The Champion newspaper of Nigeria interview with Stephen Joseph, Moderator of the IG’s Southern Cameroons People Forum. The interview was published in February of 2005.
Question 1:
Who are the Southern Cameroons people? What do they stand for exactly, what do they want from the Cameroonian government?
Stephen Joseph:
The people of Southern Cameroons are the people who the British carved out of the lost German colonial possession of Kamerun in Central Africa after the First World War. They became incorporated into Nigeria as an expansion of that British colony from 1915 to 1919. In 1919 they were placed under the League of Nations Mandate System after Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, insisted that all ex German territories be placed under a mandate system of the League of Nations. Britain returned the territory to the League of Nations but remained the Administering authority and continued to administer the territory from Nigeria as if it were a part of Nigeria.
The continued administration of Southern Cameroons from Nigeria by the British was unfortunate because the territory and its people neither benefited from colonial investments as a British colony nor benefited as a League of Nations Mandate, with rights.
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