Now, President Yar'Adua bruises the Senate over Bakassi - Nigeria Village Square

By Seyi Olu Awofeso

Friday, 07 December 2007

In a scripted move as an in-direct denunciation of the Nigerian Senate, President Umaru Yar'Adua last week rushed to Cameroon to promise the Yaoundé government of his commitment to handover the Bakassi peninsula on schedule, despite a Nigerian Senate's motion two weeks ago, that ownership of that peninsula remains un-decided and subject to its legislative ratification. Yar'Adua's "over-diplomatic" statement in Yaoundé speaks louder than words, for it shows a Nigerian government now divided against itself over the legal status of Bakassi. On Yar'adua's cue, and plausibly with his approval too, the Nigerian air force Chief, in an unusual statement to the Press, disclosed that Nigerian air force has no single, functioning fighter plane. Such disclosure of the country's military vulnerability would ordinarily earn a dismissal. But it didn't, because it was plausibly authorized by President Yar'Adua as commander-in-chief. Un-surprisingly, that confession of Nigeria's non-existent air force possibly earned just a wink and a chuckle inside the presidency. But is this anyway to conduct diplomacy? Certainly not. President Yar'adua has only given hostages to fortune by that overkill, intended to subdue Nigeria's lately effervescent Senate into a certain sobriety. That intentionally released information by the executive and the military, in concert, on Nigeria's comatose air force; under-funded over the years and possibly robbed of its meagre financial resource under military regimes, would likely tranquilize the overexcited Senate. Yet, it will also redound to Nigeria's detriment in short order, as an unlikely candidate for a Security Council seat in the prospective re-constitution of the United Nations. No country qualifies for a Security Council seat without a functioning air force for regional or continental missions under chapter seven of the United Nations Charter. In pertinence, President Umaru Yar'Adua has no previous experience in federal politics. It is no surprise that he blundered his very first diplomatic challenge on Bakassi, on which he actually needed to do nothing, since the Senate was on the path of self-ridicule, by interposing itself between the United Nations and Cameroon as a final decider of Nigeria's land and maritime boundaries; two matters clearly outside the Senate’s remit, under the 1999 Constitution. On the upside, news of a comatose air force predictably sent the clearest signal yet to the belligerent Nigerian Senate, that Nigeria is simply in no position to fight Cameroon over Bakassi. A repudiation of the 2006 Greentree treaty by the Senate would leave Nigeria with the only option of war, which that intentionally leaked information, has foreclosed. Meantime, as the executive and the military succeed in neutralizing the Senate's bellicose posture, by these extreme measures, President Yar'Adua holds onto the Greentree treaty, without submitting it, as demanded by the Senate's motion. Yar'Adua will likely continue to hold on as such until he perceives calmness of spirit over Bakassi in the Senate's suddenly radical Chambers. In truth, without having to take any action at all, Yar'Adua ought to have war-gamed the Senate. If he did, it would have been obvious to him as President, that he didn't need to take or authorize either of those tranquilizing measures. The Nigerian Senate was already stranded at outset. Except for some scattered support from a clutch of Nigerians who totally mis-construe Bakassi as a question of patriotism by deeming the Senate as picking up the gauntlet, the Nigerian Senate totally lacks concrete backing in its pretensive attempt at renunciation of the 2006 Greentree compact, which though rises to a treaty in the extent of its diminution of Nigeria's territorial borders. The logic of Bakassi, as pertain Nigeria, is as simple as follows. General Abacha's Provisional Council (PRC) had appropriated all legislative powers of Nigeria, de facto, in 1993. Thus, the PRC is deemed retrospectively, as would the National Assembly be deemed its successor, to have consented in advance to be bound by the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the case filed by Cameroon, on the 2,400 square kilometres of borders separating both countries. Full Story