Ejagham Cross Border Re-integration between Cameroon and Nigeria 1916-1961

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue III, March 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186

Ejagham Cross Border Re-integration between Cameroon and Nigeria 1916-1961

Raphael Achou Etta (PhD)
University of Bamenda, Cameroon

Abstract: – The 1913 colonial boundaries which came on the heels of a series of Anglo-German border agreements from 1885 officially divided the Ejagham community putting them astride in the German and British territories of Cameroon and Nigeria, respectively. This colonial administrative surgery was plotted along the Cross River and the Awa stream which lay within the Ejagham land. These natural waterways that hitherto served as an economic vacuum for loose exploration and exploitation became lines of political and economic division among the Ejagham of the two territories. The German attempt to rigidly control and prevent the flow of goods and people to the British territory seriously affected, although did not completely perturb the interactions among the Ejagham of both sides in all spheres of life. The article on this premise posits that the German departure from the territory and British succession was a blessing for the Ejagham communities severed by the colonial borders. The British decision to jointly administer the Southern Cameroons as an integral part of South Eastern Nigeria reinvigorated the firm resolve for the Ejagham to re-establish economic and socio-cultural integration on both sides of the border.

Key words: Administration, Border integration, British Cameroon and Nigeria, German Kamerun, Re-integration

I. INTRODUCTION

The German withdrawal from Cameroon in 1916 after the First World War was an opportunity for the Ejagham of Cameroon to renew their old ties with their kin and kith, and Efik trade partners of Nigeria. They earlier expressed their discontent for the German administration through the 1904 resistance and by simply allying with the British forces during the war against the Germans. The British defeat of the Germans and subsequent administration of the area was a changing fortune for the Ejagham people, though still in separate colonial territories but with little or no border control. Cultural and commercial exchanges were reinstated because of British gesture to harmonize the administrative and educational systems of Nigeria and that of Southern Cameroons and by constructing roads linking their Nigerian colony with Southern Cameroons via the Ejagham communities. The British administration willingly or unwillingly revamped the inter Ejagham integration across the international boundary of Cameroon and Nigeria from 1916-1961.

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