BAKASSI IN OTHER PLACES
I do not know how you could move
a group of people who were once farmers from their land to a new settlement,
without making provision for them to continue their age old profession, which
is farming. This is the same problem all over the World where people have been
relocated away from their God-given land to a newer settlement, while the
original land is appropriated for developmental use. The Bakassi situation is
unique, because the relocation was not as a result of infrastructural or
developmental use or connected with exploration of mineral resources. They were
simply evacuated from their homes for Cameroonian to assume occupation or
ownership of the territory pursuant to ICJ ruling and capitulation by President
Obasanjo's administration.
Not long ago, at a Sustainable
Development Class, I asked a visiting or guest lecturer who supervised the
relocation of an entire community to a brand new village in order to provide
space for a mining operation, whether in addition to the new bank account and
new houses given to the new settlers, he also provide additional land for them
in the new settlement for farming and goat rearing, given that their occupation
in their former settlement was husbandry. He paused, and walked towards my
desk, stared at me for a moment and said (actually, I caught him off guard,
because I asked the question in between sentence when it was not yet time for
Q&A), “if I have to do it again, that would be the first thing I would do.”
And he was gracious enough to add that they did not make provision for the villagers to continue their original occupation in the new settlement, and that "it is the same problem all over the
World where people have been relocated from their original settlement to a
newer settlement in order to create space for irrigation use or mining
operation.”
He was right. And I appreciate
his sincerity. The affected village in question is in Sub-Sahara Africa. For
me, and especially as a black student, watching the documentary was a sorry
sight. Within two years of their relocation, they depleted their bank accounts,
and then misery and deprivation set in and pervade the landscape, without end
in sight. They were helpless. Every home is a consumer and buyer of produce,
but there was no harvest, because there was no land to farm and no ground to till.
That is the sort of deprivation
that the people of Bakassi who were evacuated from their God-given land for an
unknown terrain where no one knows their names and where no government
authority and agency remember their occupation are experiencing presently. No
amount of compensation can remedy that deprivation. If you don't know their
yesterday and their history, you cannot plan for their today and tomorrow -
reality is the reference point for policy enunciation. Only the Bakassi people can feel the pain.
Finally, as a Nigerian and as a
professional with special interest in sustainable development of human and
natural resources, especially of people and communities
proximate to mining and oil and gas operations, I will not give up on the
Bakassi travesty, until there is justice and equitable resolution of this
forced resettlement.
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