Chizoba Ogbeche
Bakassi Media Youth Forum (BMYF) is to confer a post-humous award on former Head of State, late General Sani Abacha, for his strong political will and commitment to defending the territorial integrity of the country.
This was contained in a communiqué issued by the group at the end of its inaugural meeting in Abuja.
The communiqué signed by the forum’s chairman, Mr. Ene Okon, stated that the decision to honour the late Head of State was in recognition of his proactive intervention in the Bakassi-Cameroon crisis especially as it concerns deploying the country’s military might to halt the hostile Cameroonian forces from invading Bakassi.
The forum recalled how the late Abacha vowed not to allow any country take an inch of Nigeria’s land and stood by his words by keeping Cameroon at bay against encroachment and attack on the people of Bakassi.
It read in part: “Fifteen years after General Sani Abacha passed to the Great Beyond, we remember his patriotic zeal to safeguard Nigeria and stabilise the African continent.
“To sustain the legacy of Abacha for generation’s yet unborn, the BYMF will henceforth be holding a memorial lecture in his honour to draw attention of the world to the injustice the people of Bakassi now suffer as they are treated as ‘illegal citizens’ in their ancestral land.”
Okon expressed disappointment at the ICJ’s decision to cede Bakassi to Cameroon and the hurried manner at which the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo, “handed over the people’s ancestral place of abode to its hostile neighbour without considering their rights and safety.”
The BMYF also appreciated the late Head of State for bringing government closer to the people of Bakassi through the creation of Bakassi local government, pointing out that as “Nigeria played ‘big brother’ by obeying the ICJ’s judgement, thousands of the people of Bakassi were displaced and now lived as strangers in another land.