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All Journal Dialektika kontemporer Pinisi Journal of Social Science
Felix Tabi Okorn
University of Calabar
Social Sciences Other

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From International Court to Community Conflict: The Unintended Consequences of the Bakassi Ruling on Inter-Community Relations in the Cross River Estuary Ibiang Okoi; Felix Tabi Okorn
Jurnal Ilmu Sosiologi Dialektika Kontemporer Vol 14, No 1 (2026)
Publisher : dialektika kontemporer

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Abstract

The 2002 International Court of Justice ruling on the Bakassi Peninsula, which ceded the territory to Cameroon, represents one of the most significant boundary decisions in post-colonial Africa. While extensively analysed for its geopolitical and legal implications, the ruling's unintended consequences on inter-community relations within Nigeria's Cross River estuary remain inadequately examined. This paper argues that the ICJ judgment triggered a cascade of secondary boundary disputes by fundamentally altering Cross River State's coastal status, creating legal ambiguity around maritime boundaries, and generating resource competition that has manifested in renewed tensions between neighbouring communities and states. Drawing on legal geography and borderland studies frameworks, the paper analyses how an international legal decision, designed to resolve a bilateral dispute, has produced complex local consequences including the Cross River-Akwa Ibom offshore oil wells conflict, heightened inter-community competition over fishing grounds and mangrove resources, and internal political fragmentation within affected communities. The research demonstrates that international boundary adjudication cannot be understood as an isolated legal event but must be recognised as a transformative force that reshapes local spatial realities, often in ways that judicial bodies neither anticipate nor address. The findings contribute to broader scholarly conversations about the relationship between international law and local lived experiences, the unintended consequences of boundary-making, and the limitations of state-centric approaches to territorial dispute resolution.
“We Are All Potential Migrants”: Insecurity, Forced Displacement, and the Remaking of Rural Livelihoods in Northwestern Nigeria, 2018–2025 Felix Tabi Okorn
Pinisi Journal of Social Science Vol 5, No 1 (2026): May
Publisher : Universitas Negeri Makassar

Show Abstract | Download Original | Original Source | Check in Google Scholar | DOI: 10.26858/pjss.v5i1.88263

Abstract

The escalation of armed banditry in northwestern Nigeria since 2018 has generated one of the country’s most severe displacement crises, forcing over 300,000 people from their rural communities across Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Niger, and Sokoto States. While existing scholarship has focused on the immediate humanitarian dimensions of this crisis and on the military and policy responses of the state, considerably less attention has been paid to the long-term reconfiguration of rural livelihoods among displaced populations. This article examines how forced migration induced by banditry has reshaped agricultural practices, labour markets, and land tenure systems in both source communities and host areas. Drawing on a political economy framework and the concept of forced immobility, the study employs a mixed-methods design combining a household survey of 300 displaced and host-community households across three local government areas in Zamfara and Katsina States with in-depth interviews with community leaders, agricultural extension workers, and local government officials. Findings reveal that displacement has precipitated a fundamental restructuring of agrarian livelihoods characterised by the collapse of household food production, the transformation of land access from customary to monetised arrangements, the erosion of communal labour systems, and the emergence of new patterns of dependency on humanitarian assistance and urban informal economies. The study further demonstrates that displacement does not affect all households uniformly. Differential access to social networks, financial capital, and off-farm skills produces divergent livelihood trajectories, with some households achieving partial recovery while others descend into chronic vulnerability. The paper concludes that displacement is not merely a temporary disruption but a process of profound economic restructuring with lasting implications for food security, rural governance, and the political economy of the region.
Co-Authors Ibiang Okoi