By Okoi Obono-Obla
A friend of mine from Ogbia in Bayelsa State recently sent me this message:
“I saw some artifacts that were taken from Cameroon yesterday on the British Museum website and they have the same designs and motifs as the Igbo-Ukwu artifacts. The ones I saw were said to have been mostly taken from the ‘Bamileke’ area. Bamileke people live in the western and north-western regions of Cameroon. Bamileke is a Central Delta word. I don’t know if they are also of Akpa origin, but from the artifacts I have seen, I am sure there are Akpa amongst them.”
His observation is significant, particularly as the Akpa are known to have originally lived in what is now the Republic of Cameroon in the 15th century. This prompted me to attempt to construct a historiography to examine whether the Akpa are related to the Bamileke people of Cameroon.
The Bamileke language shows similarities to some of the Upper Cross and Delta-Cross languages spoken in Cross River, Bayelsa, Rivers, and Ebonyi States of Nigeria. Historically and linguistically, the Bamileke people are related to various Grassfields languages and Southern Bantoid groups. These groups share historical migration roots and linguistic ties with minority ethnic communities in eastern and south-eastern Nigeria, particularly in Taraba State, such as the Mambilla region, and the broader Cross River borderlands.
The Bamileke languages are Grassfields languages that belong to the Southern Bantoid branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Most Bamileke historical narratives trace their origin to the Nile River in what is now Sudan. Oral tradition collected by Alexis Maxime Feyou de Happy and his son, Joseph, suggested that the arrival of the Bamileke in Western Cameroon occurred in multiple waves with two primary routes. The first route originated in the North between the Lake Chad area and the Nile Valley. The second route originated in Nigeria around the Cross River area.
Southern Bantoid is a major branch of the Bantoid language family. It consists of the Bantu languages along with several small branches and isolates of eastern Nigeria and west-central Cameroon. Some of these Southern Bantoid languages include the Mbe language, spoken by the Mbube people of the Ogoja area in Cross River State, numbering about 65,000 people. As the closest relative of the Ekoid family of Southern Bantoid languages, Mbe is fairly close to the Bantu languages. It is tonal and has a typical Niger-Congo noun-class system.
Bantoid itself is a major branch of the Benue-Congo language family. It consists of the Northern Bantoid and Southern Bantoid languages, a division which also includes the Bantu languages that constitute the overwhelming majority and after which Bantoid is named.
The Upper Cross River languages are a branch of the Cross River language family spoken primarily in Cross River State, Nigeria. The North-South cluster includes Koring, Kukele, Kohumono, Agwagwune and others. The languages are spoken in Obubra, Abi, Biase, Yala, Yakurr, Odukpani, Ikom, and Akamkpa Local Government Areas.
Related languages include the Korring, Kukele, and Mbembe languages of Ebonyi State, and the Korop language of Southwest Cameroon.
On the other hand, the Cross-Delta languages include Kana and the Central Delta group, which includes Abuan, Odual, Kugbo, Ogbia, and others.
Some of the groups within the Southern Bantoid, Upper Cross River and Delta-Cross clusters, such as the Yakurr, Ogbia and others, trace their genealogy to the Akpa people. This Akpa identity is now largely lost within the complex ethnic mosaic of modern Nigeria and may have fused into one of the ethnic groups we have today in Cross River State – is it the Ejagham? Further research and findings will be required to confirm this.
This reflection is particularly important as recent reports have highlighted the failure of the Cameroonian authorities to issue passports and identity documents to about 4 million Nigerians resident in Cameroon. These are people born and bred in the Republic of Cameroon, who were raised there and have raised families there. This situation has triggered one of the greatest identity crises ever seen in Africa. cad0
It is an irony of history, because Cameroon and Nigeria – both countries created by colonial masters, the United Kingdom and France, only in the twilight of the 19th century – share so much in terms of ethnicity and culture.
Ultimately, the history of a people can be traced from a variety of sources, including motifs, language, artworks, archaeological excavations, written records, and oral traditions. The striking similarity in motifs between the Bamileke artifacts documented in the British Museum collection and the renowned 9th-century Igbo-Ukwu bronzes also housed in the British Museum provides a compelling starting point for further research. When viewed alongside the contemporary plight of millions of people of Nigerian origin in Cameroon, it reminds us that the borders that divide us are recent, while the cultural bonds that unite us are ancient.
References
Bamileke people – Wikipedia – oral tradition of origin along the Nile and two migration routes.
Cross River languages – Wikipedia – classification of Delta-Cross including Kugbo, Ogbia.
Benue-Congo and Bantoid classification.
Upper Cross River languages – Wikipedia.
Punch Newspapers – Four million Nigerians affected by Cameroonian clampdown.
Igbo-Ukwu bronzes in the British Museum collection.
