Belonging and Becoming: Boundary and Identity Issues in the North West Region of Cameroon

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue IV, April 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186

Belonging and Becoming: Boundary and Identity Issues in the North West Region of Cameroon

Mathias Azang Adig (PhD)
Semantic scholar in History of Politics and International Relations. His area of interest span from colonial labour, slavery, colonialism, frontier issues, ethnic identity, governance to economic and social issues of societies. Semantic scholar

Abstract: Inter-ethnic boundary crises are hallmarks of Cameroon with the North West Region (NWR) gaining notoriety with high propensity of aggravation. The varied ramifications of crises related to boundaries in this region, orchestrates unanimity among academics and researchers that the issue is topical and preoccupying. What seamlessly surfaced from the boundary crises is the ethnic identification. Boundaries divided ethnic groups, rendered some stranded and landless. The main thrust of this paper is the nexus between boundary and identity issue in the NWR of Cameroon. The study investigates how ethnic groups in this region belonged and/or became with the implantation of boundaries among them. The paper establishes the premises that the advent of formal boundaries in the region, a phenomenon hitherto absent, triggered the identity question. It concludes that the notion of dual, lost and void identities in the NWR owed their origins to the advent of formal boundary, introduced by the Chamba, officialized by the colonial administrations and adopted and/or adjusted by the post-colonial government.

Keywords: Boundary, Chamba, Colonialism, identity, self-determination, NWR

I. INTRODUCTION

Before German colonization, Cameroon composed of independent indigenous polities varying in sizes and political organizations, with boundaries rooted in ethnic and social contacts. The polities were highly jealous and protective of their political independence. Following the Germano-Duala Treaty of July 1884, the territory became a German protectorate which she administered as an entity and thus laid the groundwork for the ‘Kamerun identity’. By 1914, the Germans had successfully taken the first step towards uniting the coastal and inland ethnic groups into a single cohesive modern entity. By this standing, modern Cameroon nation is a collection of varied autonomous groups, arbitrarily bundled together by the Germans in the 19th century. At the independence of Cameroon, the territory was bound to have a heritage of artificially and arbitrarily created international and inter-ethnic boundaries which according to W.E. East “were not visible expression of age-long efforts of the indigenous people to achieve political adjustment between

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