As the Bakassi Candles die...

By Nnamdi Okose

It was as if a silent wind lit candles everywhere. Cities, even those far from Bakassi were bursting with the anticipation. Bakassi must be saved! We must save our kinsmen from the clutches of the Cameroonians! The flickering lights from the lit candles are dying out now. The legendary collective amnesia of Nigerians is beginning to kick in. We are slowly forgetting that Bakassi both its area and its people allegedly belong to Nigeria.


From an African perspective, there are certain lessons to be learned from the Bakassi affair. These lessons I hope shall continue to haunt us long after the candles have been extinguished. The first is that it has suddenly struck us that dead, pale faced Europeans who in the past had made monkeys of our fathers will always resurrect from their eternal slumbers to mark the boundaries of our own farmlands. Their nescient verdict so many years ago that we were sexual freaks or some upright orangutans have not changed and cannot be challenged at least by Nigeria.

Another lesson many will have learned from this dramatic sequence is how power bequests on people great knowledge and intellect. It makes a man like Fani Kayode challenge the impetus of Chinua Achebe. It makes a man like Abacha question the sanity of a man like Soyinka. Power imbues us with such intelligence. It has made a man like Adoke, smug and aloof; decide that the clamour of Nigerian intellectuals and historians all around the world even from his legal colleagues did not have any legal merit. Adoke's genius had afforded him a prior glimpse of the judgment of the yet to be determined International Court Judge. Power can give one such mastery of the future, at least in Nigeria.

The third lesson we must learn about the Bakassi drama is akin to a woman battling to save the life of her child. Even when the doctor says that the chances of survival are slim, the woman latches onto a strand of hope and perseveres. I do not wish to engage once again in the argument of doctors and faith but studies have shown that even doctors apply themselves to their patients in a scientific ardour akin to faith.

That Adoke considered himself a recalcitrant doctor in the Bakassi issue was not in doubt. He did everything to undermine the case and never gave it any iota of chance. Newspapers report him convening meetings to decide the fate of Bakassi people and not showing up. This third lesson is linked to treason, the undermining of one's country and the punishment thereof.

As the last of the flickers of the flames of the Bakassi imbroglio continue dying out in turbulent winds, we must cusp the few lights remaining and with courage ask if Adoke and people like him who have betrayed this country will ever be brought to justice for treason here in Nigeria?