Abuja - Nigeria was Wednesday preparing to officially hand over the disputed Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon on Thursday, ending a decades-long dispute marked by legal battles and sporadic violence.

While the United Nations has hailed the peaceful solution, Nigerian militant groups in Bakassi have threatened to step up attacks on Cameroonian forces if the final handover takes place.

Dozens have died in clashes in recent months as Nigerian troops have gradually handed over control to Cameroon.

In the latest battle in late July, 10 rebels and two Cameroonian soldiers were killed.

Nigeria was expected to beef up security for the handover, although some confusion remained about where the actual ceremony would be held.

The two West African nations nearly went to war over the peninsula, which is believed to have rich oil and gas reserves, in 1981.

Further Nigerian military buildup over ten years later led Cameroon to take its case to the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague in March 1994.

The ICJ finally ruled in October 2002 that Cameroon should receive the peninsula, basing its decision on a 1913 treaty between former colonial masters Germany and Britain.

Cameroon and Nigeria signed an agreement to pave the way for the handover in New York in 2006 during US-mediated talks.

A spokesman for United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last week said that the peaceful end to a "potentially dangerous border dispute" should function as a model for negotiating settlements to border disputes elsewhere.

The final implementation has been held up, however, by legal battles.

A federal court in Nigerian capital Abuja recently granted an injunction barring the government from handing over the peninsula, but President Umaru Yar'Adua said Tuesday that the move would go ahead.

"This handing over process, as painful as it is for everyone, including the president, is a commitment we have made to the international community and we have a responsibility to keep to it," Yar'Adua's spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi said. (dpa)