By Dr. Peter Mbile
( aka Ngembeni Wa Namaso)
Batanga community
Batanga culture, a legacy to uphold.
Among the Batanga people of Ndian in Cameroon’s Southwest administrative region, culture is not just heritage—it is geography, memory, and rituals rooted in sacred spaces.
At the heart of their annual cultural gathering, the Bobombi Wa Batanga, lies a powerful paradox for all displaced peoples: How can a culture that depends on sacred geography continue to exist when the people are physically separated from their ancestral land?
To be uprooted is more than being displaced.
It is to lose (albeit temporally) one’s connection to the ground where identity is enacted.
For the Batanga, whose ancient Moboko rites take place only in proximity to the sacred Ibombi tree ( Anonidium manii ), and whose mystical judgment drum the “Essimi” only resonates effectively in spiritually consecrated terrain, the connection between land and culture is not metaphorical. It is existential.
Yet today, Batanga men and women like many across the Southwest and Northwest are scattered, internally displaced, or unable to perform key rituals due to insecurity.
Their customs, once protected by time and terrain, are now under siege.
And the source of this disruption is not external conquest or natural disaster—it is the internal unraveling driven by the Ambazonian Project – a sub plot of the Cameroon Anglophone Crisis.
Culture Interrupted: When Conflict Blocks Custom
The Bobombi Wa Batanga , once a space for communal healing, is now interrupted by fear.
The Moboko, once a male-only justice assembly grounded in ancestral ethics, sits partially silent.
The DIYALA, where women deliberated on matters affecting the entire community, remains paused.
The ‘Essimi’ drum cannot call the spirits where fear, uncertainty, not reverence, dominates the land.
These disruptions are not incidental,they are consequences of a crisis whose drivers and outcomes have become increasingly unanchored from the original grievances.
What began as legitimate protest against marginalization has metastasized into an ideology of chaos: the Ambazonian mindset.
This mindset, once fired by the hopes of liberation, now feeds on disruption itself.
Its adherents, bereft of a clear path to statehood or victory, have instead normalized the destabilization of community life—through ghost towns, kidnappings, and the deliberate targeting of Anglophone elites and dissenting voices.
In this environment, Batanga customs have become collateral damage, victims of a struggle that has turned inward.
A History the Ambazonian Mindset Ignores
Ironically, Ndian home of the Batanga was part of Kumba North at the time of the 1961 Plebiscite.
Along with Victoria (today’s Fako) and Nkambe (Donga Mantung), these communities chose to return to Buea in unity after the vote, despite opposing the final result. They resolved to “make unification work,” embracing a spirit of loyal adaptation, not resistance.
These were not the celebrated architects of unification—but they were its keepers.
And despite not supporting the original direction, they chose not to tear the house down.
To this day, the Batanga by instinct and tradition remain resistant to the idea of secession, not because they are blind to injustice, but because their deep loyalty to land, continuity, and custom cannot align with a vision built on rupture.
And yet, they suffer from the very instability they did not choose, and remain culturally, partly uprooted as a direct consequence of an armed movement in which they had no voice.
The Ambazonian Complex: A Grievance Without an Endgame
The Ambazonian mindset has morphed into a psychological condition. Rooted in real and imagined slights, it persists by replaying outrage, even as it lacks a plausible roadmap to independence. Its most vocal adherents are often driven less by strategic vision than by a profound need for recognition—to be seen, to be acknowledged by the State, to not be erased.
To dismiss this as irrational would be a mistake.
Alienation is real, especially in a system where Anglophone officials, once elected, are absorbed into national frameworks as “députés de la Nation” rendered voiceless in their own communities.
Institutional neglect has bred resentment. But the solution cannot be armed terror against one’s own people.
Nor can it come from military crackdowns, which only reinforce psychological isolation.
The current security-focused approach fuels the Ambazonian complex, validating its perception of exclusion and strengthening its narrative of being ignored and illegitimate.
The Batangas, a celebrated people.
A Local Solution: Dialogue Without Supervision
If Cameroon is to resolve this crisis and restore dignity not just to the Batanga, but to all Anglophone communities it must accept a difficult truth: Only a locally driven solution, led by Anglophones themselves, can challenge and neutralize the Ambazonian mindset.
This will not be easy. It will require courageous Anglophones in government too, to co- lead the charge, even at the cost of personal political and material capital.
It will require Francophone power brokers to step back, resisting the urge to control the process.
Symbolically and strategically, Francophones must not be at the center of this first phase of dialogue.
This is not about exclusion—it is about strategy. Only when Anglophone communities confront their own contradictions, heal internal wounds, and rebuild trust among themselves can a broader, more inclusive national dialogue succeed.
The challenge is not merely security—it is psychological reconciliation.
It is the spiritual and cultural replanting of a people who have been uprooted from their land, their rituals, and their peace.
Unless this happens, the Batanga will not be the only ones carrying drums that can no longer summon spirits.
In conclusion: Replanting the Spirit, Restoring the Ground
The tragedy of the Anglophone Crisis is not only in the lives lost or communities displaced.
It lies also in the quiet erasure of cultural foundations, in the sacred rites that can no longer be held fully, the ancestral trees whose shade lies partially filled, and the intergenerational memory that risks being severed with each year of conflict.
For the Batanga and many others, being uprooted is not just a matter of physical displacement—it is a spiritual suspension, a loss of grounding in the very rituals that give meaning to identity, belonging, and morality.
The Moboko cannot simply be relocated.
The Essimi cannot be beaten just anywhere.
And peace cannot be imposed from outside.
The Ambazonian mindset, for all its noise and symbolism, offers no harvest—only more disruption, more silence in the sacred groves, and more ghosts in the towns.
But its psychological roots must still be addressed—through empathy, through recognition, and above all, through space for Anglophones to speak, listen, and heal among themselves.
This requires humility—from government officials, from the military, from Francophone elites, and from Anglophones themselves.
It requires the bravery to engage not as victims or vassals, but as custodians of a shared future, rooted not in ideology, but in the land, the drum, the tree, and the truth.
If we do not begin this process now, we risk raising generations for whom Bobombi is a word without a tree, Moboko a ritual without meaning, and Anglophone a label torn between fear and futility.
But if we rise to the moment with sincerity and resolve, then perhaps the next Bobombi Wa Batanga and others across the Northwest and Southwest will not just be a return to culture but a celebration of a people re-rooted, reconnected, and ready to rebuild.