Two weeks ago, this column looked at the global conflicts of our time and some of the causes of those conflicts. I tried to go back into history and the kinds of conflicts the world went through and the causes. After very devastating wars for control of land and other resources, the world decided to put in place bodies and agencies to mediate and address any of such disputes in future. I gave the example of the Bakasa Peninsula issue between Nigeria and the Cameroun whose ownership had been a bone of contention for more than 50 years.
I remember in my hustling days in Nigeria in the early 1980s. Nigerian Military personnel patrolling the peninsular were shot at and killed by the Camerounian soldiers. This was the time when Alhaji Shehu Shagari was the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Amadu Ahilijo was the President of Cameroun.
Nigerians were very angry and urged their government to wage war on Cameroun. The then very vibrant Nigerian media were at the forefront of the agitation. I remember one cartoonist in the Concord Newspaper had cartooned a very huge Nigeria and very rich (remember those were the days when the oil Naira was in display), being toyed with by a relatively tiny and poor Cameroun. Against the populist will of the masses, Nigeria did not go to war. The Camerounian President then, visited Nigeria and laid wreath for the soldiers who lost their lives and paid some compensation to the bereaved family.
Even though calm was restored, the ownership question was never solved. Recently, the two nations subjected themselves to international arbitration. In just about a decade ago, a verdict was delivered on the matter in favour of Cameroun and Nigeria gracefully accepted the verdict. Not long after this remarkable show of commitment to international treatise by Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’ Ivoire also got entangled in a maritime dispute over oil and its location.
Again, these two West African nations did not resort to the use of guns. The matter was put before an international body, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and waited patiently for the outcomes of the matter. For two years running, very little or nothing at all was heard about the case until recently when we were told that the verdict on the matter was going to be made on the 23rd of September of this very year.
I personally did not know that any media house was going to beam the proceedings live. I was just ready to watch my usual Saturday Newsfile programme on Joy T.V when the host decided to let me know that the verdict was being given in Germany. As the gentleman whose name I did not and still do not care to know rattled on with technical terminologies I did not understand, I could pick some of the statements he made through the interpreter.
In a lot of instances in the beginning, he was virtually dismissing almost everything Ghana had presented as arguments to support her case, or so I understood. I was with some two gentlemen in my poor home listening together. I started sweating, I asked for two tots of my usual mahogany bitters to stabilize me but there was none. At a point in time I thought I was hallucinating. I would get up and be pacing within the hall looking for nothing I needed.
Eventually, I gave up, abandoned the T.V and went out to do some other things having braced up myself that we have lost the case. A few minutes later, one of the gentlemen who were watching the programme with me came out to tell me that it seems we were winning. He went on to say that a female interpreter who had taken over from her male counterpart seemed to be talking for us. I asked him ‘how can she be talking for us, she is only saying what the man was reading the verdict in another language to us in English’. The rest is known to all of us now.
For me, the joy of assembling our brains in such deep technical matters as Ghanaians to fight and win this case is my biggest joy. From the accounts in the public domain, the Nana Addo government did not take any member of the team put in place by the John Mahama administration to deal with the matter when it first arose. He as a matter of constitutional imperative, added his Attorney-General and if any others, to the team. He did not subtract from the previous team.
I also remember very well that when the matter first begun, Honourable K.T.Hammond, who was one time a key actor in the Energy Ministry under the Kufuor administration had in a public forum encouraged the then government to pursue the case in the ITLOS because he was very sure that Ghana was going to win the case and that the then government should not relent in its efforts to protect the interest of Ghana.
There was a sense of quiet unanimity amongst our technical people from different political persuasions to fight to protect what all of them believed was ours as a people. Kufuor’s administration discovered the oil, after a lot of studies and research had been done over the years by previous governments, particularly the P/NDC administrations. The NDC 3 exploited the resources and went on to the ITLOS to safeguard our national claim to the territorial waters because it also believed that the Kufuor administration could not have been wrong in encouraging the oil companies to invest in that portion of the sea.
The Nana Addo’s government believed also that the Mahama government was not wrong in taking the matter to ITLOS. Our collective beliefs in the actions and decisions of the various governments, is what has produced the results we are all happy about today. As I write we have been told that a high powered delegation of the Ivorien President, Alhasane Ouatara is to meet President Nana Akufo Addo. Whatever discussions will be engaged in between the two parties cannot be pre-empted at this stage. However, I can conveniently predict the acceptance of the verdict of the ITLOS by the Ivorien delegation.
The relations between the two nations over time, taking away the Asec Mimosa-Asante Kotoko episode which saw mayhem visited on thousands of Ghanaians in that country some 23 years back, has been excellent. The social and economic interaction among the people of the two nations has been good and we need to strengthen it. I have huge family members based in Cote d’ Ivoire through marriage and I believe so many of us have families there as well.
Nigeria, Cameroun, Ghana and La Cote d’Ivoire have shown to the world that it does not take the use of armaments to settle scores of whatever nature. That peaceful resolution of misunderstandings is the best way to go. Africans have had more than their fair share of conflicts in the global politics and struggle for power and resources. Every piece of space must be used to address the myriads of problems the continent is still afflicted with.
Any armed conflict between or among nations in the West African sub region in particular would further worsen the plight of our people. Illiteracy, hunger, diseases, homelessness, unemployment among our teeming population, particularly the youth, the filth which has engulfed our communities with its attendant early childhood diseases and other such negative occurrences which do not enhance our collective growth and development, are areas that we need to redirect our arsenals towards with the view of reducing them if not completely eradicating them.
The decisions of the four nations discussed above tells the world that we have come of age as a continent and wars among ourselves remain a remote option in solving our misunderstandings and disagreements. The other biggest enemy which we need to direct our efforts at, is corruption. That canker is drawing back our progress and we need to deal drastically with it to ensure that resources are used for the benefit of the majority.
Now I can take my four tots to celebrate, albeit modestly.
From Kwesi Biney