Tag: Africa

Something historically mighty is happening on the border between Nigeria and Benin Republic in the area of Kwara State. Like most of the borders created by European founders of Africa’s modern countries, the Nigeria-Benin border here splits an ancient African people into two, one half in Nigeria and the other in Benin. What is happening now is that the people themselves, the Bariba, are slowly erasing the colonial boundary and re-unifying themselves as one people. In the process, the Nigeria-Benin border is reported to have moved – and to be moving – eastwards in favour of Benin and against Nigeria, and as many as 16 villagesare reported to have changed from being part of Nigeria to being part of Benin Republic. And all of this is happening peacefully, almost imperceptibly. As far as is known, this is a first in Sub-Saharan Africa.

It raises the big question: Is this a beginning of a trend in the future of the countries which European imperialist agents bequeathed to us in Africa? Could a time come when the political map of Sub-Saharan Africa would undergo massive redrawing?

As a result of the largely irrational borders created by imperialist agents all over Africa, practically all Sub-Saharan African countries were faced immediately at independence by serious border problems. For instance, take Nigeria, Africa’s largest country in population and third largest in territorial size at independence. Hardly any one mile of Nigeria’s thousands of miles of borders stands free of serious, and potentially explosive, border conflicts. In its south-western length, it cuts through the homeland of the Yoruba; further north from there, it cuts through the homeland of the Bariba; in the north-west, through the country of the Hausa; in the north-east through the country of the Kanuri and related peoples; in the south-east through the homelands of peoples who straddle the Nigerian-Cameroons border in the Adamawa Mountains and the Cross River swamps. Naturally, since independence, Nigeria has more or less regularly had one border problem or other. The most publicized of such problems has been the dispute with the Cameroons over the Bakassi Peninsula. This dispute started soon after independence, was occasionally marked by armed conflicts, and sometimes threatened outright war between the two countries. It was resolved in 2006 as a result of intensive mediation by the United Nations. Even after that, significant residues of the bad blood have continued to linger. Even as recently as the first months of 2010, there were reports that Nigeria might send, or was sending, troops to the area because of seriously deteriorating security conditions for Nigerians living there.

Though the Bakassi situation has attracted the most attention in the world, it has by no means been the only cause of dispute between Nigeria and the Cameroons. All along their 1,600 miles of border from Lake Chad in the north to the Gulf of Guinea in the south, Nigeria and the Cameroons have been locked in disputes since the 1960’s. Indeed, but for Nigeria’s intimidating size and influence in African affairs, the comparative weakness of the countries that are her neighbours and her own cautious restraint in her attitudes to border uncertainties, Nigeria should be perpetually engulfed in destabilizing border storms.

Most other African countries have not been that fortunate. In fact, border conflicts became such a great potential threat to peace in the new Africa in the first years of independence that the OAU had to pass a resolution in 1964 binding all African countries to agree to maintain the borders bequeathed to them by the colonial powers. Even though most members of the OAU subscribed to that resolution, many neighbours have never been able specifically to settle their border disputes.

In eastern Africa, Somalia and Kenya have suffered from serious border difficulties since independence. In fact, the great crisis that destroyed all order and government in Somalia started with multiple border problems – especially with Kenya and with Ethiopia.  With a substantial ethnic Somali population inside the Kenyan border provinces, independent Somalia has never recognized the border with Kenya. As soon as Somalia became independent, she began actively to encourage ethnic Somali insurgency inside Kenya and Ethiopia. Her quest for military help for these border situations pushed her into an alliance with the Soviet Union. Receiving substantial military help from the Soviet Union, Somalia became deeply involved in the world-wide Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers, and that meant very influential enemies from among the Western powers. When a revolution came in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian revolutionary government became Soviet allies, Somalia more or less found herself abandoned by the Soviets – and the fragile political system of Somalia (of clans and clan leaders) fractured under the pressure, and then in 1991 totally collapsed. With the collapse of orderly government in Somalia, her border conflicts became more tense and more confused, producing serious complications with Kenya and then with Ethiopia, and forcing Ethiopia to send troops repeatedly into Somalia in order to keep peace there.

While battling border troubles with Somalia, Kenya has also had to face border problems with Uganda and, to some extent, with Ethiopia and Sudan. The British took some trouble to demarcate the Kenyan-Ugandan border in 1926, and the two countries subscribed to the 1964 OAU resolution on the preservation of colonial borders. Even so, their border remains unsettled. On their land borders, conflicts are caused by irregular crossings from either side, especially by livestock herders. In the area known as Migingo, the dispute has been particularly intense. The border through Lake Victoria, where no agreed demarcations exist, is even more problematic. And so also is the uncertainty of the border in the Bukwa and Morumeri area where the three countries, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan (now South Sudan), have conflicting claims. The Kenyan-Ethiopian border has been comparatively peaceful, but it too is occasionally disturbed by conflicting claims of pastoralist communities from both sides. A stretch of territory known as the Elemi Triangle, administered by Kenya, is claimed by Sudan and partly also by Ethiopia. This region of Africa is also the scene of one of the worst inter-state wars on the continent – the war over a disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. For two years, 1998-2000, this border war reached a peak. In 2000, negotiations produced a settlement, but in spite of that, tension has continued between the two countries. An estimated 70,000 people have lost their lives in these hostilities.

In summary, the border problems confronting our countries in Black Africa are very serious. And they are not our only fundamental political problems. The same irrational actions of the European colonizers that produced these tortuous border problems also produced for us countries that comprise many different nationalities with different political traditions and expectations, countries that are extremely difficult to manage and extremely difficult to make stable.

Our tragedy as citizens of these wobbly countries with these trouble-prone borders is that we have never produced leaders who are capable of handling our fundamental problems with the needed amount of statesmanship. For virtually every Black African leader, the quest always is for power and more power. In Nigeria since independence, we have produced only the kind of leaders who seek to maximise power at the so-called federal centre – in a country where the obvious need is a policy of conscious respect for our nationalities and a constitutional arrangement guaranteeing a thoroughly rational federal structure. It is the same in virtually all other Black African countries. The result is that we Black Africans are citizens of countries that generate discord, conflicts and poverty, countries with very doubtful futures.