A petition demanding for a separate independent state for the people of Southern Cameroons has been sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN).

The petition signed by the Chairman of the Southern Cameroons Peoples Organization (SCAPO), Dr. Kevin Ngwang Gumne accused the UN of toying with the lives of the people of the Southern Cameroons for the last 45 years adding that SCAPO has finally decided to bring all of this to an end by proclaiming the Republic of Ambazania.

The petition which was also forwarded to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Camerounian counterpart, Paul Biya maintained that there is no formal union between the English-speaking Southern Cameroons and French-speaking la Republique du Cameroun.

Going down memory lane, SCAPO said: "The bid for the self-determination of the Southern Cameroons has been going on for many years. We have based our bid for self-determination on legal grounds arising from the fact that the UN Resolution 1608 (XV) of April 1961 which enjoined former British Southern Cameroons and French-speaking Republique du Cameroun to form a federal union by October 1, 1961 was never implemented in legal terms.

This is because we discovered that the French Cameroun was more interested in annexing English-speaking Southern Cameroons than in forming a real federal union as required by the UN resolution".

It added that: "In September 1995 we conducted a signature referendum throughout Southern Cameroons in which we collected nearly 400,000 signatures from 75% of all eligible voters.
Although the signature referendum was conducted under the threat of arrest and detention by French-speaking gendarmes, the overwhelming opinion was that they wanted Southern Cameroons to achieve full independence by peaceful separation from French Cameroun.

The result of the signature referendum is in safekeeping and will be brought out at the right time to demonstrate the will of the people of the Southern Cameroons".

Further going down memory lane, the group said "It will be recalled that in early 2002, the Southern Cameroons Peoples Organization (SCAPO) took the Federal Government to the Federal High Court in Abuja to demand that the Federal Government, should honor its obligations under the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights by taking up the case of the self-determination of the people of the former Southern Cameroons to the International Court of Justice and to the United Nations General Assembly.

After a very passionate debate on the admissibility of such a case brought by a foreign group, Justice Rosaline Ukeje finally ruled the case admissible and went on to hear the substance. Justice Rosaline Ukeje finally issued a landmark ruling on March 5, 2002".
In the judgment, the group claimed that the court directed the Federal Government to institute a case before the International Court of Justice and should take any other measures as may be necessary to place the case of the peoples of the geographical territory known as at 1st October 1960 as Southern Cameroons for self-determination before the United Nations General Assembly and any other relevant international organizations.

It however regretted that the Federal Government clearly and unfortunately chose to ignore ruling of the court arguing that if this had been done, the outcome of the Bakassi case would have been different from what it is now.

It also noted that the ICJ ruling of October 2002 was correct only in the sense that it determined that the sovereignty over the Bakassi Peninsula does not belong to Nigeria, the group said however in ruling that the sovereignty belongs to Cameroon, the ICJ failed to specify which Cameroon it was referring to, "to the extent that there has never been any formal union between the Southern Cameroons and la Republique du Cameroun, which attained independence on January 1, 1961 with defined and internationally recognized borders, we believe that the sovereignty over the Peninsula belongs unquestionably to the Southern Cameroons and not la Republique du Cameroun".