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Cameroonian nationality law is regulated by the Constitution of Cameroon, as amended; the Nationality Code of Cameroon (), and its revisions; and various international agreements to which the country is a signatory. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a national of Cameroon. The legal means to acquire nationality, formal legal membership in a nation, differ from the domestic relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Cameroonian nationality is typically obtained under the principle of jus sanguinis, i.e. by birth in Cameroon or abroad to parents with Cameroonian nationality. It can be granted to persons with an affiliation to the country, or to a permanent resident who has lived in the country for a given period of time through naturalization.

Acquisition of nationality
Nationality can be acquired in Cameroon at birth or later in life through naturalization.

By birth

 Persons born legitimately anywhere to at least one parent who is Cameroonian;
 Persons born illegitimately to two Cameroonian parents, to one Cameroonian parent if that parent was the first parent to establish a filiation, or to a stateless person who first established filiation and whose spouse is Cameroonian; or
 Foundlings or orphans born in the territory of unknown parentage; or
 Persons born in Cameroon who are stateless.

By naturalization
Naturalization can be granted to persons of the age of majority and legal capacity who have resided in the territory for a sufficient period of time to confirm they understand the customs and traditions of the society. General provisions are that applicants be of good character, have no criminal history, and are in good physical and mental health. Nationality may also be granted for service to the nation or under exceptional circumstances. The general residency requirement is five years, but there is no residency period required for individuals who have performed exemplary services to the nation. Besides foreigners meeting the criteria, other persons who may be naturalized include:

 Persons born in Cameroon who have resided in Cameroon for at least five years prior to a date within six months of reaching the age of majority;
 Adoptees who are residing in Cameroon at the time of adoption and upon declaration of nationality six months prior to reaching majority;
 Minor children who are married or of legal age may declare the right to Cameroonian nationality, if their Cameroonian parent reclaimed nationality;
 The wife of a Cameroonian husband may acquire his nationality by declaration upon legal marriage;
 The husband of a Cameroonian wife may naturalize without a residency period; or
 Persons who were previously nationals of Cameroon and wish to regain nationality, upon approval of a presidential decree.

Loss of nationality
Nationality may be renounced in Cameroon by following the proper registration procedures. Persons can be denaturalized for committing fraud in a naturalization petition, committing a crime or disloyal act against the state, serving another state without authorization, or the voluntary acquisition of dual nationality.

Dual nationality
Cameroon does not presently allow dual nationality.

History

African empires (609BC-1884)
The territory between the Mandara Mountains, which today form the northern Cameroon–Nigeria border, and Lake Chad was populated by diverse people who had different cultural and political structures. From 609 BC migrants from the Near East settled in the region and established large and powerful empires. One of these states was the Kanem–Bornu Empire, with the former lasting to the end of the fourteenth century, and being supplanted when the capital was moved to Birni N'gazargamu in Bornu. Political centralization was characteristic to the empire and a means to dominate trade throughout the region. The Kanem empire attempted to enforce vassalage on the smaller communities which pre-existed in the area and interacted with other later significant states, such as the Wandala Kingdom, also known as Mandara Kingdom  and the Sokoto Caliphate. Each of these states were expansionist and militaristic.

The Wandala Kingdom was founded between 1440 and 1450 in the northern part of the territory. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, some of the vassal states of Bornu began to press for autonomy because stress for sharing resources created conflict. People from the Sultanate of Baghirmi and nomadic Tuareg groups raided Bornu territories and by 1759, the empire had lost control of the salt mines at Bilma and trade routes through the Sahara. Though there is evidence that the Kanuri-Bornu Empire attempted to involve itself in the political succession of Wandala, it was a fairly minor state until 1780. That year, Wandala defeated an attack by the Bornu Empire, precipitating the decline of Bornu, leading to the sacking of Birni N'gazargamu in 1808, during the Fulani War. That year, the Sokoto Caliphate was founded, replacing previous states in Hausaland. New polities emerged from the former Hausa states, which now were aligned with the Sokoto Caliphate, and included the Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Muri and Nufe Emirates.

English and Dutch traders and missionaries began establishing themselves in the region from 1844. In 1868, . a merchant from Hamburg established a trading house on the Kamerun River, now known as the Wouri River. In 1874, Woermann's son, Adolph, joined the business and began implementing plans to expand their enterprise by eliminating his competitors, the native people. His agent, Johannes Thormählen, first requested that a German consul be sent to the region that year. Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck was reluctant to grant the request, believing that business enterprises should finance colonization efforts rather than the state. Thormählen then formed with Wilhelm Jantzen, Woermann's agent in Liberia, their own trading company operating between Hamburg and West Africa. The network of Adolph Woermann and Jantzen & Thormählen controlled half of the trade coming out of West Africa through their network of trading posts and shipping services by 1882. In 1883, Woermann used his influence to persuade the Hamburg Board of Trade to allow him to send warships to protect German merchants and together with Jantzen & Thormählen secured agreements with the chiefs along the Cameroonian coast to cede their sovereign rights to Germany. In 1884, having been elected to the Reichstag, Woermann was able to convince Bismark to establish colonies in Africa as protection for German commercial interests.

German protectorate (1884–1919)
In July 1884, Bismark appointed Gustav Nachtigal as Consul-General of the Colony of Kamerun. He continued the practice of obtaining treaties with chiefs in the colony, but at the end of that year, resistance to German occupation resulted in attempts by natives to disrupt trade. Two German corvettes were sent to quell the uprising and secure German authority in the colony. Under the terms of the German Colonial Act of 1888, German colonies were not part of the federal union, but they were also not considered foreign. Thus, laws that were extended to the colonies sometimes treated residents as nationals and other times as foreigners. German law applied to those subjects who had been born in Germany. Native subjects in the colonies were not considered to be German, but were allowed to naturalize. Naturalization required ten years residence in the territory and proof of self-employment. It was automatically bestowed upon all members of a family, meaning children and wives derived the nationality of the husband.

In 1911, disputes between German and French authorities, resulted in France ceding a large portion of their territory in French Congo to the Germans in exchange for German recognition of French authority in the Moroccan Protectorate. The area granted under the Treaty of Fez was known as Neukamerun. The Nationality Law of 1913 changed the basis for acquiring German nationality from domicile to patrilineality, but did not alter derivative nationality. In 1914, during World War I, Belgian, British, and French colonial troops, made up of mostly Africans launched the two-year Kamerun campaign. Securing the territory in 1916, Neukamerun was returned to France. The remainder of the territory was assigned at the end of the war in 1919 as a protected territory of both France and Britain.

British-French mandate/trust territory (1922–1960)
In 1922, the Cameroons, known as British Cameroon and French Cameroun, became League of Nations mandated territories, under the shared authority of the two countries. The British section was located in the western 1/5th of the country and administrated through the British Colony of Nigeria. France administered the remaining 4/5ths of the territory. At the end of World War II, the League of Nations was transformed into the United Nations and the mandated territories were known as Trust Territories. The goal of the trusteeship system was to shepherd the protectorates toward self-governance and eventual independence.

Nationality in British Cameroon
Under British law, mandated territories were outside the Crown's dominions, meaning British nationality laws did not apply to natives, but only to British subjects born to British fathers who may have been domiciled in a mandated place. As a protected territory, Britain took responsibility for both internal and external administration, including defense and foreign relations. Indigenous persons who were born in a mandate were treated as British Protected Persons (BPP) and were not entitled to be British nationals. BPPs had no right of return to the United Kingdom and were unable to exercise rights of citizenship; however, they could be issued a passport and could access diplomatic services when traveling abroad.

Under the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914, which established an imperial nationality scheme for use throughout the British Empire, common law provisions were reiterated for natural-born persons born within the realm on or after the effective date. By using the word person, the statute nullified legitimacy requirements for jus soli nationals, meaning an illegitimate child could derive nationality from its mother. For those born abroad on or after the effective date, legitimacy was still required, and could only be derived by a child from a British father (one generation), who was natural-born or naturalized. It also provided that a married woman derived her nationality from her spouse, meaning if he was British, she was also, and if he was foreign, so was she. It stipulated that upon loss of nationality of a husband, a wife could declare that she wished to remain British. It allowed that if a marriage had terminated, through death or divorce, a British-born national who had lost her status through marriage could reacquire British nationality through naturalization without meeting a residency requirement. The statute reiterated  Naturalization required five years residence or service to the crown.

Amendments to the British Nationality Act were enacted in 1918, 1922, 1933 and 1943 changing derivative nationality by descent and modifying slightly provisions for women to lose their nationality upon marriage. Because of a rise in statelessness, a woman who did not automatically acquire her husband's nationality upon marriage or upon his naturalization in another country, did not lose her British status after 1933. The 1943 revision allowed a child born abroad at any time to be a British national by descent if the Secretary of State agreed to register the birth. Under the terms of the British Nationality Act 1948, British nationals in the Nigeria Colony and British Cameroon were reclassified at that time as "Citizens of the UK and Colonies" (CUKC) and native-born inhabitants in Cameroon became statutory BPPs. The basic British nationality scheme did not change overmuch, and typically those who were previously defined as British remained the same. Changes included that wives and children no longer automatically acquired the status of the husband or father, children who acquired nationality by descent no longer were required to make a retention declaration, and registrations for children born abroad were extended.

On 1 October 1960, the Colony of Nigeria gained its independence. Subsequently, the inhabitants of the northern part of British Cameroon voted to become part of Nigeria on 1 June 1961. By the Northern Cameroons Administration Amendment Order of Council 1961/988 and an amendment Act (Law 24) to the Nigerian Constitution, Northern Cameroon was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Under the terms of the constitutional amendment, persons who were CUKCs or BPPs born in Northern Cameroon or the wife of a person meeting the criteria effectively became Nigerian nationals. Under a plebescite held on 11 February 1961, the inhabitants of southern British Cameroon, voted to join an independent French Cameroun by a margin of 7 to 3. The native inhabitants of Southern Cameroon remained BPPs under the trust agreement until 1 October 1961.

Nationality in French Cameroun
Under French law, B-type mandates were construed to be outside of French territory and were to be administered without a nationality code. France was barred from granting blanket nationality to the inhabitants of French Cameroun. From 1848, natives of France who settled in French territories were French nationals and were subject to French law. This meant that from 1848 when the Civil Code was extended to all of the French nationals in the colonies, women were legally incapacitated and paternal authority was established over their children. Upon marriage, a woman married to a French man automatically acquired the same nationality as her spouse. Illegitimate children were barred from inheritance and nationality could only be transmitted through a French father. Under the Code de l'indigénat (Code of Indigenous Status) promulgated for Algeria in 1881, and extended to Cameroun in 1924, native inhabitants in French colonies and territories followed customary law.

In 1927, France passed a new Nationality Law, which under Article 8, removed the requirement for married women to automatically derive the nationality of a husband and provided that her nationality could only be changed if she consented to change her nationality. It also allowed children born in France to native-born French women married to foreigners to acquire their nationality from their mothers. When it was implemented it included Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion but was extended to the remaining French territories in 1928. A decade later, the legal incapacity of married women was finally invalidated for French nationals. After World War II, France strove to create policies which would integrate the inhabitants of its trust territories into the French Union. Under the Constitution of 1946, Article 60, trust territories became a legal category under the French Union. Though neither French nationals nor citizens, Camerounians were under Article 81, citizens of the French Union and entitled to enjoy the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. This meant that Cameroun was able to send 3 deputies and 2 senators to the French Parliament. France also created a Territorial Assembly of locally elected members; however, only French nationals and elite native persons were given the franchise. A decree issued on 30 April 1946 eliminated the Indigenous Code, making all inhabitants of Cameroun were now subject to French criminal and penal law.

By 1955, resistance to French colonial rule had become a violent insurgency in Cameroun. Refugees fled the territory seeking harbor in the British southern Cameroon protectorate. The following year, the French Nationality Code of 1945 was made applicable to Togo and Cameroun. Under its terms, French nationality was conferred once again automatically upon foreign wives of French men unless they expressly declined it, but allowed mothers who were French nationals to pass their nationality to children born outside of France. In 1957, Cameroun was granted internal autonomy and by a Decree issued on 16 April (Décret N° 57-501) defined the institutions and individual status of Camerounians. In Title II, the law specified that nationals of Cameroun were entitled to citizenship in Cameroun within the framework of the French Republic. The French Constitution of 1958 standardized nationality provisions France, Overseas Departments, and Overseas Territories, but under Article 77 conferred no nationality upon Camerounians.

Faced with continual upheaval, in 1959, France recognized that the African states could have separate nationality codes and still be part of the French Union. In November, Cameroun adopted a nationality code which established that nationals were legitimate children born to Camerounian fathers, children born in Cameroun who had no other nationality of origin, and foreign wives of Camerounian husbands. It also provided the illegitimate children could gain nationality if the first parent to establish a filiation with the child was Cameroonian. It allowed naturalization of foreigners after a five-year residency, or of husbands of Cameroonian wives without a residency period. Children born to two foreign parents in the territory and who had lived there for at least five years as a minor in Cameroun could acquire nationality at majority. As the independence movement became more intense, France agreed to grant independence on 1 January 1960 French Cameroun. The UN passed resolution 1349 (XIII) terminating the trusteeship for Cameroun on 13 March 1959.

Post-independence (1960–present)
The first constitution for the Republic of Cameroun was accepted by referendum held in February 1960. In July 1961, a conference was held in Foumban to discuss modifying the constitution to incorporate Southern Cameroon. Failing to reach agreement on terms, a second conference was held in August at Yaoundé. No treaty for the union was agreed upon and when the draft constitution was presented to the House of Assembly of the Southern Cameroons, it was not endorsed. The National Assembly of the Republic of Cameroun accepted the draft constitution, despite the lack of provisions to effect the integration of the two entities. The constitution which was adopted and went into effect in October changed the governance from a parliamentary system to a presidential system, in which the polity elected the executive rather than the assembly. It established the Federal Republic of Cameroon, dividing the country into two federated states, East and West Cameroon, with the latter being the former Southern Cameroon. In 1968, Cameroon revised its nationality code (Loi no. 1968-LF-3). Under the new terms a child could derive nationality through either parent, but gendered differences remained for children born in and out of marriage and for transmitting nationality to a spouse. In 1972, a new constitution was adopted which changed the administration from two states into multiple provinces and changed the name of the country to the United Republic of Cameroon.

On 13 November 1995, Cameroon became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. In 2020 a preliminary draft of the Code of Persons and the Family (), which would replace the Nationality Code of 1968, was released to the press. Under its terms, distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate children and their ability to acquire nationality from either of their parents are removed. It would allow for automatic acquisition of nationality for children adopted by Cameroonian parents and expand eligibility for obtaining nationality if one had grandparents who were born in Cameroon. Also included in the proposal are equitable provisions for deriving nationality from a spouse and the acceptance of dual nationality. According to Marie-Thérèse Abéna Ondoa, Minister of Women and the Family, the proposed draft was sent for review by the Ministry of Justice prior to final legislative deliberations.

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

Nationality law
Law of Cameroon


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Home All News Shocking true story of modern day Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea:...
Shocking true story of modern day Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea: a young Indian man on a merchant ship comes to depend on a band of drug-fueled jungle pirates – and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King
Shocking true story of modern day Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea: a young Indian man on a merchant ship comes to depend on a band of drug-fueled jungle pirates - and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King
Cindy Hotnheavy
real life pirates Gulf of Guinea
Thanks to BBC News for this:
For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life.
But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate's life upside down.
His fate would come to depend on a band of drug-fueled jungle pirates – and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King.
The MT Apecus, a 263-foot long ship, dropped anchor off Nigeria's Bonny Island shortly after sunrise.
Sudeep Choudhury (28) was at the end of a draining shift on deck. Looking towards land, he could make out dozens of other ships. On the shoreline beyond them, a column of white oil storage tanks rose out of the ground like giants.
He had breakfast and then made two phone calls. One to his parents – he knew they worried about him, their only child – and one to his fiancee, Bhagyashree. He told her that everything was going to plan and that he would call her again later that day. He then clambered into bed for a sleep.
It was 19 April, 2019. The small, ageing oil tanker and its crew of 15 had spent two days sailing south from the port of Lagos to the Niger Delta, where oil was discovered in the 1950s by Dutch and British businessmen seeking a swift fortune. Although he knew that vicious pirates roamed the labyrinthine wetlands and mangroves of the delta, Sudeep felt safe that tropical South Atlantic morning. Nigerian navy boats were patrolling and the Apecus was moored just outside Bonny, seven nautical miles from land, waiting for permission to enter port.
The warm waters of the Gulf of Guinea, which lap across the coastline of seven West African nations, are the most dangerous in the world. It used to be Somalia, but now this area is the epicenter of modern sea piracy. Of all the seafarers held for ransom globally last year, some 90% were taken here. 64 people were seized from 6 ships in just the last three months of 2019, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which tracks such incidents. Many more attacks may have gone unreported.
The bountiful oil found here could have made the people of the delta rich, but for most it has been a curse. Spills have poisoned the water and the land, and a fight over the spoils of the industry has fueled violent crime and conflict for decades. In the villages above the pipelines that have netted billions for the Nigerian government and international oil companies, life expectancy is about 45 years.
Militant groups with comic book names like the Niger Delta Avengers have blown up pipelines and crippled production to demand the redistribution of wealth and resources. Oil thieves siphon off thick black crude and process it in makeshift refineries hidden in the forest. The level of violence in the delta ebbs and flows – but the threat is always there.
Sudeep woke up a few hours later to yelling and banging.
The watchman in the ship's command room, high above the deck, had spotted an approaching speedboat carrying 9 heavily-armed men. His cry of warning ricocheted around the 80m-long ship as the crew scrambled. They couldn't stop the pirates, but they could at least try to hide.
Sudeep, just 28 but the ship's third officer, was in charge of the 5 other Indian crew working on the Apecus. There was no oil on board, so he knew the pirates would want to take human cargo for ransom. Americans and Europeans are highly prized because their companies pay the highest ransoms but in reality, most sailors come from the developing world. On the Apecus, the Indians were the only non-Africans.
With less than five minutes to act, Sudeep gathered his men in the engine room in the bowels of the ship before running upstairs to set off an emergency alarm that would notify everyone on board. On his way back down, he realized he was only wearing the underwear he had gone to sleep in. Then he caught his first glimpse of the attackers, who were wearing T-shirts and black face coverings, and brandishing assault rifles. They were alongside the vessel, confidently hooking a ladder onto the side.
The Indians decided to hide in a small storeroom, where they crouched among lights, wires and other electrical supplies, and tried to still their panicked breathing. The pirates were soon prowling around outside, their voices echoing above the low hum of engine machinery. The sailors were trembling but stayed silent. Many ships that sail in the Gulf of Guinea invest in safe rooms with bullet-proof walls where crews can take shelter in exactly this kind of situation. The Apecus didn't have one. The men heard footsteps approaching and the bolt slid open with a clang.
Get up.
The pirates fired at the floor and a bullet fragment struck Sudeep in his left shin, lodging itself just an inch from the bone. The men marched the sailors outside and up onto the deck. They knew they had to move very quickly. The captain had put out a distress call and the gunshots might have been heard by other ships.
The attackers ordered the Indians to climb down a ladder onto the waiting speedboat, which had two engines for extra speed. Chirag, a nervous 22-year-old on his first deployment at sea, was the first to comply. With the pirates' guns trained on them the others followed, as did the captain.
The 6 hostages – five Indians and one Nigerian – squatted uncomfortably on the overcrowded boat as it began to motor away. The remaining crew, including one Indian who had managed to evade the attackers, emerged onto the deck. They watched as the pirates sped off towards the delta with their blindfolded captives, leaving the Apecus floating in the tide.
The text message from the shipping agent arrived in the middle of the night.
Dear Sir, understandably Sudeep's vessel has been hijacked. The Greek owner is co-ordinating the matter. Don't get panicky. No harm will come to Sudeep. Please keep patience.
Pradeep Choudhury and his wife Suniti, sitting in their bedroom, were left reeling by this perfunctory message. They had spoken to their son just hours earlier. Pradeep began forwarding the text to family members and Sudeep's closest friends. Could this really be true? Had anyone heard from their son?
Sudeep, as anyone who knows him will say, was mischievous growing up. He was restless, always wanting to get out of the house for an adventure. And his parents, especially his mother, would constantly worry about him. They have lived in Bhubaneswar, a small city in the state of Odisha on India's eastern coast, for most of Sudeep's life. It's a place that Indians living in the centers of power and influence – Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore – rarely, if ever, think about, but running a small photocopying shop from the front of their home gave the Choudhurys a comfortable life.
On the busy pavements near their home in central Bhubaneswar, the faces of deities stare out from modest shrines. But before he left for Africa, Sudeep didn't really believe in any kind of god. Life would be what he and Bhagyashree could make of it. They met when they were teenagers. Now a software engineer, she has the air of a girl who would have been popular at school.
The couple are the kind of aspirational young Indians whose dreams far eclipse the stable, traditional family lives that their parents craved. There are tens of millions like them in India, armed with degrees and certificates but coming of age in a lumbering economy that continues to churn out many more graduates than well-paying jobs.
For Sudeep, a job in merchant shipping promised an escape from all of that. He was lured by stories of good money, plenty of work and a chance to see the world. And he's not alone – after Filipinos and Indonesians, Indians make up the largest contingent of global seafarers, working as deckhands, cooks, engineers and officers. Some 234,000 of them sailed on foreign-flagged vessels in 2019.
But getting the right qualifications is complicated and Sudeep studied for five years, set on a path that cost his family thousands of dollars. At the age of 27, he finally qualified as a third officer and got a tattoo on his right forearm to celebrate: a little sailing boat bobbing on a cluster of triangles representing the sea, with a large anchor cutting straight through the middle like a dagger.
On the first morning after the sailors were kidnapped, dozens of men emerged from the forest and fired their guns into the sky for nearly half an hour to celebrate. The five Indians, who had been left on a car-sized wooden platform floating on a mangrove swamp, stared hopelessly at the brown water below them.
To get to their jungle prison they had been taken on a snaking, hours-long boat ride through the waterways of the delta. In those first days, the message from the pirates – reinforced with occasional beatings – was clear: if no-one pays a ransom, we will kill you.
Sudeep was still living in his underwear and itched all night under buzzing mosquitoes that left his skin dotted with bites. He hadn't been given a bandage for the wound on his leg, so he had pushed mud into the hole. The humidity of the jungle meant the men were never dry. They shared a single dirty mat for a bed, and would snatch brief minutes of sleep before jolting awake and remembering where they were.
Early on, the pirates had dragged a skeleton up from the swamp to show the sailors what had supposedly become of a former hostage whose boss had refused to pay. That wasn't the only macabre threat. On another day, they were shown a pile of concrete blocks. Try anything and we'll strap these to your legs and drop you in the ocean, the pirates told them.
A rotating cast of guards kept watch from the riverbank, 10 or so metres away. They spent their time fishing, smoking marijuana and drinking a local spirit made from palm sap called kai-kai – but they also watched the hostages closely, occasionally training a gun on them and yelling out a warning, as if their captives might suddenly dive into the murky water and swim away.
Over time, Sudeep would try to strike up a relationship with some of these men. He would gently ask them how they were, or if they had children. But the response was always silence, or a blunt warning. Don't talk to us. They appeared to be under strict orders but never referred to their leader – who seemed to be based elsewhere in the jungle – by name. He was just "The King".
Sudeep and the other men – Chirag, 22, Ankit, 21, Avinash, 22, and Moogu, 34 – had little choice but to try to conserve their energy and wait for something to happen. Their lives fell into a kind of lethargic routine. Once a day, normally in mid-morning, they would get a bowl of instant noodles to share between the five of them. They would carefully ration the meal, passing around a grimy spoon and each taking one mouthful. They would repeat the ritual in the evening and hand back the empty bowl.
They were given nothing to drink except muddy water, which was often mixed with petrol. Sometimes they were so thirsty they drank saltwater from the river. The Nigerian captain was kept separately in a hut nearby. He was treated better and the Indians began to loathe him for it.
To pass time, the five men would talk about their lives back home and their plans for the future. They would watch the nature around them – snakes slithering up trees, birds taking flight through the mangroves. They would pray. If the pirates spotted a monkey, the quiet would be broken. The Indians would watch them scramble after it, spraying the animal with bullets. It would later be cooked over a bonfire but the meat was never shared with them.
The sailors tried to keep track of each passing sunset by etching small arrows into the wooden planks that they slept on. They were at times delirious – some of them, including Sudeep, contracted malaria. In whispers, they would imagine a scenario where the pirates came to kill them and they fought back. If they were going to die, they could probably kill at least three of them on the way down, right?
At moments like this they laughed, but it was a constant battle not to sink into despair. During the many quiet hours in which they would simply lie under the beating sun, Sudeep would think over and over what he could do to get them out, and what he would tell the Indian High Commission or his family if he got a chance to call. In his head, he was still trying to plan his wedding.
The pirates' initial demand was for a ransom of several million dollars. It was an exorbitant sum and one they must have known was unlikely to be paid. But these kinds of ransom kidnappings involve complex and drawn-out negotiations, and in the undiscoverable warrens of the Niger Delta, time always seemed to be on their side.
About 15 days after the attack, the pirates took Sudeep on a boat to another part of the forest, and handed him a satellite phone so he could appeal directly to the ship owner, a Greek businessman based in the Mediterranean port of Piraeus called Captain Christos Traios. His company, Petrogress Inc, operates several oil tankers in West Africa with swashbuckling names like the Optimus and the Invictus.
Sudeep knew little about Capt Christos but had heard he was an aggressive, bad-tempered man. "Sir, this is terrible. We are in a very bad condition. And I need you to act very fast because we might die here," he told him. His boss, furious about what had happened, was apparently unmoved. The pirates were incensed. "We just want money," they would say over and over again. "But if your people don't give us money, we will kill you."
Their business model is dependent on the compliance of ship bosses who, usually covered by insurance, will pay significant amounts to free their crew after weeks of negotiations. But in this case they were up against a stubborn ship owner. The key now, the kidnappers knew, would be to reach the families.
Back in India, Sudeep's parents spent their nights lying awake. They knew so little about what had happened that their minds veered towards the worst in those hours before dawn broke, when the streets of Bhubaneswar would briefly be still. They feared their son would never emerge from a pirates' den that they could scarcely imagine.
There was no way the family could afford to pay the pirates directly and it was never considered as a serious option. The Indian government doesn't pay ransoms but they hoped it would help them in other ways – by assisting the Nigerian navy to find the pirate camp, or forcing the ship owner to pay up. Bhagyashree and Swapna, a formidable cousin of Sudeep in her mid-30s, took charge of this effort. They corralled the family members of the kidnapped men into a WhatsApp group so they could co-ordinate efforts to get their boys freed.
It soon became clear to Bhagyashree that the pirates would gain nothing by killing the sailors. But she was nervous about how long their patience would last. Pressuring the ship owner from all directions seemed the only feasible way to get her fiancee out. And so in the car, in the bathroom stall at work, and at home lying in bed, she was online, tweeting, firing off pleading emails to anyone who might be able to help.
After three weeks of near-silence, on day 17, the families had a breakthrough. A sister of one of the kidnapped men, Avinash, received a call from her brother in the Nigerian jungle. He told her that all the men were alive but they really needed help. The other families would go on to receive calls from their sons in the coming days – but not Bhagyashree and the Choudhurys.
Strange relationships began to be forged. A relative of one of the sailors who works in the shipping industry, a man called Captain Nasib, began calling the pirates regularly on their satellite phone to check on the men's condition. But the tinny audio recordings he posted in the WhatsApp chat did not reassure the families. The ship owner "does not care" about the lives of his men and is "playing around", a pirate angrily told Capt Nasib in one phone call.
On 17 May 2019 – day 28 – the pirates gave Sudeep the chance to speak to Capt Nasib, who assured him that the ordeal would only last a few more days. But Sudeep, as the ranking officer, was told he had to keep everyone's morale high in the meantime. "I'm trying," Sudeep can be heard responding in Hindi in a crackly recording of the call. "Tell my family that you talked to me."
Every few weeks the Indians were moved from one jungle lair to another. As negotiations with Capt Christos seemingly broke down, The King himself began to visit them. He would never say much, but the other pirates treated him with a reverence that suggested fear. His status as the group's leader almost seemed a consequence of his sheer size. All the pirates were muscle-bound and threatening but The King was especially hulking – at least 6ft 6in. He carried a much larger gun than the men under his command, and a leather belt filled with bullets was always strapped around his massive frame.
He would turn up every four or five days and calmly smoke some marijuana before the captives. He would say that Capt Christos was still not playing ball and that this would have consequences. The King spoke deliberately, and with better English than the other men. After many weeks in captivity, the sailors were becoming bony and thin; their eyes were a pale yellow and their urine was at times blood-red. Each visit from the King felt like it brought them closer to the fate of the skeleton they had seen pulled from the mud.
Then events took a more bizarre turn. Up until this point, what had happened to the Apecus seemed to be just another opportunistic ransom kidnapping. But in late May, unbeknownst to the men who sat festering on those planks in the swamp, machinations were unfolding that seemed to point to a far more complex series of events.
The Nigerian navy had publicly accused the tanker company of being involved in the transport of stolen crude oil from the Niger Delta to Ghana. The attack on the Apecus and the kidnapping, according to the navy, had actually been provoked by a disagreement between two criminal groups. There had even been arrests. The ship company's manager in Nigeria had apparently confessed to being involved in illicit oil trading.
Capt Christos, the ship's owner, fervently denied this. In emails seen by the BBC, he blamed the Indian government for getting the Nigerian navy to detain his vessels and staff in order to force him to "negotiate with terrorists" and pay an "incredible" ransom. Indian authorities dispute this version of events. The Nigerian Navy didn't comment.
It was a precarious situation for the captives. But the accusations – which put Capt Christos's tanker operations in Nigeria at risk – did seem to spur him to reach a resolution with the pirates. And so on 13 June, Sudeep's family finally learned from a government source that negotiations were complete and that payment was being arranged. At the same time, the sailors in the jungle were told that their ordeal might be coming to an end.
The men woke up on the morning of 29 June 2019 like they had almost every day for the previous 70 days. At mid-morning, after handing over the bowl of noodles, one of the guards beckoned Sudeep over and whispered that if things worked out, this could be his last day in the jungle. Two hours later the guard returned with confirmation: the man bringing the money was on his way.
The frail Ghanaian man in his mid-60s who approached in a boat that afternoon, nervously clutching a heavy plastic bag with US dollars peeking out of the top, did not look like a seasoned negotiator. Within minutes of his arrival, it was clear something was not right. A group of pirates began beating the old man. The King, bellowing about the money being short, pulled a small knife out of his belt and stabbed him in the leg, leaving him writhing on the muddy ground. He then approached the Indians and told them that while the Ghanaian would be staying, all six captives were free to go. His men wouldn't stop them, but if another pirate group picked them up, they were on their own. He looked Sudeep in the eye: "Bye-bye."
The men did not hesitate. They ran to the water's edge, where the fishing boat that had brought the bag man was parked. Sudeep told the driver to take them where he had come from. After more than two months he was still in his underwear, though the pirates had given him a torn T-shirt to wear. The boat rocked unsteadily from side to side as it motored away.
After nearly four hours, the driver said he was out of fuel and stopped at a jetty. In the distance, on the outskirts of a small village, a group of barefoot men were playing football. The ragged sailors approached them. When they explained they had been kidnapped, they were ushered into a house and given bottles of water which they gulped down one after the other. Three of the village's biggest men kept guard outside the guesthouse they were housed in during the night. The Indians, though weak, finally felt safe. "It was as if God himself appointed them as our saviors," Sudeep said later.
The men were soon in bustling Lagos, Nigeria waiting for a flight to Mumbai, India. Alone for the first time in his hotel room, Sudeep poured himself a cold beer, ran a bath and examined his scars. A pirate had inflicted a fresh wound with a fish cleaver on his shoulder a few days before, which stung as he gingerly lowered himself into the steaming bath. An Indian diplomat had given him a packet of cigarettes and over the next hour, he smoked 12 of them one after the other, staring at the ceiling as the water around him slowly cooled.
It's been eight months since the men were released. Suniti, wearing a yellow sari, sits on the kitchen floor, rolling chapatis on a round block of wood. A few metres away her husband watches the Indian cricket team play New Zealand on TV.
"Sudeeeeeeep!" Suniti calls her son to come downstairs and eat but it sounds like a cry of yearning, as though she's checking he's still here. He lost more than 20kg in the 70 days that he spent in the jungle and returned with sunken cheeks. His mother weighed him every few days for the first month, feeling buoyed with each kilo gained.
Bhagyashree passes her mother-in-law a metal plate, her red and gold wedding bangles sliding down her arm as she does so. "I was confident he would return," she says. "It's just the start for us, so how can I spend life without him? I believed in the Almighty – that he would come, that he had to come. Nothing can end like this."
They finally got married in January. The couple have their own space upstairs, but every evening the four of them eat as a family in the small living room on the ground floor. On this night cousin Swapna – who campaigned ferociously for Sudeep's release – is visiting, and sings a 1960s Bollywood love song after dinner.
Back in his tight-knit family and community, Sudeep appears to have found stability. He is working at the local maritime college, teaching young sailors about safety at sea, although he has put his own ocean-faring days behind him. He shows flashes of joy with his family and friends, but it's hard to tell what mark months in a pirates' den has left behind. They rarely talk about it.
"The trauma is still there," he tells me, as we drive around the dark streets of Bhubaneswar with pop music playing on the car speaker. "But it's okay. I got married and all my friends and family are here… If I go to the sea then that thing will come again in my mind."
The ordeal is over but Sudeep and the other men remain tangled in a bureaucratic mess to try to get someone to take responsibility for what happened to them. Since returning, they have not received their salaries, nor any compensation. Sudeep reckons he's owed close to $10,000 in wages for the more than seven months he spent on the ship and in captivity. Capt Christos did not respond to detailed questions about the kidnapping, whether he disputed that he owed Sudeep money and about the fate of the Ghanaian man left behind with the pirates.
He said in an email: "All the kidnapped personnel was safely released and return [sic] to their homes, thanks to Owners ONLY!" The company continues to deny that the Apecus was involved in the purchase of illegal oil, and instead argues it was at Bonny Island for repairs and to pick up supplies. A court case is pending in Nigeria.
What happened to Sudeep underscores the vulnerability of those who find themselves in trouble or exploited at sea – a frontier where regulations and labor protections in theory exist but are difficult to enforce. Seafarers are on the front line of global trade – Nigerian oil ends up at petrol stations across Western Europe, including the UK, as well as India and other parts of Asia. Stories like Sudeep's, of which there are many, also reflect the human cost of security failings in the Gulf of Guinea. Unlike Somalia, Nigeria – the largest economy in Africa – will not allow international navies to patrol its waters.
After all he's been through, it seems cruel that Sudeep should need to go through another fight. But he says that he wants to pursue it until the end. "I faced this and that means I can face anything in my life," he says on another late-night drive. "No-one can break me down mentally. Because for me it's a second birth, I'm living another life."
I ask him if it really feels that way. "It's not feeling that – it is my second life," he replies. We park outside his house – it's past 11pm but the lights are still on inside. Bhagyashree and his parents are waiting.
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