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21 Chapter Two: The Geographical and Ethnographic Survey of Bamenda Grassfields To these ethnic groups may be added the arrival of the Fulanis. They migrated to the Bamenda plateau from French Cameroons in search for pastures and salt. According to their oral traditions, the first group of the Fulani arrived in Bamenda from Banyo in 1916 under Ardo Sabga and settled in Babanki Tungoh. They first faced the problem of securing the good faith of the aboriginal inhabitants who could give them settlement and grazing land. The natives strongly opposed their settlement scheme because they suspected their intentions and the eventual damage of their crops by the Fulani cattle. As time went by, the Fulani won the admiration of the natives through persuasion of gifts like cattle. As a result of this, the chief of Babanki-Tungo provided the Fulanis with baskets of maize and demonstrated his wish to cohabit with them by erecting bamboo houses for Ardo Sabga and his followers (Chilver and Kaberry, 1967:1; Ritzenthaler and Ritzenthaler, 1965:12). It is clear from the foregoing discussion that a lot has been said and written by some anthropologists and colonial administrators about the Bamenda Grassfields. These same issues have attracted some post independent writers (See Ngoh, 1996; Fanso, 1989; Johnson 1970; Le Vine, 1964; Rubin, 1971). In most of these secondary studies about this region, they attempt at reconstructing the past, however, they have been inadequate because of the uncritical acceptance of some colonialist perceptions about the indigenes’ material and cultural realities. Even a few of the writers who attempted going more in-depth into that past were at best Eurocentric. The next section will examine the traditional and sociopolitical structures of these groups. C) Traditional and Socio-Political Organisations The socio-political organisations of the ethnic groups discussed above can conveniently fall into two systems, namely, the centralised and “segmentary” or decentralised systems. In order to better appreciate these systems, it is necessary to look at their fundamental characteristics. The centralised groups of Fondoms of the Bamenda Grassfields include Kom (Bikom), Bafut, Nso and Bali: Centralised states usually arose when the leader of a local group or of immigrant warriors gained control over a number of decentralised village communities and formed a kingdom. But generally, the pre-existing ...

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