Seun Bamidele disputes, one where people, especially women and youth, are left stateless, silenced, and structurally excluded. Media Erasure and the Silence of Displacement One of the most striking outcomes of the Bakassi Peninsula conflict is the sustained erasure of displaced communities from mainstream media and policy discourses. While the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in 2002 (ICJ 2002a; 2002b) resolved the territorial dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon, the human cost of that decision — particularly the forced displacement of tens of thousands — has received comparatively little attention. Media coverage in both countries tends to prioritize geopolitical narratives such as sovereignty, diplomatic cooperation, and legal compliance, while sidelining the everyday struggles of displaced persons (Taiwo and Igwebuike 2015). As Ezeilo (2010) notes, this pattern of coverage perpetuates a form of structural invisibility that renders the displaced population peripheral to both state accountability and public empathy. This media neglect has profound implications for policy formation. When the experiences of displaced Bakassi residents are omitted from public discourse, their needs are similarly excluded from national and international policy agendas. The dominant narrative of Bakassi as a “success story” of peaceful conflict resolution (Bonchuk 2014; International Peace Institute 2008) masks the underlying social dislocation and long-term humanitarian crises. For example, reports highlight that many displaced persons still lack access to housing, education, and legal documentation over a decade after the territorial transfer (Unah 2021; Macdonald 2024). Without visibility in media or political forums, these issues fail to galvanize action or attract sustained international attention, leaving affected communities in protracted limbo. In addition, this silence serves as a mechanism for the depoliticization of displacement. The media’s focus on legal outcomes rather than lived realities reinforces a technocratic approach to conflict resolution, one that treats borders as abstract lines rather than social spaces inhabited by real people (Akhere 2023; Hart 2022). As LeFebvre (2014) and Ngalim (2019) argue, the absence of people-centered narratives allows states to celebrate legal compliance while evading responsibility for the human suffering their decisions produce. This silence is especially troubling given that many displaced persons, particularly women and children, continue to experience trauma, dispossession, and statelessness (Dayil 2015; Sheikh et al. 2016). Their exclusion from dominant narratives reflects a broader failure to humanize displacement in border conflict reporting. Brazilian Journal of African Studies | Porto Alegre | v. 10, n. 19, Jan./Jun. 2025 | p. 144-169 159