The Bakassi Settlement between Nigeria and Cameroon and the Practice of Preventive Diplomacy in Africa's Gulf of Guinea Sub Region, 2002 to 2025

The settlement of the Bakassi dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon is often described as a model of peaceful boundary change in Africa. This article tests that description. It uses a qualitative case study design built on documentary analysis of the International Court of Justice judgment of 10 October 2002, the Green tree Agreement of 12 June 2006, United Nations records, the proceedings of an International Peace Institute conference, peer reviewed scholarship, Nigerian press reporting and testimonies already in the public record. It asks whether the settlement succeeded as law, as process and as protection for people. The analysis draws on three ideas: the African norm of boundary permanence, preventive diplomacy through the good offices of the United Nations Secretary General, and Johan Galtung's distinction between negative and positive peace read alongside human security. The article finds that the settlement achieved legal closure and interstate peace at remarkably low cost, largely because of executive leadership in Abuja and Yaoundé, quiet mediation by Kofi Annan and the face saving design of the Greentree Agreement. It also finds that procedural legitimacy was thin inside Nigeria, where the Agreement appears never to have been ratified, and that human security was weak, since large numbers of Bakassi people were displaced into camps and unfinished resettlement sites while those who stayed reported harassment and disputed levies. The article concludes that Bakassi is a model of how to end an interstate dispute without war, but not yet a model of how to settle the fate of the people who live on a boundary. Recommendations are offered to Nigeria, Cameroon, the African Union and the institutions of the Gulf of Guinea.