By Tansa Musa

YAOUNDE, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Nigeria wants to set up a joint security force with Cameroon to police the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula, its foreign affairs minister said.

Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil exporter and most populous nation, handed control of the disputed territory in the Gulf of Guinea to its West African neighbour Cameroon in August after years of fighting.

"The Gulf of Guinea is likely for a very long time to be the most viable source of flow of oil," Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister Ojo Maduekwe said late on Friday.

"So we have a common interest to make sure there is security there, that non-state actors do not come there to create problems, and no one can achieve this alone."

He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the Cameroon-Nigeria Grand Joint Commission which met in Cameroon's capital Yaounde on Thursday, six years after its work was suspended pending resolution of the Bakassi conflict.

Around 50 people have been killed in border attacks in the last year alone. The Niger Delta Defence and Security Council, a little-known armed group responsible for two attacks on Cameroonian soldiers in July, threatened more violence at the time of the handover.

Madeukwe said the absence of a strong security force was allowing criminal gangs to flourish.

"It will be wrong for both countries to allow this to continue," he said.

The two countries have agreed to cooperate over oil exploration in the region, which could help boost Cameroon's declining production of around 90,000 barrels per day, but analysts say security is Cameroon's most pressing priority.

Around 90 percent of the population in the Bakassi peninsula, estimated at 200,000 to 300,000, are Nigerian fishermen and their families.

Nigeria and Cameroon fought over Bakassi in 1994 when Cameroon first took its case to the World Court, and again in 1996. The International Court of Justice gave Bakassi to Cameroon in a 2002 ruling, based largely on a 1913 treaty between former colonial powers Britain and Germany.

Nigeria's oil-producing region, the Niger Delta, has for years been blighted by attacks on petrochemical installations and workers, cutting output. (For a FACTBOX on Bakassi, click on [ID:nLE410289]) (Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Elizabeth Piper)

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