The Concept of
Boundary and Indigenous Application in Africa: The Case of the Bakassi Boarder
Lines of Cameroon and Nigeria
Mark Bolak Funteh
University of Maroua, Cameroon
Abstract
The notion and function of boundary differed
fundamentally in the European and African contexts. In traditional Africa, the
concept of an ethnic boundary was expressed in terms of neighbours with whom
the particular polity shared a territory and such a boundary was conceived of
in terms of a region or a narrow zone fronting the two neighbours marked off by
it. Thus, the boundary was the zone where two States were joined together. In
other words, African boundaries were usually rooted in ethnic and social contact.
But European partition of Africa conceived boundaries as physical separation
points. Africans who had become frontiersmen had no immediate knowledge that
their lands and kin divided by the boundary were now “foreign”. They did not
know that the new boundaries functioned differently from the traditionally
familiar ones. They thought the former were only for the white men until they
were checked at crossing points. Its impact on their relations with their kin
and neighbours made them to create secret routes across the frontiers. But
these new borders soon faded in their minds. This paper, therefore, attempts a
theoretical approach to the valorization of ethnic rather than international
prescript boundaries by the inhabitants of Bakassi, and how their activities
challenge the application of international decisions. It concludes by
attempting a therapy for such challenges as on the Bakassi borderlines, and of
course brings to book the African-border conflict prone paradigm.
Keywords: Concept, Boundary, Indigenous Application,
Boarder Lines, Bakassi, Cameroon, Nigeria
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