British Cameroons : Agreements Were Null and Void
By   Dr. Viban Williamson

My father used to tell me that before I crossed his door post to go to school; my successes and grades were already incised on the walls of his house. I would pensively dismiss what he was saying as a prank. If I got poor marks in my mathematics lessons which were not my favorite discipline,   I attributed my failure to myself, my teacher or both.  If I had aces, I did not blame anyone. I glowed in darkness and worked harder like a bee. Eventually, I got to know that the street of life could never be paved with aces. Kings and queens at the end get decapitated. We witnessed King Haile Selassie I (Ras Tafari) of Ethiopia's demise in the hands of the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam who after plundering his country made an exit to Zimbabwe in 1991. We saw Master Sergeant Doe of Liberia dying on his podium being severed limb by limb till he died. We saw our beloved President Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso speaking his mind before his assassination. What have we not seen and yet to see?   If successes could emanate from our homes, similarly our failure could stem from there. The fundamental question is how did the failures of the British Cameroons come from their home?

Woes and Success are from within not Without

The woes and successes of the British Cameroons started at home. Often we of British Cameroons tend to look outside for the raisons d'etre of our demise particularly in the hands of La République du Cameroun, our dependency instead of independence.   We were given a country called the British Cameroons as a Mandated Territory that evolved to a Trusteeship Territory that lasted from 1916 to 1961, with a flag, a constitution, armed forces, and efficient infrastructure by the standard of the day and above all we elected democratically successive Prime Ministers. We had a House of Chiefs akin to the House of Lords in England. Initially, the British were mandated in 1919 to look after us by the League of Nations and later replaced by the United Nations Organization (UNO) in 1945. The British Colonial Government divided the British Cameroons in 1946 into the Northern and Southern Cameroons without our mandate. The Mambilla, Ngwa, Kaka, Bang, etc unified tribes along the new frontier that was never recognized by any independent state even up to today, were divided and that was to cause hardship among kin and kith. The reason the British Colonial Government gave was that it was for administrative convenience and not meant to be sacrosanct. It was a ruse. The problem arose when it became clear that the British Northern Cameroons was to become part and parcel of the Federation of Nigeria after a hitherto contested and questioned UN backed plebiscite of October 1961.

We asked on whose authority the British used to divide the country into two sections. The boundary they followed, the River Donga cuts the township of Bang into two. To the north of this township, one was in the (British) Northern Cameroons and to the south one was in Southern Cameroons. The town was eventually allowed to be ruled from the British Northern Cameroons. It posed no hassles in those days (1946-1961) as the British Cameroons was considered as an entity and was at one time ruled from Nigeria. This arrangement did not mean that it was part of Nigeria. As scantily populated as Bechuanaland (now Botswana) was, the British once established its administrative capital in the town of Mafeking in South African territory, but the British never dared insinuate that it was part of South Africa.