Administrative Reconstitution and Political Solidary of the Ejagham in Cameroon under British Rule 1916-61

Emerging as an ethnic group that spread across the Cameroon-Nigerai borders, the different Ejagham entities were re-organized when the German colonial administrative context without agenda for their ethno-geographical limits. As part of the Ossidinge administrative Division under the Germans, the people did not enjoy ethnic specificity as they were merged with other ethnic polities like the Bayang and Bakuku .Circumstances developing from the end of the German rule and the establishment of British rule, brought about remarkable changes in the administrative composition of the Ejagham villages. The paper using primary and secondary sources and a qualitative analytical approach contends that, the British administrative re-organisation of ethnic groups to align with their philosophy of indirect rule had a double–pronged incidence on the Ejagham. On one hand it constituted the villages into a common administrative bloc and in the other hand; it gave them the opportunity to knit political solidarity around the Cameroon option during the February 1961 UN organised plebiscite. This decision became a paradox of the social straddling that would have linked the Ejagham of Cameroon with their consanguine relative in Nigeria.