MaryAnne Iwara family and community members due to cultural and social norms, including perceptions of their role in the conflict. The children are even called ‘bad blood’ and further rejected within their immediate community.15 It is worth noting that these returnee women are legally Nigerian citizens, and going by this citizenship status, their children are automatically conferred with Nigerian citizenship.16 However, the proof of indigeneity, which is the instrument that determines their access to allocation and distribution of citizenship rights as determined by local government administrators and district heads are often refused, and this is fundamentally tied to these erroneous perceptions. As a result, the returnees cannot access practical support for inclusion and reintegration from the lack of documentation and are consequently denied the rights normally associated with Nigerian citizenship. The upshot of this is that the children are at-risk towards re-radicalisation, while their mothers are forced into prostitution and other crimes. Bakassi returnees The Bakassi Peninsula is an oil-rich territory located on the Gulf of Guinea and stretches across a geographical territory of approximately 1,800 square kilometres. Geophysical surveys have revealed that the peninsula is rich in petroleum deposits and holds “about ten percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves.17 Until 2002, the territorial sovereignty of Bakassi lay within Nigeria, but had been contested, as both Cameroon and Nigeria lay competing claims to the territory. Following an ICJ ruling,18 the boundary and sovereignty of Bakassi was ordered to lie with Cameroon, thereby denying Nigeria the intrinsic geographical and economic benefits of the peninsula. The peninsula was mainly populated by Nigerians, before the advent of colonialism, who depend solely on the rich aquatic resource as means of livelihood being mainly fishermen, boat-makers and marine transporters.19 Though the ICJ judgment required transfer of territory and sovereignty, it did not compel the inhabitants to move or change their nationality. It was, however, not made fully clear whether and how they could acquire Cameroonian citizenship, or were to retain Nigerian citizenship.20 In the face of this ruling, the 300,000 population of the Peninsula were affected and subjected to forced migration from their ancestral abode following the cession, and also as a result of the hostility experienced from Cameroon military.21 While the majority of them moved and became displaced within Nigeria, the exact number of persons who remained on the Peninsula or accessed Cameroonian citizenship is unknown due to the informal birth, death and residence registers that exist within rural areas. Without specific guidance, the application of the ruling lacked clarity, as thousands of Nigerians in the Peninsula are at risk of being stateless, though many wanted to remain Nigerians since they had more social and economic ties with Nigeria. The clear absence of a citizenship approach to this international dispute resolution by ICJ not only stripped substantial number of persons living on the peninsula of their rights but disrupted and deprived them of their sources of livelihood. In this case, citizenship status was either lost or became uncertain for significant numbers of former Nigerian citizens, all without any formal process of citizenship revocation. 15 UNICEF, (2017) ‘Report: Bad blood’, https://www.unicef.org/wca/reports/bad-blood 16 The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Chapter 3 Section 25.1.b 17 Anyu, J.N. (2007), ‘The International Court of Justice and border-conflict resolution in Africa: The Bakassi Peninsula conflict’, Mediterranean Quarterly 18(3): 39–55. 18 Ibid. 19 Adigbuo, E. R. (2019), ‘Role conflicts in foreign policy: Nigeria’s dilemma over Bakassi Peninsula’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 37(4): 404-420. 20 Manby, B. & S. Momoh (2020), Report on citizenship law : Nigeria, Florence, GLOBALCIT Country Reports. Retrieved from Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository, at: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/67855 21 Unah, L. (2019), ‘ The lifelong consequences of a little known Nigeria-Cameroon land dispute,’ TRTWORLD, https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-lifelong-consequences-of-a-little-known-nigeria-cameroon-land-dispute-26701 16 Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Working Papers