• No plan to create new State of Cameroon from Nigeria — UN source
There has been a growing controversy over a purported plan by the United Nations to annex a part of the Nigeria’s north to Cameroon, for creation of a new country to be known as the State of Cameroon, in a declaration to be made July 10, 2020.
It was said that in the new arrangement, Nigeria will lose 24 Local Government Areas, said to have been earlier given away in the Green Tree Agreement signed in 2006, by the country’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo for Nigeria and and the incumbent President Paul Biya for Cameroun.
Likewise, the unverified information already published in some Nigeria’s mainstream newspapers and online platforms, and currently circulating like a wild fire in the social media, had it that plans had been concluded by the UN to make an open declaration on July 10, 2020.
One of those said would be hardly hit by the development is, former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, whose Local Government Area, Jada, is said to be part of 23 others already annexed to Cameroon, and consequently, by July 10, it was said Atiku would cease to be a Nigerian.
To give credence to their claims, the purveyors of the information said a disclosure had been made in a May 26, 2020 letter on the UNO State of Cameroon by Professor Martins Chia Ateh, the United Nations, appointed workshops coordinator in Cameroon and Nigeria.
Prior to that, it was said former Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Paul Biya of Cameroon, on the invitation of the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, had, in March 2003 signed documents to cede their disputed territories (Northern and Southern Cameroon) to the proposed UNO new country in West and Central Africa.
The new state was equally said would have a total landmass of 28, 214 square KM, with an estimated population of 20 million people to be carved out of Nigeria.
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To further solidify their claims, the rumour mongers quoted a report as saying that the recent withdrawal of troops by President Paul Biya from the southern part of the planned UNO State of Cameroon, attested to the planned July 10 declaration.
It was said that the withdrawal of Cameroonian troops from the annexed territory was consequent upon a demand formally made by the former President of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Ali Treki, on May 20, 2020, which it was said finally set the stage for the creation of the new state being spearheaded by the UN.
The May 20, 2020 Treki’s formal letter to Biya, was said to have been
referenced by Ateh’s May 26, 2020, which it was said was what finally exposed the UN’s planned declaration.
The said Ateh’s letter was quoted in part as saying: “Greetings and thank you very much for the attached list of those who were detained in the Nkambe prison of Cameroon in August 2008.
“It is only now that the soldiers of la Republique du Cameroun are being withdrawn from the southern part of UNO State of Cameroon.”
On UN’s creation of a new country in Africa, Ateh was also said to have written: “I should be getting back to you once the United Nations finishes with an official announcement on the existence of UNO State of Cameroon to the international community.”
Nigeria, in its northern region is sharing borders with Cameroon, Bakassi Peninsula and Lake Chad located south and northeast of the UNO State of Cameroon, said to be a new country to be carved out.
If that would be done, it was said the creation of the new country will see Nigeria losing those 24 Local government which spread across three states in the North-East, as follows: In Borno (five), Adamawa (12) and Taraba (seven).
Reports further attributed to Ateh as the UN workshop coordinator and chairman, steering committee, claimed that, the councils to be ceded to UNO State of Cameroon, include Bama, Gwoza, Ngala, Kala/Balge, Dikwa, Madagali, Michika, Mubi North, Mubi South, Mayo/Belwa, Toungo, Ganye, Serti, Hong, Jada, Maiha and Jada councils.
It was said the UN had kept Northern and Southern Cameroon under watch since Obasanjo and Biya signed the documents under the UN treaty before the announcement of the new state..
Further to the claims is that, the Secretary-General of UN, Antonio Guterres, had commenced the process of sensitisation towards the July 10 date of creating the new state for the Anglophone separatists in Cameroon.
Ali Treki died 2015
However, The Daily Leaks checks revealed that, the former President of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Ali Treki, said to have written a May 20, 2020 memo to Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, asking him to withdraw troops from the annexed territory, could not have done so, since he died five years earlier, precisely in October, 2015.
His death came five years after he had completed his tenure at the UN. The Libyan authorities in a statement precisely on Tuesday, October 21, 2015 announced the death of Treki.
“Libya has lost, with the passing away of former Foreign Minister Ali Abdesselam Triki, one of its best men and renowned diplomat,” the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday in a communiqué.
“It was with deepest sorrow that the Foreign Ministry learned the death of Ali Abdesselam Triki, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Libya, died Monday 19 October,” the communiqué added.
Born 10 October, 1937, Ali Abdussalam Treki died 19 October 2015 at 78 years of age.
His Life and Times
It will be recalled that Ali Abdussalam Treki was elected President of the United Nations General Assembly’s 64th session on 10 June 2009. At the time of his election, he was serving as Libya’s Secretary (Minister) of African Union Affairs, a post he has held since 2004.
Ali Abdussalam Treki presided the General Assembly’s 64th session from 15 September 2009 to 14 September 2010.
Prior to his death, he was a Libyan diplomat in Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, and had served as one of Libya’s top diplomats beginning in the 1970s and ending with the 2011 Libyan Civil War.
During his governmental engagements, Treki was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1976 to 1982 and again from 1984 to 1986, and he was later the Permanent Representative to the United Nations on several occasions.
UN position on the purported new country
In the wake of this rumour the United Nations (UN) office in Nigeria has said that, the already widely circulated information is not true.
The 193-member intergovernmental organisation founded in 1945, promote international peace and security, and friendliness among nations, reacting to the development in Nigeria said the information is not true.
A background source in the UN had described the said plan as a ruse, asserting that “UN does not create countries.”
Nigeria’s former NBC DG refutes claims
Also, former Director-General of Nigeria’s National Boundary Commission (NBC), Mr Dahiru Bobbo, had refuted the claims saying, “there is no iota of truth in the report purported to have been published in some media to the effect that Nigeria may lose 24 Local Government Area to new UNO State of Cameroon on the basis of “Obasanjo, Biya ceded territories In 2003.”
Bobbo said as the Director-General of the NBC of Nigeria from 1999 to 2006, he was sure there was never a summit between Obasanjo and Biya throughout 2003.
“Therefore there could have been no agreement, treaty, communique or any other bilateral exchange of documents between Cameroon and Nigeria on cessation of territories to UN or to anybody for that matter.
“The records available confirmed only two meetings of Presidents Obasanjo of Nigeria and Biya of Cameroon in Paris on 5th September 2002 and Geneva on 15 November 2002 both on the invitations of the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Anan.
“The communiques issued on the two summits were in respect of the establishment of a Cameroon Nigerian Mixed Commission on the implementation of the decisions of the international Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague (The World Court) on Bakassi Peninsula and the land boundary between Nigeria and Cameroon.
“The mixed commission of which I was a member and secretary handled the assignment and handed over territories to both Cameroon and Nigeria as ruled by the World Court including Dambore, Narki (Borno) and Burha Vango (Adamawa to Nigeria and Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon.
“The last two meetings between the UN Secretary-General, President Biya and President Obasanjo were held in Geneva on 11 May 2005, and at Green Tree, New York, USA, on 12 June 2006, concerning the Modalities of Withdrawal and Transfer of Authority in the Bakassi Peninsula, ” Bobbo said.
