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Nigerian Migrants in the Camerooms and the Reactions of the Host Communities, 1885 - 1961

Adebayo A. Lawal, Department of History and Strategic Studies, University of Lagos
panlawi2001@yahoo.com

This is an attempt to identify the motives for and patterns and types of the migrations of Nigerians to the Cameroons from 1885 to 1961. The paper focuses on the Igbo, Efik-Ibibio, Ijo, Tiv, Yoruba and Edo ethnic groups who embarked an primary, secondary, and oscillatory migrations in response to changing circumstances and opportunities. The groups from various dispersal points and used different routes and settled in various Cameroonian towns, notwithstanding the strict cross-border controls by the British and Germans between 1885 and 1914 and by the British and the French between 1919 and 1961.
The mandate system compelled the political integration of the British Cameroon with Nigeria and triggered more frequent migrations of Nigerians to fill many colonial vacancies, and implement the indirect rule. The Trusteeship system also reinforced political, administrative, economic and financial integration with the concomitant introduction of modern transport and communication system, manpower training, and the Cameroons Development Corporation. According to the 1951 census the Igbo constituted the largest proportion of Nigerians who dominated commerce and were more visible in the colonial service and palm oil plantation. All the Nigerian ethnic groups inter-married with the Cameroonians and vice versa and shared similar Islamic and Christian beliefs. However the politics of the 1950s in Eastern Region by which politicians in the British Cameroons were marginalized in the regional election, aroused anti-Igbo sentiment in the Cameroons. A remote cause of the hostility were their commercial malpractices which were hinged on the concepts of “price and buy” and “conditional sales”. Apart from condemning Igbo commercial domination, the Cameroonians called for Igbo deportation, Indeed Igbo lives and property were under threat. Calm was only restored by the prompt intervention of the colonial government. With available evidence the paper tries to test the models of Mabogunje (1970), Byerlee (1974) and Todaro (1969) that typify migrations in West Africa. The choice of these models will be justified.