The Bakassi Judgment

On 10 October 2002 the International Court of Justice ruled that sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula, on the Gulf of Guinea between the Cross River estuary near Calabar and the Rio del Rey, belonged to Cameroon (Wikipedia). Cameroon had taken the dispute to the court on 29 March 1994. Nigeria relied largely on Anglo-German correspondence from 1885 and on treaties with local rulers, notably the 1884 Treaty of Protection; Cameroon relied on the Anglo-German treaty of 1913 and on two agreements signed with Nigeria in the 1970s. The court decided mainly on the basis of the Anglo-German agreements.

The Bakassi Peninsula, with a population generally put at between 150,000 and 300,000, lies where warm and cold ocean currents meet, making it a rich fishing ground on which most of its people depend (Wikipedia). It is often described as oil-rich, although no commercially viable oil has been found there; its waters have nevertheless attracted at least eight multinational oil companies. Disputes between Nigeria and Cameroon over the peninsula led Cameroon to take the case to the International Court of Justice in 1994 (Wikipedia). The fishing grounds form where the warm Guinea Current, called Aya Efiat in Efik, meets the cold Benguela Current, Aya Ubenekang, building up shoals rich in fish and shrimp. After the judgment the territory was handed over in two stages, the first in August 2006 and the rest two years later, on 14 August 2008 (Wikipedia).

Bakassi had remained under Nigerian administration from Calabar after the Southern Cameroons voted in 1961 to join Cameroon. Under the Greentree Agreement it was transferred to Cameroon in stages; on 22 November 2007 the Nigerian Senate rejected the transfer as contrary to the 1999 constitution, but the territory was completely handed over on 14 August 2008 (Wikipedia).