The Bakassi Movement for Self-Determination (BAMOSD) is a militant organization that seeks for the independence of Bakassi, a territory of Cameroon and formation of the Democratic Republic of Bakassi. The movement played a leading role in the Bakassi conflict.
According to an email sent by Sive Ogan, a member of BAMOSD, the decision to declare secession from Nigeria was taken at a meeting in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State on July 2, 2006. [1]
It has made two declarations of independence since its foundation in 2006: one on August 2, 2006 in light of the Greentree Agreement between Nigeria and Cameroon, and another one on July 31, 2008 (two days less than two years after the first declaration of independence). In the latter declaration, Akwa Obutong was declared the capital of the republic.
One of the first leaders of the organization, Tony Ene Asuquo, died less than a month after the first declaration of independence in a mysterious car accident. [2]
It has been indicated in both Nigerian and Cameroonian media that the BAMOSD is backed by the militant MEND movement, which opposes the federal government and the predominant petroleum industry in the Niger Delta, and the SCAPO, which seeks independence for the nearby Southern Cameroons as the Republic of Ambazonia.
On 31 October 2008, gunmen in speedboats kidnapped and threatened to kill 10 crew members from French offshore service vessel (OSV) "Bourbon Sagitta" near the Bakassi Peninsula. The vessel's owners said those taken hostage were seven French nationals, two Cameroonians and a Tunisian. A group called Bakassi Freedom Fighters has claimed to have carried out the attack.
The leader of the group Ebi Dari told the BBC's Randy Joe Sa'ah in Cameroon that the Cameroonian government has seven days to enter into dialogue. He said the government had been warned many months ago that there would be no peace in Bakassi if it did not talk with the Bakassi Freedom Fighters. He said the group opposed the secession of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon from Nigeria.
Reuters news agency reported that the attack had been carried out jointly with a second group called Niger Delta Defence and Security Council (NDDSC). [3]
On November 5, 2008, the commander of the militant group, Ebi Dari confirmed that one of the French hostages under its custody was killed in a failed rescue bid by Cameroonian soldiers. [4] However, then it was reported that the seafarer reported killed was still alive [ permanent dead link ]
On November 5, 2008 Groupe Bourbon announced that all its 10 crew members had been released. [5]
Bakassi is a peninsula on the Gulf of Guinea. It lies between the Cross River estuary, near the city of Calabar and the Rio del Ray estuary on the east. It is governed by Cameroon, following the transfer of sovereignty from neighbouring Nigeria as a result of a judgment by the International Court of Justice. On 22 November 2007, the Nigerian Senate rejected the transfer, since the Greentree Agreement ceding the area to Cameroon was contrary to Section 12(1) of the 1999 Constitution. Regardless, the territory was completely ceded to Cameroon on 14 August 2008, exactly two years after the first part of it was transferred.
At the crossroads of West Africa and Central Africa, the territory of what is now Cameroon has seen human habitation since some time in the Middle Paleolithic, likely no later than 130,000 years ago. The earliest discovered archaeological evidence of humans dates from around 30,000 years ago at Shum Laka. The Bamenda highlands in western Cameroon near the border with Nigeria are the most likely origin for the Bantu peoples, whose language and culture came to dominate most of central and southern Africa between 1000 BCE and 1000 CE.
Biafra, officially the Republic of Biafra, was a partially recognised secessionist state in West Africa that declared independence from Nigeria and existed from 1967 until 1970. Its territory consisted of the predominantly Igbo-populated former Eastern Region of Nigeria. Biafra was established on 30 May 1967 by Igbo military officer and Eastern Region governor C. Odumegwu Ojukwu under his presidency, following a series of ethnic tensions and military coups after Nigerian independence in 1960 that culminated in the 1966 massacres of Igbo people and other Eastern ethnic groups living in northern Nigeria. The military of Nigeria proceeded to invade Biafra shortly after its secession, resulting in the start of the Nigerian Civil War.
Ambazonia, officially the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, also referred to as Amba Land, is an unrecognised breakaway state in West Africa which claims the Northwest Region and Southwest Region of Cameroon, though it currently controls almost none of the claimed territory. No country has formally recognized Ambazonia's independence, and it is currently the site of an armed conflict between Ambazonian separatist guerrillas and the Cameroonian military known as the Anglophone Crisis. Ambazonia is located in the west of Cameroon and southeast of Nigeria on the Gulf of Guinea.
The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. It is located within nine coastal southern Nigerian states, which include: all six states from the South South geopolitical zone, one state (Ondo) from South West geopolitical zone and two states from South East geopolitical zone.
The Southern Cameroons was the southern part of the British League of Nations mandate territory of the British Cameroons in West Africa. Since 1961, it has been part of the Republic of Cameroon, where it makes up the Northwest Region and Southwest Region. Since 1994, pressure groups in the territory claim there was no legal document in accordance to UNGA RES 1608(XV) paragraph 5, and are seeking to restore statehood and independence from the Republic. They renamed the British Southern Cameroons as Ambazonia.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is a decentralised militant group in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. MEND's actions – including sabotage, theft, property destruction, guerrilla warfare, and kidnapping – are part of the broader conflict in the Niger Delta and reduced Nigeria's oil production by 33% between 2006-07.
This article is about the particular significance of the year 2006 to Nigeria and its people. See also Timeline of Nigerian history
Since 2006, militant groups in Nigeria's Niger Delta, especially the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), have resorted to taking foreign employees of oil companies hostage as part of the conflict in the Niger Delta. More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped since 2006, though most were released unharmed.
Relations between Cameroon and Nigeria were established in 1960, the same year that each country obtained its independence. Since then, their relationship has revolved in large part around their extensive shared border, as well as the legacy of colonial arrangements under which areas of Cameroon were administered as part of British Nigeria. The countries came close to war in the 1990s in the culmination of a long-running dispute over the sovereignty of the Bakassi peninsula. In the 21st century, however, a return to conviviality has been achieved, partly because the demarcation of their border has been formalised, and partly because the Boko Haram insurgency in the Lake Chad basin has necessitated increasingly close cooperation in regional security matters.
The following lists events that happened in 2013 in Nigeria.
Starting in late January 2015, a coalition of West African troops launched an offensive against the Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria.
The 2016 Niger Delta conflict is an ongoing conflict around the Niger Delta region of Nigeria in a bid for the secession of the region, which was a part of the breakaway state of Biafra. It follows on-and-off conflict in the Christian-dominated southern Niger Delta in the preceding years, as well as an insurgency in the Muslim-dominated northeast.
The Anglophone Crisis, also known as the Ambazonia War of Independence or the Cameroonian Civil War, is an ongoing civil war in the former Southern Cameroons regions of Cameroon, part of the long-standing Anglophone problem with profound root causes. Following the suppression of the 2016–17 Cameroonian protests, Ambazonian nationalists or separatists in the Anglophone territories of Northwest and Southwest Regions launched a guerrilla campaign against the Cameroon Armed Forces, and later unilaterally proclaimed independence. In November 2017, the government of Cameroon declared war on the separatists and sent its army into the Anglophone regions.
Dr. Ebenezer Derek Mbongo Akwanga is an Ambazonian independence activist. He is the chairman of the African People's Liberation Movement, an Ambazonian separatist movement, and heads its armed wing, SOCADEF. A former student at the University of Buea, he and fellow activist Ayaba Cho Lucas founded a pro-independence student association. Their movement was soon outlawed, and in 1997, Akwanga was imprisoned for six years. Following his escape from prison, he joined forces with the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC). When the SCNC split into several factions, he became the leader of the Southern Cameroons Youth League (SCYL). The SCYL eventually transformed into the African People's Liberation Movement (APLM). In March 2019, he oversaw the APLM taking part in founding the Southern Cameroons Liberation Council, in an attempt to form a united front. Akwanga is also an advocate of the Biafran case, and has spoken in favor of an alliance between Ambazonian and Biafran independence movements. He has called for referendums on independence in both the former Southern Cameroons and Biafra.
The Bakassi conflict is an ongoing insurgency which started in 2006, in the Bakassi Peninsula of Cameroon waged by local separatists against Cameroonian government forces. After the independence of Cameroon and Nigeria the border between them was not settled and there were other disputes. The Nigerian government claimed the border was that prior to the British–German agreements in 1913, and Cameroon claimed the border laid down by the British–German agreements. The border dispute worsened in the 1980s and 1990s after some border incidents occurred, which almost caused a war between the two countries.
The insurgency in Southeastern Nigeria is a military conflict that broke out in the city of Orlu, Imo State, Nigeria on 22 January 2021, when the Nigerian Army moved to crush the paramilitary wing of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the Eastern Security Network (ESN). The conflict escalated after the ESN managed to repulse the initial push by the Nigerian Army, but IPOB ended the initial crisis by unilaterally withdrawing the ESN from Orlu. After a few weeks of quiet, Nigeria launched a military offensive in the area to destroy the ESN. On 19 February 2021, IPOB declared that as of the day before, a state of war existed between Nigeria and Biafra. Three weeks later, another separatist group declared the formation of a Biafran interim government which was subsequently endorsed by IPOB. Since then, the Biafran separatists have begun to form alliances with other separatist groups in Nigeria and Cameroon. Despite these developments, the separatists claimed that their militant operations were mainly aimed at defending local communities from armed herders and bandits instead of fighting the Nigerian government. In late June, IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu was arrested by Interpol and handed over to Nigerian authorities.
Separatist movements of Nigeria want to achieve state secession, which is the withdrawal of one or more states from the multinational Federal Republic of Nigeria. The only act of secession in Nigeria occurred from 1967 to 1970 during the Nigerian Civil War, when the breakaway republic of Biafra declared its independence from Nigeria and was eventually defeated. Ever since then, Nigeria has experienced the emergence of separatist movements seeking the independence of Biafra as well as other proposed states.
Biafra Nations League initially known as Biafra Nations Youth League is a secessionist group in Nigeria's eastern region with operational headquarters in Bakassi Peninsula. The group was established in Port Harcourt, Rivers State on the 3rd August, 2013.