Bronwen Manby and Solomon Momoh In August 2017, a year after he took office, President Mohammadu Buhari set up a 23person committee, headed by the Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, to deliberate and submit a report on how to restructure Nigeria. In a presentation at Chatham House in London in 2017 on the work of the Committee, Governor el-Rufai stated inter alia: In many communities, people still use the notion of ‘indigene-ship’ to consign compatriots to a position of ‘settler’ and, by implication, perpetual exclusion from enjoying the full political, social and economic opportunities guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen.54 In its January 2018 report, the Committee recommended that local government or state of origin should be replaced with state of residence, finding the current system to be ‘discriminatory’; as well as proposing ‘an amendment to the Federal Character Commission Act to allow people domiciled in a place to be considered as indigenes’.55 An amendment to replace ‘origin’ with ‘residence’ in relation to the ‘federal character’ provisions would recognise the reality of internal migration and inter-ethnic marriage within Nigeria, and allow Nigerians to access their rights as citizens wherever their place of residence. However, any legal reform would also need to address the lack of clarity over entitlement to Nigerian citizenship based on membership of an ‘indigenous community’, currently evidenced by a ‘certificate of indigeneity’, and provide clear criteria by which this status would be decided. 5.2 The citizenship of those affected by the ICJ Judgment on the Nigeria-Cameroon border During the colonial period, it was not important to establish a precise boundary between the British Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria on the one hand, and the Northern and Southern Cameroons mandated to Britain in 1919 by the League of Nations on the other, since the mandated territories were administered from Nigeria.56 The oil-rich Bakassi peninsula, on the southern edge of the border between Nigeria and Cameroon, projecting into the Gulf of Guinea, continued to be administered from Nigeria after independence (and is listed as one of 774 local government areas in the 1999 Constitution). Cameroon contested this ownership, and the dispute escalated into confrontations between the military forces of the two states. Cameroon also asserted that Nigerians had settled on Cameroonian territory along the northern part of the border. In 1994, Cameroon referred the disputes over the border to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ issued its final judgment in the case in 2002, and granted sovereignty over the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon, as well as transferring other territory near Lake Chad.57 The court did not comment on the nationality of those living in the transferred territory, 54 Mallam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, Next Generation Nigeria: What is restructuring and does Nigeria need it? Africa Programme Meeting Transcript. Chatham House 21 September 2017. p.6. Accessed 14/05/2020 via https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2017-09-21-What-is-restructuring-anddoes-Nigeria-need%20it.pdf 55 See Ripples Nigeria, Restructuring: 12 unforgettable points of the El-Rufai report rotting away in APC’s cupboard. 22 July 2019. Accessed 14/05/2020 via https://www.ripplesnigeria.com/restructuring-12unforgettable-points-of-the-el-rufai-report-rotting-away-in-apcs-cupboard/. 56 This section draws on Manby, Citizenship in Africa, chapter 8.3. 57 Land and Maritime Boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria (Cameroon v. Nigeria: Equatorial Guinea intervening), ICJ Judgement of 10 October 2002, available with other documents related to the case at RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/12 - © 2020 Author(s) 17