IKAN, August 14, 2008 (AFP) - Polygamist Sunday Binang, 52, wore a melancholic look as he bemoaned Thursday the loss of his ancestral home -- the oil- and fish-rich Bakassi peninsula -- to neighbouring Cameroon.

'I and my family of three wives and 17 children have become refugees in our country,' he said at a centre temporarily housing Nigerians displaced from Bakassi following the gradual transfer of the peninsula, which was concluded Thursday.

'Since Tuesday, we have been getting rations of food as if we are prisoners because they have given our land to another country,' he told AFP.

For Binang and some 20,000 other Nigerians, the loss of Bakassi was made final Thursday with the inking of the legal paperwork by officials from Nigeria and Cameroon in the southern city of Calabar, in the presence of members of the United Nations and the international community.

The handover ended a 15-year-old bitter feud between Abuja and Yaounde, but left many Nigerians residents of the territory bitter at the severing of their ancestral roots and possible threat to their livelihood.

Given a choice to stay in Bakassi under Cameroonian administration or to move to Nigeria, Binang preferred the latter.

'One thing they did not tell us is how to remove the tombs and graves of our forefathers or will they also take that from us?' wondered the former fisherman.

'We now have to obtain a visa to travel to Bakassi. For our fishing business, we have to pay tax or will be arrested for trespassing into a foreign land,' he lamented.

Cameroon dragged Nigeria before the International Court of Justice in 1994 to adjudicate in the border dispute, a 1,000-square-kilometre (386-square-mile) patch of Atlantic coastal swamp between the two neighbours.

After years of legal wrangling, the court in October 2002 ruled in favour of Cameroon. Some 3,000 Nigerian troops pulled out of Bakassi two years ago and Thursday saw the final withdrawal of the west African powerhouse.

'Nigeria has signed away our sovereignty in the name for respect for international law and peaceful co-existence,' community leader Edem Archibong said.

'Our leaders have taken away our joy and honour. They have stripped us bare. Where do we start from?' asked the 44-year-old father of two.

He described the handover as 'a criminal neglect, injustice and insensitivity of both Nigeria and the international community to the feelings of the local people.'

'We are traditional fishermen. Now our only means of livelihood has been taken from us, all in the name of international diplomacy,' he said.

The paramount ruler of Bakassi, Etim Okon Edet agreed.

'We are saddened by this painful loss of our traditional home. Things cannot be the same again for my people because there is nothing that the government can do to assuage our anger and anguish,' he said.

Justice Minister Michael Aondoakaa assured local people that the Nigerian government had taken 'very serious measures' to resettle anyone wishing to move to Nigeria.

Workers were seen at a construction site near Ikan, Nigeria, just across the border from Bakassi, where some 50 houses have been completed out of the promised 205 units for the displaced.