Mambila people

Taraba State, Nigeria

The Mambilla or Mambila people of Nigeria live on the Mambilla plateau (in 'Sardauna' local government area of Taraba State in Nigeria). A small fraction of Mambilla migrants left the Mambilla Plateau for the Ndom Plain (also known as the Tikar Plain) on the Cameroon side of the international border as well as in a couple of small villages, such as New Namba, further north towards the towns of Gashaka and Banyo. The preferred ethnonym is spelt Mambila in Cameroon and Mambilla in Nigeria. "Norr" is also used (the word for person in Nigerian dialects of Mambilla) (Bami-Yuno, ms).

Identification

The Mambilla / Mambila people of Nigeria and Cameroon regard themselves as a group with a common identity. They are the denizens of the Mambilla Region, and have been in their homeland for upwards of 4,000 years (Zeitlyn & Connell, 2003). The Mambila and Mambiloid-speaking peoples represent the Bantu who stayed home following the Great Bantu Split of pre-historic times. In Nigerian dialects they refer to themselves as 'Norr' (the people) while in Cameroon there is a collective noun 'Ba' that is used in the unmarked sense to refer to the Mambilla, and also to refer to Mambilla in Cameroon on the Ndom or northern Tikar plain (see below) contrastively with neighbouring Mambilla on the highlands of the Mambilla plateau who can be referred to as "Bo ba bo". The populations of different Mambilla villages speak different dialects of Mambilla or closely related Mambiloid languages. They also share a set of closely related cultural practices, in particular a conjunction of masquerade and oath-taking called "suu", "shua", "sua" or "shuaga". In the Somie (Ndiba) dialect this is phonetically written as [ʃwaɣa]. See discussion in "Sua in Somie" cited below. A locally written French language historical source for Somie history is Zeitlyn 2000.

The Mambila language is a congeries of dialects and related languages. The SIL Ethnologue database gives two codes MCU[1] for the Cameroonian dialects and MZK[2] for the Nigerian dialects. See the survey work of Bruce Connell on the VIMS website cited below, and the article on Mambiloid languages. The Common Mambilla or Tungbo Dialect is the most widely understood Mambila dialect in Nigeria. It is also the literary language of Mambilla for the vast majority who inhabit the Mambilla Plateau. The Mambila New Testament known as 'Li Fa' and several Mambilla Language study texts are written in the Common Mambilla dialect for Nigeria. A New Testament in Ju Ba is also available for speakers of Cameroonian dialects.

Location

Most Mambilla live on the Mambilla plateau with their modern capital at Bommi (Gembu in "Sardauna" Local Government. ). 6°42′50″N 11°15′00″E / 6.713833°N 11.25002°E / 6.713833; 11.25002 (Gembu, Nigeria) in Taraba State of Nigeria [Note that the traditional and historical name of this local government area has been "Mambilla", and that the "Sardauna" misnomer is a modern imposition by external or non-indigenous peoples, particularly, in conjunction with the defunct Jega Government of 1984]. This is a highland plateau, the northerly continuation of the Bamenda grassfields. The plateau is dissected by many rivers (notably the River Donga) leaving a complex geography of steep valleys separated by highlands (all of similar altitude). The Gang Peak, located in the northeastern corner of the Mambilla Plateau, on the Mambilla-Gashaka-Cameroon tri-point boundary zone, is Nigeria's loftiest landform. Villages are found both on the hilltops and on valley bottoms, and are relatively isolated from one another particularly during the rainy seasons when river crossings can be difficult (and impossible for motorised transport). Agriculture is concentrated on the valley bottoms while the highlands have been extensively grazed since the 1940s, i.e. since the immigration of cattle graziers towards the end of British administration (it was part of British Cameroon until the referendum of 1959/61). There has been overgrazing and erosion has caused considerable problems from the late 1970s onwards.

A smaller number of Mambilla, migrants from Nyo in southern Mambilla Plateau and other villages, are to be found on the edge of the Ndom (northern Tikar) plain in Cameroon at the foot of the escarpment of the Mambilla Plateau. The principal Cameroonian villages are Atta, Sonkolong and Somié. This is an area which, beginning from about A.D 1790, they, in a piece-meal fashion, progressively captured from the Twumwu, a pre-Tikar group that inhabited the Ndom Plain (Zeitlyn & Connell, 2003). At an altitude of some 700 m, these Ndom villages live in a different ecological zone from those of the Plateau and oil palm plantations and gallery forest are found there.

Farmer Grazier disputes

In late 2000, and thereafter, particularly on 1 January 2002 when Udawa Fulani mercenaries from Niger and Chad invaded the Mambilla Plateau, conflicts over land led to many Fulani herders being driven from the Mambilla Plateau and becoming refugees in Cameroon. (There were confirmed newspaper and official reports of Fulani mercenaries being brought into Mambilla.[3] Similar troubles occurred in mid 2017.[4][5]

Climate

There is a dry season from late November until early March, the rains (which are abundant and regular) peaking in August. Showers and isolated heavy rains are rarely experienced between December and February On the Mambilla Plateau the altitude is sufficient for evenings to be cool. Daytime temperatures hardly exceeds 25 °C (77.0 °F) making it the coldest plateau in Nigeria.[6]

References

  1. ↑ "Mambila, Cameroon".
  2. ↑ "Mambila, Nigeria".
  3. ↑ See Gaussett's article, and reports/photos of the captured mercenaries in TheNews, 4 February 2002, pp. 29 –30, New Impression, 22 April 2002, p. 42; Daily Independent, 21–27 January 2002, pp. A1, A2; TELL, 28 January 2002, p. 23
  4. ↑ Kindzeka, Moki Edwin. "Number of Nigerian Refugees Spiral as Herdsmen Disputes Surge".
  5. ↑ "Mambila". Scoop.it.
  6. ↑ "The Zainab Okino Blog".
  • Bami-Yuno (2009): "Linguistic Genocide in the Mambilla Region", Paper, 3rd Biennial Convention, National Association of Mambila Students, Bommi, Nigeria, 28–29 December 2009
  • Bami-Yuno (2011): "The Original Bantu Homeland Debate"; Paper, 4th Biennial Convention, National Association of Mambilla Students, Bommi,Nigeria, 28–29 December 2011
  • Bami-Yuno (2012): "The Mambilla Region in African History"
  • Bami-Yuno (2012): "Jumboni - History of the Mambilla Chiefdom"
  • Connell, Bruce linguistics refs
  • Gausset, Q. (2005): 'Agro-pastoral conflicts in the Tikar Plain (Cameroon)', in Q. Gausset, M. Whyte and T. Birch-Thomsen (eds.), Beyond territory and scarcity: Exploring conflicts over natural resource management, 90-111. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.
  • Percival, D.A (1938): "Administrative Reorganization of Mambilla" (An Intelligence Report)

Zeitlyn, David, Nicodeme Mial, and Charles Mbe 2000. Trois études sur les mambila de Somié, Cameroun. Boston, Mass.: Boston University African Studies Center: Groupe de Recherches sur l'Afrique Francophone. Fulltext available from

  • Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies
  • Sua in Somie David Zeitlyn, Sua in Somie: Aspects of Mambila Traditional Religion, Sankt Augustin, Academia Verlag, 1994, 260 pp., 3 88345 375 7
  • Perrin, M. J. and Hill, M. V. 1969. Mambila (Parler d'Atta): Description Phonologique. Yaoundé: Universite Federale du Cameroun.
  • Perrin, Mona. 2005 Mambila Orthography Statement
  • David Zeitlyn 2005 Words and Processes in Mambila Kinship: the Theoretical Importance of the Complexity of Everyday Life. ISBN 978-0-7391-0801-7
  • Other work by David Zeitlyn is listed in the Oxford Research Archive


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