Professor Maurice Kamto has been cited and applauded for being among the architects of Cameroon’s diplomatic victory in the border dispute with Nigeria in the Bakassi Peninsular case. This mention was made at a ceremony he was not invited to.
The ceremony was initiated by Journalist Zephirin Koloko, Director of the Cameroonian Communication Agency, and the Network of Media Owners in Cameroon. But in the absence of the one who was the head of the pool of Cameroonian lawyers on this file.
Cameroon’s Minister of Communication, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi, and a representative of President Paul Biya attended the ceremony on the evening of August 14, 2023, at the Hilton hotel in Yaoundé, mentioning Professor Maurice Kamto among others.
“… Without being exhaustive, there have been renowned jurists, including the Minister of State Laurent Esso, Professor Joseph Owona, Professor Maurice Kamto, and Professors Joseph Bipoun Woum and Peter Ntamack of late memory, who have shown competence, patriotism, and commitment to the fierce defence of the rights of our country,” he said. ,
Maurice Kamto was thus cited among the personalities who validly brought and defended the case of the border conflict between Cameroon and Nigeria before the International Court of Justice.
As a reminder, Cameroon and Nigeria missed out on a fratricidal war in the early 1990s when the armies of the two countries clashed intermittently in Bakassi, a territory rich in oil, gas, and others. The territory is located in the Ndian Division, South West Region of Cameroon.
The clash was taken to the International Court of Justice, which, after bitter debates, took a judgement on October 10, 2002, recognising the sovereignty of Cameroon on the peninsula of Bakassi.
The decision was materialised on June 12, 2006, by the Greentree Agreements in the United States. The agreement was signed by President Paul Biya of Cameroon, Olusegun Obasanjo, the then Nigerian President, and Koffi Anan Atan, the then UN Secretary-General.
