Analyze/The freedom to administer oneself was a luxury that peoples considered inferior could not afford. The German protectorate regime, that under mandate of the League of Nations (LON) replaced by that of trusteeship of the United Nations organisation (UNO), were all mechanisms put in place to extend the power or authority of the powers colonial on external dependencies inhabited by populations who did not have rights but only duties and who had to struggle or fight at the risk of their lives for some, to put an end to injustices which started in 1884 in Cameroon for begin to crumble from 1960 with the waves of independences in Africa.
The excessive ambition which results in the fact of violating the sovereignty of a State to extend domination or power is a tendency which has always existed and which has favoured the colonization of African territories in general and Cameroon in particular. When arriving in Africa and Cameroon in particular, the dominant power did not intend to deal as equals with a people considered inferior on the international scene but imposed its authority on all levels even if it was necessary to use means binding to achieve this.
After losing the two great wars, Germany de facto lost its external dependencies including the territory of Kamerun whose future depended on the League of Nations (LON), an arbiter created in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles and replaced in 1945 by the United Nations Organisation (UNO), which renewed the Franco-British administration of this territory decreed in 1919 by the League of Nations (LON) which had already launched the process of emancipation of the territory under its supervision and under administration of the two great powers. The French and British therefore had a mission, and the UNO General Assembly had sovereign powers. In other words, it is she who proposes the best possible options for the future of this territory after consultation with the main stakeholders including the administering powers and even the populations who would have the right to express their choice in a democratic manner for the first time.
But in a context of desire to extend the power of the superpowers abroad, we must wonder if the territory will not be definitively divided into several parts. The question of reunification is all the more worrying because unlike the case of British Togoland where the UNO assembly had proposed union with the Gold Coast (former British colony now called the Republic of Ghana) or the maintenance of the British trusteeship regime, the UNO instead proposed two Plebiscites: The first in the Northern part which extended from the border of Nkambe (North-West) to Lake Chad and "covered part of the Current Nigerian States of Adamawa, Borno, and Taraba” for the choice between the extension of trusteeship and attachment to Nigeria. On November 7, 1959, the maintenance of guardianship won 70,546 votes against 42,788 for attachment to Nigeria. The United Nations commissioner at the time would have noted in his report that this vote above all expressed “a protest against the local administration system in force in Northern Cameroon”. But it was only a postponement. The gold of the second plebiscite of February 11 and 12, 1961 but this time in the two Cameroons under British administration, the proposals were no longer the attachment to Nigeria and the maintenance of supervision but rather: The attachment to the federal republic of Nigeria or to the Republic of Cameroon. There was therefore no option of pure and simple independence for one part of these territories. The options proposed by the UNO only provided for attachment to an already independent countries.
The Northern party of British Cameroon chose to join the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and the South, which covered the current North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon, chose to join the Republic of Cameroon.
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If the results had been considered as a whole as in the case of British Togoland where despite the fact that the North voted in majority for union with the Gold Coast and the South in majority for maintaining the regime under supervision, the UNO rather considered the overall results favourable to the union with the Gold Coast, the solution of attachment to the Republic of Cameroon would have won by 331,530 votes against 244,037 as have reported public law lecturer and international relations specialist Marcel Merle (1923-2003) in his article on The plebiscites organized by the UNO. Perhaps by proceeding in this way for the case of Cameroon, that is to say, a distinction between the choices of the North and South parts of British Cameroon, the UNO wanted to avoid conflicts given that there did not have the option of pure and simple independence of one of these parts of territories that many would have wanted but which did not depend only on them but above all on the UNO which had the authority to propose the options.
The protests against the joining of Southern Cameroon to the Republic of Cameroon were without effect, as were the protests of French representatives and their allies of the Yaoundé regime, particularly with regard to the choice of joining Northern Cameroon to the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Indeed, the Republic of Cameroon had decided to refer the matter to the International Court of Justice on the basis of the compulsory jurisdiction clause contained in the trusteeship agreement of December 13, 1946 relating to Cameroon under trusteeship of the United Kingdom before the expiration of the validity thereof. On May 31, 1961, the Republic of Cameroon filed a petition against the United Kingdom in which breaches of the guardianship agreement and resolution 1473 (XIV) relating to the administrative separation of Northern Cameroon and the Nigeria. But this had no impact on the decision taken by the United Nations Organisation General Assembly.
Nothing predicted that the process of emancipation of Cameroon would end without the French and British who recovered German territory at the end of the two great wars obtaining something. By choosing to separate administrations, the UNO, and before it the League Of Nations, already foreshadowed that a sharing would occur and would be a necessity in order to satisfy those who contributed to the successful completion of this emancipation process.
The mandate regime, like that of trusteeship, was not intended to reunify the two Cameroons but rather to allow either the attachment to independent Nigeria which was under British administration to extend the Territory of a former British colony, or the joining to the Republic of Cameroon which had been under French administration to satisfy France. It should be noted that on the French side, no plebiscite was necessary unlike on the British side where the situation was much more complex. And to show its impartiality or not to show a preference for the attachment of Northern Cameroon with Nigeria which was sanctioned by the refusal to fully integrate Nigeria following the plebiscite of November 7, 1959, the UNO proposed another option but this time in the Northern and Southern territories knowing full well that the influence of the British administration exercised in these territories will certainly ensure that one of the territories switches to the side of Nigeria.
The isolation or rather the holding of two separate plebiscites in two different territories while considering the results in distinct ways was a strategic plan more favourable to the enlargement of the Nigerian Territory rather than to a complete reunification of the two British Cameroons with the republic of Cameroon. Everyone took their share of the cake and even if the choice of Northern Cameroon was disappointing, we must not lose sight of the fact that the territory of Kamerun or the current republic of Cameroon, definitively divided into two after the Second World War, could also have lost the Southern part of British Cameroon which chose to join the Republic of Cameroon. It is therefore even more necessary currently to campaign for a One and indivisible Cameroon in a context where some are demanding the independence of a territory not recognized on the international scene and which has freely chosen to formalize its membership in the Republic of Cameroon through the plebiscite of February 11 and 12, 1961 organized by the United Nations organization.
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