Nigerian court orders delay in Bakassi handover

ABUJA (Reuters) - A Nigerian court ordered authorities on Thursday not to transfer the disputed Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon until it had dealt with a lawsuit filed by community leaders opposed to the handover.

Nigerian forces are due to complete their long-delayed withdrawal from Bakassi, a peninsula of mangrove islands whose offshore waters are believed to be rich in oil, on August 14 to comply with a 2002 World Court order.

But a group led by two former chairmen of Bakassi, Emmanuel Etene and Ani Esin, has sued the Nigerian authorities at a Federal High Court in the capital Abuja, seeking 456 billion naira (1.9 billion pounds) in compensation before the transfer.

"It is hereby ordered that parties should maintain the status quo and should not take any step pending the hearing of all applications," presiding judge Mohammed Umar said.

He adjourned the case to October 20.

President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has repeatedly expressed his commitment to the handover, ordered his attorney general and justice minister to appeal the decision.

"If there are legal hurdles, the president is fully committed to addressing those hurdles so that the handover can go as planned," said Olusegun Adeniyi, the president's spokesman.

The suit is one of a series of attempts to block the transfer of the peninsula. Nigerian fishermen and their families make up about 90 percent of the population in Bakassi.

A little-known armed Nigerian group has launched two attacks on Cameroonian soldiers in Bakassi in the past weeks and threatened more violence until the transfer is renegotiated.

Yar'Adua has said Nigeria will withdraw its forces from the region despite the attacks.

GREEN TREE AGREMENT

The two neighbours argued about Bakassi for decades and came close to war over it on several occasions. Both agreed to abide by an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in 2002 which recognised Cameroon's ownership of the peninsula.

The deal was sealed under the "Green Tree Agreement" signed in New York in June 2006 after Nigeria missed the first handover deadline in September 2004.

Officials of the southeastern Nigerian state of Cross River, where Bakassi is located, said the Federal High Court ruling would not be obeyed.

"This court cannot sit as an appellate court on the judgment of the International Court of Justice," Cross River state deputy director of litigation Bassey Bassey told reporters.

The plaintiffs say the suit was not challenging the ICJ judgment but the modalities for its implementation. They argue that the Green Tree Agreement was not ratified by parliament.

They want the court to order the authorities to resettle the 206,000 Nigerians in Bakassi in a place of their choice, instead of the allocated landlocked "New Bakassi."

Many Nigerians in Bakassi say their ancestors lived in the area before a 1913 colonial era Anglo-German treaty on which the ICJ, commonly known as the World Court, based its 2002 ruling.

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(Writing by Tume Ahemba; editing by Nick Tattersall and Jon Boyle)