What is going on and who is responsible? Scholarship on conflict on the Mambila Plateau. A response to Lenshie et al. 2021

ABSTRACT

This is a response to Lenshie et al. (2021) paper in African Identities ‘Ethnic groups across Nigeria – Cameroon border territories: contested autochthony and contentious ethnic identities in Mambilla Plateau, Nigeria’. We are concerned that their characterization of the previous literature is inaccurate and that their discussion of their own data does not respond to the complexities they themselves have documented.

KEYWORDS:

• Autochthony claim-making
• ethnic identities
• politics of belonging
• Mambilla Plateau
• social identity

This article responds to:

Ethnic groups across Nigeria–Cameroon border territories: contested autochthony and contentious ethnic identities in Mambilla Plateau, Nigeria

While we welcome the publication of research on the Mambila Plateau by Lenshie et al., we have to put on record our disagreement with how they have used the published record and with the framing of their discussion of the different groups now residing on the Plateau. Our concerns are the lack of clarity about exactly what factors are being considered and the use of the published record.

Early in the article, Lenshie et al. say that ‘Despite the dynamics of the cross-border relations of ethnic groups between Nigeria and Cameroon, the ethnic groups have engaged in violent conflict in the Mambilla Plateau over autochthony’ (p. 2). This is confusing. No explanation is given of what the ‘dynamics of the cross-border relations’ might be or why these are relevant to ‘conflict on the Mambilla Plateau’ which is all within Nigeria. The (highly permeable) post-1961 borders seem to be not relevant to the dynamics of the inter-ethnic relations involved in the conflicts. If they are so, then more explanation should be given especially since there is plenty of inter-ethnic conflict in other parts of Nigeria far from international borders.

Names for ethnic groups and places

This is complicated and to help readers unfamiliar with the area, we put this near the start. It is common in the literature to write things such as ‘The Mambilla people live on the Mambila Plateau. However, the population in Cameroon are known as Mambila.’ This makes it hard to use spelling to distinguish places from peoples.

As the authors mention in some footnotes, some of the ethnic names used are considerably different between Cameroon and Nigeria (see table 1).

Table 1. Nigerian and Cameroonian Ethnonyms.

Nigerian ethnonym	Cameroonian ethnonym	Notes
Panso	Nso’	Banso is also used, Ba- is a prefix meaning ‘people’
Kaka	Yamba	This also helps distinguish the Kaka in question from other groups in Cameroon also known as Kaka or Keaka
Kambu	Wimbum/Limbum
Mambilla	Mambila	Bà and Nɔ̀r are Mambila language ethnonyms

In both countries, Fulani are also known as Fulbe, sometimes also written FulBe because of the implosive b. We also note the town of Banyo in Cameroon is referred to as Bamnyo in Nigeria. The difference is merely one of spelling.

Moreover, it should be remembered that over the timescales of the Bantu expansion (see below at the end of the next section), the ethnic groups in the area have experienced considerable change as exemplified by models such as Kopytoff’s African frontier thesis (1987).

Linguistic history

Lenshie et al.’s use of linguistic history is problematic, beginning with their use of the term ‘Semi-Bantu’ (p. 9), a meaningless term from the linguistic standpoint which became obsolete in the 1960s (Greenberg, 1963). The consensus among linguists is that the Bantu-speaking peoples (and thus their languages) came from an area to the south of the Mambila Plateau. One recent encyclopedia article summarizes the situation as ‘The Bantu homeland has been situated {between South-Eastern Nigeria and Western Cameroon}—quite unanimously – since the early 1970s’ (Bostoen, 2016 citing Greenberg, 1972). In the broadest terms, all the peoples in the wider area can be glossed as the ‘Bantu that stayed at home’ (with the exception, of course, of the Fulani). However, over the timescales concerned, this is not a significant claim: apart from anything else, none of the ethnic groups we are discussing can plausibly claim continuity over the time scales concerned. Furthermore, Mambiloid languages are non-Bantu Bantoid languages. We are very careful about the complex relationship between language and ethnicity and we never talk about language families as if their speakers have a common cultural essence (see e.g. Connell & Zeitlyn, 2023). This is why rhetoric such as the ‘Bantu that stayed at home’ is unhelpful, to say the least, although hard to resist, and on occasion, we have succumbed. Moreover, while the work of the missionary priest Placide Tempels (1969; first published in 1945) has been popularised throughout the region, we do not endorse the essentialising notion of a Bantu cultural identity.

Most importantly, no researchers (certainly none cited in this article) apart from Lenshie et al. have ever identified ‘the Mambilla Plateau to be the original settlement of Bantu tribes, and specifically singled out the Mambilla ethnic group as the only Bantu tribe that remained in the territory’ (p. 9). In their article, they do not consider the issue that Fulfulde, the language of the Fulani, is not a Bantu language, rather it is classified as an Atlantic language within Niger-Congo, and has its homeland far to the west in Senegal and Gambia. In other work, this is at least mentioned (Lenshie & Gambo, 2014, p. 167).

Ethnic groups and history

We try to avoid the use of the contentious vocabulary autochthon/allochthon, although we have to use these terms here to engage with Lenshie et al. In recent decades, they have become highly charged. This makes it extremely difficult to publish considered historical assessments of different populations and their histories.

We agree with the statements made about commonalities and sharing between different groups made at the bottom of p. 9. However, they then say that the shared cultural features between different ethnic groups on the plateau ‘are not coincidental, but rather a result of their shared migratory history from the Congo Basin’ (9/10). Not only was this migration hypothesis disproven and discarded along with the idea of ‘Semi-Bantu’ languages in the 1960s with Greenberg’s work but they do not consider the implications of this statement: it could be taken as suggesting that all these groups are allochthones from the Congo basin region. This is just the sort of divisiveness they accuse us of.

Lenshie et al. do not give estimates of population by group which makes it difficult to assess the claims being made, as the size of the groups varies considerably.

Assessing their account of the history is complicated by mistakes such as putting Adama’s Jihad in the C18th rather than the C19th (p. 10) and by some unclear phrasing which suggests the jihad reached the Mambila Plateau then, and not in the late C19th as given by other sources (e.g. Hurault, 1998). (Later on, Lenshie et al. give a date of 1890 p. 14 without noting the tension between this and their earlier statement.)

When they say ‘Scholarly writing on Mambilla Plateau asserting the Mambilla ethnic group sole autochthony and belonging is recent in that it is not up to a century to establish first in time is first in right claim to the Mambilla Plateau, but the effect has been far-reaching in creating uneasy relationships among ethnic groups inhabiting the area.’ (p, 10–11 their emp.), we are not clear what is said to be recent and whether the scholarly writing can really be said to have created uneasy inter-ethnic relationships. Writing style apart, the problem we see contrasting with work by several authors on different Mambila groups is that though they may be autochthonous, Lenshie et al. make them the sole autochthonous group (we know of no others who have made this claim). As they suggest in recent political contexts, the issue might be whether a group was resident before Independence. Researchers including Jean Hurault (consistently misspelled ‘Harault’ by Lenshie et al.) have taken a much longer time frame.

As we understand it, Yamba are concentrated on the western side of the plateau where they certainly have been long in residence (e.g. before WW1/German period). These areas are contiguous to the villages regarded by Yamba in Cameroon as their homelands (e.g. Mbem, Ngwa). By comparison, they have not been in other parts of the plateau to the extent that they are for anything like as long.

Nso’ and Wimbum people are present in far smaller numbers than others, and as we understand it, on their own accounts are relatively recent arrivals on the plateau (by which we mean mainly post WW2) so differing from Mambila, Yamba and FulBe. On p. 13, they are said to have arrived in German times or before which we suspect would have been in tiny numbers.¹ We know of no evidence that Nso’ people were involved in the foundation of Mbamnga and Warwar villages (13). The indigenous names for these villages are Mambila: Lemel and Mvur, respectively. So, we disagree with Lenshie et al. p. 2 that ‘all … claim autochthony and belonging over the area’. In our view, it is unhelpful and inaccurate to treat all the different groups equally since they have such different and differently complex histories.

On p. 16, we learn that there are also Igbo people on the plateau. These have not been mentioned before. This seems inconsistent. We suspect this may be to do with claims to autochthony: Igbo are locally known as, and recognize themselves as, allochthons (as do Hausa people). However, this is also true of Banso and Wimbum perhaps with the significant difference that Igbo are not now (post 1961) from a different nation state. The listings of populations by village (Table 1, p. 8) also include Hausa, but no discussion is given of the relationship between Hausa and Fulani. Some villages are described as Hausa/Fulani others are Fulani. Do Hausa people also claim to ‘autochthony and belonging over the area’?

The history of Fulbe on the plateau is of course extremely contentious and is poorly documented. The sources cited by Lenshie et al. suggest that before the Germans arrived c1900, the plateau was primarily a reserve of slaves, regularly raided from Banyo (the main sources for this are Njoya’s history of Foumban (1952) and Percival’s 1938 report). However, Blench’s (2003) summary of Mambila history includes some FulBe and cattle on the plateau from 1875 on the basis of the Percival (1938) report (see also Hurault, 1998). (Prompted by Lenshie’s work, we have realised that only a small extract of this had been typed up. A far more complete version is in the process of being made available on the Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies website www.mambila.info).

Plebiscite

Concerning the 1961 Plebiscite, Lenshie et al. say both that Mambila people stopped other ethnic groups from voting and that ‘the majority of Mambilla did not participate in the plebiscite’ (p. 15). We find this confusing if not contradictory. We have not heard before any suggestion that most Mambila did not vote.² No account is given of how inter-ethnic differences may have led to groups voting one way or other in the plebiscite. And in any case, the decision that northern Cameroon should become part of Nigeria was not restricted to voters on the Mambila Plateau but encompassed a much wider area.

On the plebiscite fn20, p. 19 has the surprising claim that ‘Kaka, Panso and Kambu people played positive roles in the plebiscite of 1961 by ensuring the Mambilla Plateau become {sic} a part of Nigeria.’ Yet, this decision separated the named groups from those of the same ethnicity in Southern Cameroon who voted to join Cameroon in the same plebiscite. On the face of it, one would expect ‘Kaka, Panso and Kambu peoples’ to be campaigning for consistency between the votes in North and South Cameroon. This may have happened but we are not given any data on the point. If Lenshie et al. are correct, this needs explanation.

Scholarship and western scholarship

Lenshie et al. blame Western anthropologists for the use allegedly being made of their published works to foster inter-ethnic violence and attribute an influence to us that we think is unwarranted. On p. 10, they say ‘In the years leading up to the 1961 plebiscite and the democratic transition in the late 1970s, ethnic groups in the Mambilla Plateau developed a strong sense of self. The Mambilla ethnic group used Western anthropologists’ autochthony narratives to assert themselves as the only autochthonous group in Mambilla Plateau.’³ Until mobile phones became widespread and subsequently forms of access to the internet, the sad truth is that the work of academic researchers was unavailable to most of the people living on the Plateau. Only a very few had encountered Rehfisch’s work (although his thesis was published in Nigeria in 1972), and despite the pioneering work of VIMS – an early website dedicated to making available archival material on the Mambila, very few accesses came from Nigeria until after 2000 which is long after Lenshie’s period of concern in the late 1970s, so before our research started. Even today, we suspect that very few people read our work beyond a very narrow circle of colleagues such as Lenshie. This is the sad truth of academic research. The existence of our research may be known and gestured to by ethnic nationalists, but that does not make us responsible for their rhetoric let alone for the actions taken in its name. Lenshie et al. repeatedly talk about western anthropologists but never consider the possible influence on the plateau of scholarship from Nigerian colleagues such as Hamman (1975, 2008). No distinction is made between Meek, a colonial ‘government anthropologist’ who visited Mambila in the late 1920s, Percival, an Assistant District Officer who was on the Mambila plateau in late 1930s, Farnham Rehfisch, an American anthropology student, studying for a master’s degree in London who stayed in the Mambila village of Warwar in 1953, and some later researchers such as us, based in universities in UK and Canada but undertaking their research long after Nigerian and Cameroonian independence. For Lenshie et al., we are all western colonialists. Such broad generalisations are unhelpful.

Documenting the patterns of linguistic variation across the plateau is not in itself the act of ethnic nationalism that Lenshie et al. portray it as. On their account it seems that no research on language and cultural history is possible without being charged with sowing the seeds of ethnic division and intergroup enmity. Sadly, tragically, even without the taint of colonial research programs, there is plenty of inter-ethnic enmity in the world, without the influence of academic research being a significant factor in this. As the authors point out, there is competition for resources on the Mambila Plateau; in crude terms, this is mapped onto religious differences which allows propagandists from both sides to portray the conflicts as being between Muslim herders and Christian farmers. Much as it pains us to admit to it, by comparison to the competition for resources, our work is causally irrelevant to the recent history of the people living on the Mambila plateau!

We are sure that the future of research in Nigeria is in the hands of scholars and colleagues such as Lenshie, Ezeibe and Ugwu. We hope this will progress by exploring fruitful and nuanced dialogues with the earlier scholarship rather than by blanket dismissal or mischaracterization of its influence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Zeitlyn

David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford, 51 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PF, UK. He has been working with Mambila in Cameroon (and Nigeria) since 1985.

Bruce Connell

Bruce Connell is Professor of Linguistics at the Linguistics and Language Studies Programme, Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Canada. He has been working on the phonetics and history of Mambila and related languages since 1993.

Notes

1. The account they quote from a Kambu elder, despite a collapsed timeframe confirms what they reject, that they came as merchants, etc.

2. See Moss (n.d.) for a contemporary account from an administrator of the plebiscite very close to Mambila (mainly in the Yamba area but making no suggestion of boycotts by particular ethnic groups) and John Percival (no relation to the district officer) in his parallel account of the plebiscite from Northwest Province of Cameroon (2008). Neither mention ethnic intimidation as a significant factor affecting the votes.

3. We pointed out earlier that only Lenshie et al. have made this claim.