The fight for the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsular which lies in the boundary between Nigeria and Cameroon made 300,000 indigenes give up their ancestral home to currently reside in Nigeria as refugees after the International Court of Justice ceded the area to Cameroon. . Interestingly during the Nigerian/Biafran civil war, the then Nigerian head of state had promised to give that area to Cameroon if Nigerian soldiers were allowed to attack from that angle. While scholars have focussed on the implication the ICJ ruling on the former Bakassi indigenes, not much has been understood regarding how the positionality of being a refugee at home affected and continues to affect the identities of female Bakassi refugees. This is the gap the research sought to fill.
The female refugees are the focal point of this study because women are boundary makers, whose bodies carry meaning.The research employed ethnographic method of data collection, utilizing in-depth interview with 30 female Bakassi refugees, five key informants and one focus group discussion with seven male refugees.
The research findings showed that the women enjoyed their status as people who were properly catered for by their men at home prior to their displacement. They currently negotiate return through strategies such as, changing their occupation to farming, tolerance regarding their ill treatment by their hosts, silence about recounting the pain of rape and loss of their children due to the conflict and finally, sending their children to work as domestic servants in nearby and distant towns and cities. . This research further shows the fluidity of gender roles amid tension caused by double displacement as experienced by both the returnees and the locals
Since the women agree that they wish to be relocated to Day Spring Island, which is the un-ceded part of their peninsula, it is clear that the island matches best their notion of an ideal homeland. This research suggests that home is a place of preference where an individual or group of people are comfortable; hence people should be consulted on their place of choice in the event of relocation, because displacement can be devastating.