Senate Leader, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, has said except the federal government takes a proactive action against the ongoing boundary adjustment in the country, Nigeria could lose most of its tourist sites including the popular Obudu resort.
He also said in view of the boundary adjustment going on in Cross River State, the state could lose eight of its existing 18 local government areas to neighbouring Cameroun.
The ongoing boundary adjustment between Nigeria and Cameroun by the United Nations (UN) is a fallout of the 2002 judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ceded the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroun.
The senator, who promised to move a formal motion on the issue when the Senate resumes from its recess, said there was tension in the state last week over the presence of the UN boundary adjustment team led by one Isaac Baya of Zimbabwe.
According to him, the team was accompanied by Nigerian soldiers to Danari, a boundary community between Nigeria and Cameroun in Boki Local Government Area of the state in furtherance of the Green Tree Agreement (GTA) adopted for implementation of the ICJ verdict.
He said: “There is some boundary delineation exercise going on as a result of the Green Tree Agreement, which was the consequence of the judgment of the International Court of Justice on what we call Bakassi.
“The Green Tree Agreement necessitated some boundary adjustments and that exercise started somewhere from lake Chad and it is supposed to go right down to the Atlantic Ocean in the south, so the exercise is going on in a place called Danari in Boki Local Government in my constituency.
“The Anglo/German boundary of 1913 has been there and a particular beacon stone, beacon 113, we heard cannot be found, the rest has been found and that is the one they are trying to locate. The United Nations team is insisting on taking a straight line, and now the communities believe that the beacon is somewhere further in the Camerouns.
“If they follow a straight line as they want to, then we will be losing some communities to the Camerouns including the famous Agbokim waterfalls where Hon. John Enoh comes from. So I am in touch with the Cross River State Government and the community.
“But we are looking at it so that I will bring a formal motion to the floor. You know I came under Order 42 the last time just to give notice about my intention to bring a motion.
“We are going to lose some substantial territory, but I am still getting briefed on it. Now the good thing is for the boundary communities, we have Danari in Nigeria and we have Danari in Cameroun – Danari 1 and Danari 2. They know their traditional boundaries, they know where their traditional boundaries are and they have had no problems with that.
“So we want to make a case for the UN team to just accept the traditional boundaries that the two communities agreed on and let the sleeping dogs lie.”
The senator said even more worrisome was the fact that a few days ago, the UN team was in Danari with soldiers without the knowledge of the chairman of the local government and the state government.
“We were wondering where these soldiers came from and without the chairman of the local government knowing, without the state government knowing. So what is actually going on?” he demanded.
