Chapter three

religion and politics in northern Cameroon:

local and global negotiations

Researchers are attracted by new religious movements because of their

undefined nature: they are societies in the making. Still, new social con-
stellations always have a history; they are the final links of a chain forged
by spiritual and material entrepreneurs over a considerable period of
time. This chapter will take a closer look at some of these entrepreneurs,
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who through recent historical developments have created a specific multi-

religious culture in northern Cameroon through cultural and spiritual
exchange, regional migration, and overseas’ expansion. African traditions
strengthened ethnic boundaries and provided plausible insights into a
complicated universe, but they were also systems which were open for
exchange. The Islamic religion slowly penetrated the region in the early 19th
century through political conquest and military and economic supremacy
while also being influenced by the religious traditions it encountered. The
colonial presence changed face and attitude when the European powers
invaded the northern area. What started out as a peaceful collaboration
in trade turned into a quest for material benefits and political domina-
tion and was soon followed by white missionaries who sought new fields
for evangelical harvest. This historical background of African tradition,
Islam, and missionary Christianity, related to colonial administration and
independent politics, makes up the social, political, economical, and spiri-
tual context within which the new Pentecostal churches try to establish
a foothold. Regardless of how oriented they might be towards the future,
the new churches have to relate to material and spiritual power structures
which are the results of two centuries of negotiations over body and soul
and over mind and might.

The Emergence of a Multireligious Culture

The city of Ngaoundéré is today the home of a variety of multireligious

practices, a crowded arena where the new charismatic churches struggle
to find a place of their own. The present situation is on the one hand the
result of slow changes and two centuries of historical missionary activities,
Copyright 2013. Brill.

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 70 chapter three

from both Muslim and Christian communities. On the other hand, today’s
religious landscape is rapidly changing due to Arab influence through
scholarships to young Cameroonian students and Pentecostal churches
trying to challenge the hegemony of the historical churches established by
foreign missions. Any study of the present religious changes would thus
have to be developed on a canvas of historical reflections in order to make
sense. It is obvious that the ‘new Christianity’—the main focus of this
study—could never be created in a religious void simply because religious
voids do not exist in Africa, not even in modern, so-called secularised
cities. Religion has been part of the social organisation of African com-
munities as far back as collective memory can recall. African traditional
imagination provided a cosmology which organised family and village
life, an imagination which had to fight and mingle with Islamic influence
in northern Cameroon after Uthman dan Fodio started his local jihad in
Sokoto in 1804. Both of these religious traditions had to rethink the basis
of their existence when the Christian missionaries, albeit few in numbers,
entered the region in the 1920s and proclaimed a new religious message
fuelled by technological and academic supremacy.
In this struggle, the French colonial administration with its political
programme of laïcité promoted the idea that religion should belong to
the private sphere and that all religions should be treated equally, or per-
haps ignored equally. But as in most other parts of colonial Africa, neutral
politics towards religion could never be anything but an illusion. As was
the case in the British-dominated areas in Nigeria and East Africa, the
French did much to secure an Islamic political stronghold in northern
Cameroon, a stronghold that outlived independence and grew stronger
for two post-colonial decades. A historical presentation of the creation of
a multireligious culture in Ngaoundéré will therefore also have to include
the politics and the attitudes of the French colonising culture, which
to a large extent influenced African tradition, Islam, and the Christian
missionaries.
African traditions will in this part of the chapter have to be our point
of departure because the African religious imagination and the African
maps of reality, or, if you like, African worldview, have survived and
prospered within both Islam and Christianity, being influenced by a rich
variety of ethnic traditional religious practices. This religious influence is
vibrant and obvious to the inhabitants of the area, but it is only to a very
small extent a visible part of everyday life in Ngaoundéré. Whereas beau-
tiful mosques, huge churches, cars, satellite dishes on rooftops, and hun-
dreds of motorcycle-taxis are visible signs of modern material change, the

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 71

traditional religious influence—perhaps other then a small hand-painted

sign with the inscription Guerriseur traditionel—will hardly be noticed
by a visitor. However, this does not mean that religious activity is not
present in the public sphere. If you try to do your weekend shopping in
Ngaoundéré on a Friday afternoon, you will soon be convinced otherwise.
The extensive Muslim influence in this part of the country makes most
shops close during Friday prayer, and the main roads passing the central
mosque, where the lamido (the traditional king) attend the ceremony, will
be closed to traffic. Only the Bamileke and the Nigerian hardware quarters
of town, dominated by Christian merchants from the south, will be open
for trade. Similarly, a walk in almost any quarter of town on a Sunday
morning will reveal crowds of men and women, dressed in beautiful and
colourful pagnes, on their way to one of the numerous churches that are
spread all over town.
This mosaic of colours, architecture, tales, traditions, and beliefs has
undergone slow and constant changes as long as the memory of bygone
generations is possible to reconstruct. Even if every single individual piece
in the picture is different in shape and size, together they constitute an
image of a multireligious society in constant change due to an indigenous
past which has been visited by strangers and continuously rewritten in
a constant negotiation between those who once inhabited the soil and
those who wanted to influence the future of their thoughts.

African Roots and Arab Influence

African Traditional Religion

To try to reconstruct traditional religious practices the way they were
exercised by the different ethnic groups in northern Cameroon before the
arrival of Islam and Christianity is a very difficult task. My own research
has shown that no written sources produced by the local population exist,
and the few reports produced by European travellers in the early 20th
century are inaccurate sketches rather than anthropological descriptions
(Frobenius 1987). Attempts have been made to reconstruct previous reli-
gious practices (Burnham 1980; 1996; Drønen 2009; Mohammadou 1978;
1981; 1990; Muller 2002; 2007; Palaï and Taïwé 2008), showing that a rich
variety of religious practices existed in the region prior to the arrival of
Islam. However, these studies also show that interactions between the dif-
ferent ethnic groups gradually led them to change their practices, even if
all groups claim to have independent historical roots for their traditions.

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 72 chapter three

By comparing the similarities and differences between the groups, we

should be able to recognise some principles in the religious practices
which could help us understand the later development of the religious
groups in the region.
The first common feature that can be traced between the major groups
in the region concerns cosmology. Man was created in order to occupy a
specific place in the complicated world surrounding the individual. This
world was both physical and spiritual, and the borders between the two
worlds were not always clear. The spiritual powers of the universe were
to be approached through collective rites, and the individual’s place in
this collective was to a large extent determined by birth. The major ethnic
groups which inhabited the region—the Mbum, the Gbaya, and the Dii—
were acephal groups without any centralised authorities (Burnham 1996:
70–77). Consequently, every village had to provide specialists who could
be responsible for the contact with the gods through the ancestors. The
ancestors were seen as important spiritual beings by all groups; they
held powers which balanced the material surroundings of the human
beings. Most religious rites served one purpose only: maintain the bal-
ance between humans and spirits in order for the ancestors to bless the
populations through prosperity and avoid chaos and disorder. The popu-
lation’s means of maintaining this balance were basically connected to
sacrifices to the ancestors which were either conducted through collec-
tive ritual ceremonies or through individual offerings on a daily basis.1
Yet the rites were always connected to the natural surrounding of the
different groups, to the sad, a particular sorghum cultivated by the Dii
(Muller 1992), and the sore leaf among the Gbaya (Christensen 1990). The
spirits were also located in specific geographical locations, such as rivers,
mountains, caves, and trees. This aspect underscores the particularity and
the local groundedness of the religious practices as well as the fact that
neighbouring people respected totally different traditions connected to
taboos, in terms of both alimentation and social practices. This further
shows that the particular rather than the universal guided the way the
different groups approached the spiritual world.
These important balance-maintaining elements in African traditional
religion made ritual invocations part of everyday activities and guided

1 One example of this was the way in which the head of the family among the Dii
always had to spill some food on the ground before the household could start eating in
order to please the ancestors who inhabited the earth (Drønen 2009: 121).

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 73

the way the population interpreted their material surroundings. Good

harvests and good hunts were blessings provided by the gods, whereas
sickness, famine, and death proved the anger of the spirits. Causality thus
existed as a guiding principle for the ethnic group, but this causality was
very different from the philosophical principle which evolved in Europe
as a result of the Enlightenment. There was always a reason for disasters
which occurred, but the reason behind the imbalance between the mate-
rial and the spiritual world was always connected to human behaviour,
such as the breaking of taboos and unfortunate actions by individuals
which often punished the group as a whole. Alternatively, the forces of
chaos, like sickness and death, could be deliberately activated by persons
who for various reasons sought spiritual help to harm other individuals.
In any case, bad things happened for a reason and were connected to
the spiritual forces which surrounded the material world (Drønen 2009;
Thomas and Luneau 2004; van Beek 1994).
A central point in the ongoing discussion about religious change in Afri-
can concerns the notion of a supreme God. Several African theologians
have sought to make this point a hermeneutical bridge between Chris-
tianity and African traditional religion (Idowu 1973; Mbiti 1999), thereby
indicating that Africans knew the Christian God even before the mis-
sionaries arrived. However, this notion is heavily disputed among African
scholars (p’Bitek 1970) and seems to have become more of an ideological
debate than discussions over empirical findings. In my own work among
the Dii people, the fieldwork among the first generation of Dii Christians
indicated that the idea of Tayyi, a supreme Dii deity, existed prior to the
arrival of the missionaries (Drønen 2009: 129–131). However, the extent
to which the image of this deity was influenced by a century of Islamic
presence in the region before the Christian missionaries arrived is diffi-
cult to assess, and the question of the origin of the ‘Supreme African God’
remains open to dispute. African societies as well as their traditions and
thoughts were influenced by their encounter with European colonists and
white missionaries, starting a slow journey towards what the strangers
called ‘modernity’—a journey which Robin Horton argues, with some
success, would have occurred regardless of the arrival of the two world
religions (Horton 1971; 1975a; 1975b). Horton’s thoughts are of interest, par-
ticularly in terms of the more recent debate on the turns in history which
moved societies towards development of a global consciousness; however,
Horton was criticised for not being able to convincingly identify the ele-
ments within the African culture which, regardless of Islamic, Christian,
or colonial presence, moved society in this direction (Fisher 1973).

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 74 chapter three

This brief look at traditional religion in the region has thus shown
that religion throughout history has been an important aspect of social
organisation in northern Cameroon, but that the religious practices were,
in principle, limited to the ethnic group in question. Particularism was
the main focus of the practices; the time aspect was oriented backwards
towards the ancestors while the space dimension was directed towards
the physical surroundings of the village.

A Muslim Empire on the Move

The islamisation process in sub-Saharan Africa was a slow and mostly
peaceful process. Although most presentations of the growth of Islam in
this region focus on the states which adopted Islam as the imperial cult
(Trimingham 1962: 34), such as the Islamic revolutions in Masina, Bamara,
Futa Toro, and Sokoto, Islam attracted the most converts through trade
and religious prestige. Nehemia Levtzion highlights the simplicity and
adaptability of the new religion on the one hand while mentioning its
tradition and scholarship as important elements drawing new adherents
to the beliefs and practices of the new community on the other (Levtzion
1994: 208). The fact that the first North African Muslims who slowly pen-
etrated the Saharan desert were traders looking for new commercial ports
along the outskirts of the ocean of sand made many of them settle in new
areas. The new Muslim communities were not solely based on economic
strength; the small groups of tradesmen were soon joined by religious
scholars who impressed the surroundings by the advanced civilisation
they represented. The Muslims brought with them an important techni-
cal skill—namely, literacy—and a language that was understood in large
parts of the world and which gradually influenced the different lingua
franca of trade in the region.
The Fulbe were probably the single ethnic group who contributed
most to the spread of Islam from Western to Central Africa. During the
13th century, Islam became a central element of the Fulbe identity, and
Fulbe traditional virtues, pulaako, developed from being a sign of ethnic
particularity to being a model for the new religious communality. After
the Futa Toro revolutions, the nomadic Fulbe moved east and created
settlements all the way from Senegal to Nigeria, where they generally lived
in peace with the surrounding populations. The fact that the Fulbe were
cattle people contributed to friendly relations with the indigenous groups
they encountered. These groups were mostly hunters and farmers, and
milk, skin, and meat were traded for farming products and local artefacts.

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 75

The Fulbe developed friendly relations with the Hausa, who had received
Islam through contact with traders from North Africa and who had devel-
oped important Muslim trade networks in the Sokoto Empire in present-
day Nigeria (Trimingham 1962: 132). Both the Fulbe and the Hausa were
well aware of the fact that they belonged to a world religion, but neither
group put much effort into missionary activities towards the ‘pagan’ popu-
lation. Islam was to a large extent regarded as an ethnic marker, a sign
of superiority in terms of belonging to a worldwide network of advanced
culture. The Fulbe and the Hausa lived in peace until the end of the 18th
century, when Uthman dan Fodio, a zealous young intellectual, preacher,
and warrior, waged holy war against what he claimed to be lack of reli-
gious devotion among the Hausa population in Sokoto in present-day
Nigeria (Hiskett 1984; Njeuma 1978: 20–21). Dan Fodio was significantly
influenced through his personal teachers by the Qadiriyya brotherhood, a
brotherhood where personal devotion and commitment were of particu-
lar importance. In addition, it was a brotherhood which paid much atten-
tion to the hierarchical organisation of the fellowship of believers and was
thus a religious institution dependent on a strong leader (Drønen 2001:
18–20). Dan Fodio’s intentional wish to reform his Muslim surroundings
soon took a more materialistic turn, and the religious revival developed
into an expansionist movement (Bah 1993: 82; Njeuma 1978: 65).2 Fulbe
nomads who had settled in small groups in Cameroon from the 16th cen-
tury on were inspired by Uthman’s jihad, and in 1830 a delegation of Fulbe
leaders paid homage to dan Fodio, in return receiving the white flag of the
jihad, which eventually brought the religious revival to Cameroon in the
form of military expansion. The Fulbe in the northern part of Cameroon
soon gained political control over the densely populated region, inhab-
ited mainly by acephal groups with weak political organisation. The Fulbe
gradually took control over the natural resources of the Adamawa plateau,
which consisted of grazing land for the cattle, the alimentary resources
produced by the local population, and a largescale hunt for slaves who
were either used as domestic slaves or sent to the slave markets in Sokoto
(Adama 2004; Martin Z. Njeuma 1989: 22–30).
The new religion, which gradually ploughed the African soil and
entered the imaginations of more and more Africans as a result of friendly
coexistence and brutal warfare, made a lasting impact on the sub-Saharan

2 For a detailed presentation of the religious versus the political content of dan Fodio’s
jihad, see Drønen (2009: 38–43).

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 76 chapter three

continent. I previousy identified several aspects of social and cultural

changes which give sense to globalisation as an analytical term, and I will
in this chapter argue that the two world religions (i.e., Islam and Christian-
ity) have probably been the most important social movements in terms of
bringing northern Cameroon closer to the surrounding world. Islam in the
way it was practiced by the Fulbe challenged both temporal and spatial
ideas and practices as it was gradually adapted by the encountered popu-
lation. From a traditional seasonal focus where sowing and reaping were
temporal markers, the new religion introduced not only the moon as the
new temporal guide in life, but also the week, which was concluded by a
special day to pay extra homage to the new supreme god, Allah. Even daily
life, work and leisure were in principle organised by the five daily prayers,
the same way the day was divided in Cairo, Mecca, and Baghdad. The tem-
poral changes also had spatial consequences. Daily devotions were directed
towards a town far away as prayers were directed towards Mecca’s eastern
location. The traditional local holy geography was thereby challenged by
supraterritorial ideas and practices as the new religion demanded that
those who could afford it travel to the holy city in order to perform the
ritual hajj together with fellow believers from other parts of the Muslim
empire. There are even reports in the French colonial archives from 1932
describing how Muslims from the region walked to Mecca, a journey last-
ing more than twelve months.3 This shows the importance of these cross-
roads of religious beliefs and social practices which became vehicles of a
common Muslim consciousness gradually spreading to remote parts of
the new global community. One should obviously be careful not to over-
estimate the common content of this consciousness, and one should
also be aware of the fact that only a very limited number of people were
actually able to visit such crossroads throughout history. But those who
did take part were often important members of society who managed to
influence the way decisions were made and the way tales were told upon
their return. Consequently, Islam became a river which took colour from
the landscape it ran through, and these journeys became processes which
adapted universal ideas to local practices. Universal Islamic ideas were
imported and practiced within the Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya brotherhoods
which were organised according to local traditional customs. This glocal-
ising process has a long history within the Muslim community, starting

3 ANSOM/AGEFOM 929/2912.

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 77

with the first caliphs who brought the Islamic faith towards new horizons
during the first decades after Muhammad’s death.

Colonial Administration and Protestant Mission

The Colonial Administration and Religion

The first Europeans to visit this part of the West African coast were the
Portuguese in the 15th century, who named the area Rio dos Camarões,
or Rivers of Prawns (Eyongetah and Brain 1974: 53). No permanent trade
stations were established, but from the 16th to the 19th centuries, trade
gradually increased between Europe and the West African coast—a devel-
opment which was further boosted by the violent exportation of African
labour across the Atlantic Ocean. From the 1840s, several treaties were
signed between local chiefs and white traders; the British were particu-
larly active. Several local chiefs were ready to become a part of the British
Empire, and after much discussion between traders and the British govern-
ment it was decided in 1884 to make Cameroon a British colony. However,
when consul Hewitt returned to Africa to sign the treaties, the Germans
had already hoisted their flag on the coast. The Germans offered gener-
ous trade conditions to the local chiefs and gave them monopoly rights
to trade with the inland; in return the Germans received monopoly rights
for trade with Europe. But the Europeans soon understood that the local
chiefs had gotten the best part of the deal and started a bloody expansion
towards northern Cameroon in order to secure the inland trade routes.4
The First World War put an end to the German colonial adventure,
and the French victory over the Germans in Ngaoundéré in June 1915
led to the division of Cameroon between the British and the French; in
1919, Cameroon was made a mandate area under the Society of Nations
to be administered by France (Abwa 1989: 137; Mveng 1963: 361, 369–370).
The French colonial policy has often been referred to as a ‘direct rule’
with tight control over all levels of administration in the colonies, but
the weak administrative presence in Cameroon soon made it clear that
the French had to depend on the traditional Muslim chiefs to govern the
vast northern part of the mandate area, a decision partly based on positive

4 For more details on the early colonial period in Cameroon, see Eyongetah and Brain
(1974: 53–75); Gaillard (1989: 63–116); Kirk-Greene (1969: 41–87); Mveng (1963: 261–305);
Njeuma (1989: 32–105); and Rudin (1968: 17–75).

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 78 chapter three

experiences with Muslim rulers from the North African colonies (Abwa
1989: 138; Froelich 1962: 85). The local chiefs were made clerks in the
administrative system and had to report to French superiors. Local armies
were reduced to police forces and tax collectors, and the French finally
put a halt to the slave raiding expeditions of the Fulbe, to which the
German had turned a blind eye.5
Studies of the French colonial administration archives show that the
administration exercised tight control over the religious activity in the
mandate area. Even if the French were unable to control the whole terri-
tory, detailed legislation was put into place in order to supervise religious
activity. The colonial attitude towards the Christian missions was some-
what dualistic. The missionaries were regarded as co-workers in a mission
civilisatrice where Christian virtues were regarded as part of the Western
civilising project; the colonial administration even paid 25 per cent of the
overseas travel costs for the French missionaries going to Cameroon.6
However, the missions were also closely monitored due to their influence
on the local population as the administration feared political upheavals as
a consequence of indigenous organisation within the religious communi-
ties. The reports from the administration indicate that it was the French
Catholics who caused the administration the most trouble, primarily
through small quarrels between priests and administration officers due to
“the critical attitude being a part of our national character.”7 The policy of
the Catholic missionaries was to transform indigenous societies by creat-
ing new structures of local governance; this caused frequent clashes with
the politics of the colonial administration which sought to exercise its
power through local chiefs. The Protestant missionaries were in general
easier to control. Their evangelising methods consisted of preserving the
traditional political hierarchy and focusing more on spiritual and moral
matters, not social structures, in order to influence the individual con-
vert. However, one challenge facing the colonial administration was that
the Protestants’ missions were ‘foreigners,’ and German, American, and
Norwegian missionaries were accused of having published anti-French

5 Victor Azarya shows how the Fulbe in Adamawa managed to adjust themselves eco-
nomically to the changing conditions caused by the colonial presence. They still kept slaves
in agriculture villages, where many slaves developed strong emotional ties to their Fulbe
masters. In addition the Fulbe took over the increasing trade that followed the colonial
project, despite their previous negative attitude towards commerce (Azarya 1976: 28–31).
6 ANSOM/1AP 2192/9.
7 “. . . au fond récriminateur qui marque notre caractère national, . . .”. ANSOM/1AFFPOL
2192/1.

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 79

propaganda in their home countries.8 This French paranoia is evident

in reports showing that the administration sent an envoyé to the Baptist
World Congress in 1928 in order to prevent the Congress from sending Ger-
man Baptist missionaries (who were expelled after the First World War)
back to Cameroon.9 Much ink was also spent on Norwegian missionaries,
especially the superintendent Halfdan Endresen, when he threatened to
reveal to the UN inspectors in the 1950s how little the French did to abol-
ish what the Norwegians regarded as the slavery practiced by the Fulbe
notables (Drønen 2009: 53–59).10
The official French attitude towards Christian mission activity was
established through Decret du 28 mars 1933 where rules for the establish-
ment of new churches and religious services were described. The French
principles implied complete freedom of religion and liberty to perform
religious services that did not threaten the public order or offend the
public.11 The detailed control exercised by the colonial administration is
commented upon by J. Wilbois, director of l’Ecole de l’Administration et
d’Affairs, in a publication from 1934. He writes that new places of worship
can be granted a first permission, and after close surveillance for one year
(to ensure public safety), evaluations would be made to decide if the work
could continue. However, no more than five churches could exist within
a radius of eight kilometres, and the numbers of believers had to be at
least one hundred. There were also restrictions concerning collection of
‘money and materials’ for the construction of the churches. People were
allowed to hold religious meetings in local homes if it was demanded by
at least ten persons and if it was more than five kilometres to the nearest
church. Wilbois writes that this was experienced as a strict regime by the
missions and that certain malentendus existed between the administra-
tion and the missionaries due to the focus on temporal matters among the
former and spiritual matters among the latter (Wilbois 1934: 240–43).
The colonial attitude towards the Muslim community was on one
hand that of respect towards an old political and religious institution.
The administration of the lamido was respected as the leading religious
authority, and the French avoided decisions which could provoke the
Muslim leaders due to fear of armed riots. Northern Cameroon was
closed to European missionaries for several years, and when they were

8 ANSOM/1AP 2192/1 and ANSOM/AGEFOM 355/170.

9 ANSOM/AGEFOM 799/1856.
10 ANY/2AC 8587, ANY/2AC 4725.
11 ANSOM/1AFFPOL 2192/9.

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 80 chapter three

finally allowed entrance, strict restrictions were applied. For example,

throughout the colonial period, the Norwegian Lutheran mission was
not allowed to build a church in central Ngaoundéré, but rather had to
establish the mission station outside the town. On the other hand, the
arrival of the German colonial powers in 1901 and the takeover by the
French in 1916 changed the role of Fulbe supremacy on the Adamawa pla-
teau. Although the Muslim political administration to some extent was
respected by the French administration and the small European admin-
istration depended upon the Fulbe in order to control the vast northern
area, several restrictions to both political and religious freedom were
introduced. The formerly powerful lamibbe were reduced from sovereign
political and religious leaders to fonctionnaires with French superiors; the
colonial administration also kept a close eye on what kind of Islam the
population practiced. The colonial archives contain a large number of
reports dealing with the general activities of the Muslims, the size of the
Sufi brotherhoods, the construction of mosques, and the influence from
foreign Muslims, especially Arabs.12 T. M. Bah shows in a study from 1996
how the colonial administration tried to prevent radical Arab influence
in Cameroon and supported visits from Sufi brotherhood sheiks who col-
laborated with the French authorities (Bah 1996). Correspondence from
the archives also shows that some eager administrators even controlled
the content of the books which some imams ordered from North Africa.13
The French experience in dealing with the problem of radical Islam in
North Africa led the colonial administration to take preventive measures
in order to control the religious content of what was taught from the
mosques in the area.14 The results of these measures were not only that
a pro-government form of Islam gained foothold, but also that a practice
of controlling the religious institutions itself became an institution which
was transferred to, and further developed by, the Cameroonian govern-
ment after independence.

12 Affaires musulmanes were published annually in addition to reports connected to

various activities.
13 For more detailed information about Muslim activities in Adamawa during the
French colonial period, see sections 1 AC 165/3389/3393/3394, 2 AC 7997/8000/8003 and
APA 10209/10807/11180/11390/11411/12247, in Archives Nationales de Youndé.
14 ANY/APA 11180/B/C/E.

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 81

Christianity Comes to Town

Whereas traders were in the forefront of the European global economic
expansion, it was the modern mission movement which first connected
the European and the African continents together through the exchange
of cultural and religious ideas between people who shared everyday reali-
ties. The arrival of Christianity in Cameroon will in the popular mind
always be related to the name Alfred Saker, the British Baptist missionary
who arrived in 1845 and who in 1858 bought a piece of land from a local
king to form the small colony Victoria.15 Yet Saker was not the first. As in
other parts of West Africa, it was freed slaves from Jamaica, inspired by
the Jamaican abolition movement, who first set foot on the Cameroon
coast and created the first Christian communities. The forced migration to
slavery across the Atlantic was turned into a voluntary return to cultural
roots in order to share a newly acquired vision of the world, a sign that
humanity had more in common than greed and exploitation of human
resources. The charismatic Jamaican leader Joseph Merrick had earlier
travelled to London in order to encourage the British Baptists to support
the work in Africa, and the two Baptist branches soon coordinated their
efforts in Cameroon (Messina and Slageren 2005: 27–31). As a result of the
German colonisation of the coast in 1884, the British missionaries had to
leave the area, and a new mission field was opened for German Catholic
missionaries. Once again it was a multicultural exchange rather than
clearly defined European ecclesiastical ideas of expansion which inspired
missionaries to leave for Cameroon. The arrival of the German Catholics
was actually inspired by Kwa Mbange, a gifted young man who was sent
from the colony to Germany in order to be trained as a baker (Messina
and Slageren 2005133–135; Mveng 1963: 461). The Catholic Church soon
grew to become the biggest and most important church in the southern
part of the country. During the 1950s the church was also introduced to
the north, and recent estimates claim that around 30 per cent of the popu-
lation identify themselves as Catholics, including 50 per cent of the popu-
lation in the southern provinces, 25 per cent in the western provinces, and
approximately 5 per cent in the northern provinces (Gifford 1998: 253).
The work of the two missionary pioneers Alfred Saker and Joseph Mer-
rick turned out to have a lasting influence, and today Eglise Evangélique

15 The city changed its name to Limbé in 1982.

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 82 chapter three

Camerounaise (EEC) is the largest Protestant church in Cameroon, with

an estimated one million members. The church received independence in
1957. Although the majority of members are Bamileke and Bamoun from
the western and southern parts of the country, EEC today has churches
all over the country. However, EEC is not the only church which claims
Alfred Saker as its founder. Union des Eglises Baptistes Camerounaises
(UEBC) was established through the same missionary initiatives, and the
church numbered approximately 70.000 members at the turn of the 21st
century. In the 1950s, several Baptist foreign missionaries started activi-
ties in the north; today the church is present in all parts of the country.
Both these churches have witnessed the turbulent colonial history in their
midst. When Kamerun was made into a German colony in 1884, the Brit-
ish missionaries had to leave the area and the German Basel mission took
over the work initiated by Saker and Merrick. With the outcome of the
First World War, power relations between the European states changed
drastically, and France and Great Britain took control of the former
German colony. This political turnover also concerned the Christian mis-
sions, and soon missionaries from the Société des Missions Evangéliques de
Paris picked up the work which the Germans had to leave in Cameroon
(Messina and Slageren 2005: 46–51).
The Presbyterian Church of Cameroon (PCC) is another important
Protestant church founded when the Basel missionaries arrived in 1884.
This is today basically an Anglophone church, and the congregations
which were established throughout the country after the church became
independent in 1957 are the results of Anglophone migrants who moved
to other parts of Cameroon in order to fill government positions or to
start businesses. The church still maintains strong links with the German
mother mission, and as recently as 1995 the church employed 25 foreign
missionaries. Today the church has approximately 250.000 members in
around 1200 congregations; it is known as one of the most politically out-
spoken Protestant churches in the country. Having its stronghold in the
Anglophone part of the country, the church is easily associated with the
political opposition of John Fru Ndi,16 but the open letters to the gov-
ernment never carry any signs of party politics (Gifford 1998: 281–282).
In recent decades, PCC has been seriously challenged by the ‘revival’ or
‘Pentecostal’ movements within the church—a development taking place

16 John Fru Ndi is a member of the church and is said to be a personal friend of the
PCC leaders.

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 83

within several Protestant churches and which will be further commented

upon later in this chapter. The last of the major Protestant churches in the
South to be presented here is Eglise Presbytérienne Camerounaise (EPC)
which was established among the Bulu in South Cameroon in 1879 by
missionaries from the Presbyterian Church of America. At one point this
church had more than 100 American missionaries at work in Cameroon,
but for diverse reasons, including the lack of financial control, the Ameri-
cans now have withdrawn to a remote ‘partnership relation.’ Today, EPC
numbers approximately 200.000 members spread throughout the country.
The Protestant churches established in the north are of more recent
origin, but were still significantly influenced by the colonial situation.
As previously mentioned, the French colonial administration was quite
reluctant to accept missionary work in the northern part of the country
as they feared that this would influence the political balance maintained
by the Muslim Fulbe leaders in the north. It was not until the arrival of
four Norwegian missionaries in 1925 that Ngaoundéré experienced lasting
Christian influence (Drønen 2009: 60–61). Yet the Norwegian missionar-
ies did face major difficulties during the early years of mission work. The
Muslim influence in the city was strong, and not only the Fulbe, but also
the Mbum population turned out to be deeply rooted in the Islamic faith.
The strong ties between the French administration and the Fulbe lamido
made matters worse for the Norwegians, who were not allowed to build
churches or even arrange Christian meetings in town. The strict attitude
of the French administration towards Christian missions was inspired by
the laicité politics practiced in their home country where a separation
between church and state had been practiced since 1905. The somewhat
friendlier French attitude towards the ruling Muslim regime was thus a
consequence of pure pragmatics: a European power with no religious
preferences has chosen the partner they considered to be the most able
to help them realise their political project. It has already been stated that
the European administrators were few in number, and with very limited
economic resources they were dependent on Fulbe goodwill in order to be
able to administer the vast and densely populated northern Cameroon.
Christianity was from the very start an outsider in Ngaoundéré, a town
which slowly developed into the most important carrefour between the
north and south in Cameroon. During the first decades, the expansion of
Christianity was located in small villages scattered around the Adamawa
plateau; only gradually did the Norwegian mission station, situated sev-
eral kilometres from the city centre, develop into a small colony of Chris-
tian converts. The increasing number of local Christians was partially

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 84 chapter three

connected to the mission’s attitude against what the missionaries inter-

preted as domestic slavery among the Fulbe noblemen. What the mis-
sionaries called slaves was by the Fulbe seen as voluntary servants, and
the French accepted the latter definition in order to avoid problems with
their Muslim allies. Being a UN mandatory area, the French balanced their
politics on a tight rope as there was strong international pressure to abol-
ish all forms of slavery in the colonies. This international pressure was
used by the Norwegian missionaries as a pretext for playing a more active
role in the dispute over slaves who escaped the Fulbe masters and sought
refuge at the mission station. This new role of the missionaries made them
‘liberators’ in the eyes of the local ethnic groups who had been dominated
by the Fulbe for more than a century, and important alliances were cre-
ated between the mission and smaller ethnic groups who were presented
with an alternative path towards modernity and political independence
through the mission schools (Drønen 2009). Odd Magne Bakke questions
the fact that the Norwegian missionaries had been present in Ngaoun­
déré and witnessed the Fulbe practice of slavery for 25 years before they
took any action against Muslim authorities (Bakke 2008). This might be an
indication of a somewhat pragmatic attitude among the missionaries who
needed backing from the international community before challenging the
French administration over this issue. The fact that the UN General Sec-
retary during this period (1946–1953) was the Norwegian Trygve Lie and
that this boosted the confidence of the Norwegian missionaries becomes
clear from reports written by the French administration.17 This shows
once more how complex the issue of locality and globality was during the
colonial period as well as how transplanetary connections influenced the
local community through the French administration and the Norwegian
mission.

Post-Independence Politics and Pentecostal Revival

Religion and Politics in Independent Cameroon

The political changes which were natural consequences of independence
also affected the religious communities, but in many respects the new
president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, continued a policy of strict control of both
church and mosque. The government in Paris is said to have had full

17 ANY/2AC 4725.

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 85

control over the process towards independence in Cameroon, and many

commentators claim that the French ‘handed’ the power to a middle-
ranking Muslim politician from the north because he was pro-France
and did not come from any of the strong political factions in the country.
Ahidjo faced many challenges as the first president in a new nation state.
The premier was tasked with developing a single Cameroon identity
which meant overcoming strong ethnic loyalties, bridging the division
between the north and south, and coming up with a political solution in
order to solve the tension between the Anglophone and the Francophone
parts of the country. Ahidjo’s strategy, which he shared with many of the
new heads of states in Africa, was to create a strong authoritarian politi-
cal system and promote the use of force which was legitimised by the
fear that identity conflicts would tear the nation apart unless a strong
centralised government took full control. Mark W. De Lancey sums up
the political development under Ahidjo with three terms: centralisation,
coalition building, and repression (DeLancey 1989: 51). The centralisation
process was marked by the one-party system which forced all organised
political activity under the Cameroon National Union (CNU) umbrella.
Political opponents were arrested, and attempts at armed resistance were
answered with severe military repression; in this situation the French mil-
itary assistance, from both personnel and equipment, was very valuable
for Ahidjo’s building of a military and security force—forces he himself
controlled (Bayart 1978). Yaoundé was made the capital where all central
powers were gathered, and Ahidjo personally nominated the governors
who were heads of the seven provinces as well as the préfets who were the
leading officials in the départements. These officials communicated directly
with the president; thus, Ahidjo could personally control the administra-
tive system he had inherited from the French colonial administration. In
order to be able to build coalitions between the different political and
ethnic factions, Ahidjo created a sophisticated system of patron–client
relations by giving power to a few selected persons who in turn brought
their loyalists to support the president (DeLancey 1989: 52–65).
Ahidjo was also a dark horse in the Muslim community in the north
when he was elected president, and he needed to find a balance between
creating coalitions with the strong political milieus in the northern part of
the country while simultaneously preventing this coalition from becom-
ing a threat against political unity. By neglecting the development of infra-
structures (the main road from the south to the north is only now being
paved), Ahidjo kept a possible northern riot at a distance; by nominating
Muslim, primarily Fulbe, governors and préfets, Ahidjo secured support

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 86 chapter three

from this political fraction. All important government positions in this

part of the country were occupied by Muslims in the 1960s and 1970s,
and Victor Azaraya claims that in 1971 the lowest recorded percentage of
Muslims among northern deputies was 87,5, reaching 100 per cent when it
came to the most important positions. This was in a region where approx-
imately 40 per cent of the population was Muslim (Azaraya 1976: 37–59).
Hamadou Adama uses the two terms generosity and cantonnement in order
to describe Ahidjo’s attitude towards the Muslim communities. Ahidjo
was generous because he funded the construction of many new mosques
and made sure that a large number of religious scholars were educated
in Nigeria and in various Arab countries. In 1963, he created l’Association
culturelle islamique du Cameroun in order to coordinate the religious edu-
cation and the organisation of the leadership in mosques across the coun-
try; he further opened the path to increased exchange between Cameroon
and the Arab world when Cameroon became a member of the Organisa-
tion of the Islamic Conferences (OIC) in 1974. What Adama calls canton-
nement refers to the way in which Ahidjo further reduced the power of
the local Muslim leaders by making the lamibbe the lowest ranking public
officials with a small salary from the state, but without the right to collect
the local taxes which had been allowed by the colonial administration. In
addition the local Islamic courts lost their influence in Ahidjo’s eagerness
to create a secular state in which he himself had full control (Adama 2004:
155–158).
Christian-Muslim relations in the north changed considerably after
Ahidjo took power in 1960. Even if more and more kirdi (non-Muslim
northern ethnic groups) converted to Islam, Christianity was steadily
growing due to the strong presence of Norwegian and American Protes-
tant missionaries, together with a Catholic church which slowly moved
further north. The local churches, backed by foreign missions, continued
throughout to emphasise the importance of education; both the Catholics
and the Lutherans created high schools which produced results on a high
national level (Lode 1992: 70). The lack of institutions providing higher
education in the north made the most promising students move south or
abroad in order to pursue higher education, and by the time Biya replaced
Ahidjo, many well-educated Christians were ready to move into public
offices in the search for a secure income and political influence. Both the
Protestants and the Catholics also put much effort into developing health
facilities for the general public, and the quarter where the Lutheran hos-
pital is situated in Ngaoundéré is still called le Norvégien. Despite these
efforts, Christianity continued to be a religion in the margins due to

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 87

the limited space the religion was granted in the public sphere and the
strict restrictions the Ahidjo administration put on evangelising activities
(Adama 2004: 157). It was difficult for the Christians to obtain permis-
sions to build new churches and schools in areas with a Muslim pres-
ence, and several churches were destroyed in villages on the Adamawa
plateau (Lode 1992: 95–97). Social pressure for conversion to the religion
of the elite made the indigenous population leave local traditions behind
in order to join the Koran teachers who were present in more and more
villages (Muller 2000). During my fieldwork among the Dii in 2005 and
2006, I met several Dii Muslims who had converted from Christianity to
Islam during this period, according to some of them, for “purely material
reasons” (Siroma 1986: 4–5).18 Among these was the highly profiled Siroma
André from Mbé, who converted back to Christianity when the Catholic
Paul Biya took over as President of the Republic in 1982. Others found
comfort and safety in the new religion and remained Muslims.
The historical churches in the north experienced much more freedom
with Biya as president, and gradually Christianity became a natural part
of the big cities, with several churches and cathedrals now located in the
town centres. The Biya politics of nominating public officials was also
a minor revolution in the north. From having employed almost exclu-
sively Muslim officials, the government now sent Christian governors and
préfets to the northern provinces, and suddenly Christianity was the pre-
ferred religion for those seeking to be employed in government positions.
A large number of Christians, educated by the institutions created by the
missionaries, now entered the state administration; meanwhile, the Mus-
lims realised that they were being punished for their neglect of secular
education during the privileged Ahidjo years. With the arrival of public
officials from the south followed the establishment of a variety of Prot-
estant churches. Instead of joining the already existing Lutheran church,
important clerks with government positions had contacts and means to
build new churches and gather the increasing number of southerners to
worship in the same denominations they had left behind in the south.
However, the heritage of the French political culture did continue to influ-
ence the government politics towards the religious communities. One of
the Norwegian missionaries working in Ngaoundéré during the early Biya

18 During my years in Cameroon I have met many Christians born during the Ahidjo
years with Muslim names. Several of them explained that their parents, who were Christians,
gave them Muslim names in order for them not to be discriminated against by the govern-
ment and not to obstruct the possibility of a future job within the state administration.

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 88 chapter three

years was interrogated several times by Biya’s secret police due to minor
incidents during meetings to which government officials were invited.
This indicates the high level of surveillance exercised by the Biya govern-
ment and the high number of informers working for the secret police. The
government was also very reluctant to give out permissions to establish
denominations outside the historical churches which halted the spread
of new charismatic congregations outside the few ‘historical’ Pentecostal
churches present in the country prior to independence.
For the Muslim community, two major incidents came to colour their
relationship with the Biya administration during the 1980s and 1990s.
The first was the attempted coup d’état of 1984 when former President
Ahidjo tried to regain control of the country through members of the
presidential guard. Many commentators interpreted these attacks as a
northern rebellion against Biya’s pro-southern politics which ultimately
resulted in the removal of most Ahidjo-friendly politicians from posts in
the government and in administrative posts all over the country. Biya
himself tried to downplay the north–south conflict by claiming—some-
what correctly—that this was an attempted coup by ‘greedy individuals’
and that the president was strongly supported in the north. Through the
division of the north into three provinces, Biya had already divided the
area and secured a Biya-loyal administration in all parts of the country
(DeLancey 1989: 71–73). However, many of the Ahidjo-loyal rebels were
inevitably Muslims from the north, and the consequence for the Islamic
community was that the religious leaders held a low profile the following
years and that the public image of the north as one strong political and
religious block had to be seriously revised.
The second incident which influenced the Muslim community was
the Biya turn towards increased democratisation in the early 1990s. The
economic problems facing most countries in sub-Saharan Africa during
the 1980s also hit the Cameroon economy hard. Between 1980 and 1991
the GNP per capita fell by approximately 1 per cent annually. The global
political climate change after the destruction of the Berlin wall made
international institutions like IMF and the World Bank put pressure on
Cameroon in order for democratic reforms to take place. The strongest
political opposition party was the Social Democratic Front (SDF), which
organised the villes mortes campaigns in order to show its general dis-
satisfaction with the Biya regime. This made Cameroon go through a
turbulent period where the economy almost collapsed and where ethnic
clashes took place in several parts of the country (Burnham 1996). It was

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 89

only after a disputed and close win in the 1992 elections that Biya could
start the painful road towards economic reconstruction, a process which
included the 1994 devaluation of Cameroon’s currency, the FCFA, which
was linked to the value of the French franc, by 50 per cent (Gifford 1998:
249–250). One important political development which influenced the
religious communities was the increased democratisation taking place.
The freedom to register political parties and religious organisations was,
as will be discussed in detail in the following sections, going to change
the Christian geography of Cameroon in a fundamental manner, but
this new political direction also changed the Muslim communities and
gave renewed religious and socio-political power to the traditional chiefs.
Adama calls this ‘the return of the kings’ (Adama 2004: 160) and points
to the fact that the traditional Muslim chiefs now became the targets of
political parties who sought alliances with the religious communities in
order to collect voters. This development also allowed for the organisa-
tion of other ethnic groups, and several kirdi groups in the north used
this occasion to distance themselves from what was traditionally a Fulbe
domination in this part of the country. Christianity profited from this
period of dé-islamisation (Adama 2004: 162), and the political party Mou-
vement pour la Défense de la République (MDR) came to serve the interest
of several non-Muslim groups in the north. The creation of MDR was also
experienced as a reaction against the creation of l’Union nationale pour
la démocratie et le progress (UNDP), a political party widely interpreted
to represent the interest of the Fulbe Muslim population. Adama further
points to two interesting developments of alienation within the Muslim
community throughout these developments. First he points to the fact
that the kirdi who remained Muslims were squeezed between the politi-
cal interests of their ethnic group of origin and their loyalty to the Mus-
lim community dominated by Fulbe interests. The second group which
fell behind two chairs was the relative large number of young Muslims
who were sent to Arab countries for studies during the Ahidjo years; they
returned home to a society where their competence was wanted by nei-
ther the Biya administration nor the traditional chiefs who had regained
some of their lost influence.19

19 A good example of this tension within the Muslim community is found in Holtedahl
and Mahmadou’s presentation of the internal religious power struggle among Muslims in
Ngaoundéré (Holtedahl and Mahmoudou 1997).

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 90 chapter three

The Coming of Pentecostalism

One of the most striking features of Christianity in Cameroon, which is
also commented upon by Gifford (1998: 293), is the lack of African inde-
pendent, or Aladura, churches throughout the country. Being a wide-
spread phenomenon in most sub-Saharan countries with a long history of
Christian missions, the independent churches were a sign of indigenous
initiative and local variations of the message and traditions presented by
the missionaries. The close connection between the development of inde-
pendent and Pentecostal churches in other parts of sub-Saharan African
has already been commented upon, and the slow arrival of Pentecostalism
to Cameroon is most probably linked to the absence of this vibrant string
of African Christianity. Gifford claims that this lack of Christian variation
is a result of the state’s preoccupation with security (Gifford 1998: 292),
but in order for such a statement to make sense, the issue of security
must then be interpreted as a political tradition which has developed in
the country for more than a century. The tight control exercised by the
colonial administration which continued in new wrapping through both
the Ahidjo and the Biya administrations has not only kept the leaders in
positions and opponents at an arm’s length, but has also had the effect of
creating a political culture of subordination also shared by the religious
institutions.20 The religious leaders have been educated by an adminis-
trative system which to a large extent has been accepted and adopted
by the religious communities, leaving little room for innovation in either
religious or cultural terms. The africanisation of Christianity has there-
fore developed at a much slower pace in Cameroon than in neighbouring
countries, and the mainline churches have been granted privileged posi-
tions where they have to some extent joined forces with the government
in order not to be challenged by competing churches (Akoko 2007; Bayart
1973; Gifford 1998).
The arrival and development of the Pentecostal churches in Camer-
oon followed the pattern of the mainline churches where the missionary

20 There have been attempts from both the Catholics and some Protestant churches
to play a political role by criticizing the government, but these protests have often had
regional undertones and the churches have been unable to organise a joint ecclesiastic
front against the government. Gifford gives a rather negative summary of the church’s role
in Cameroon society and claims that the important elite in the country show little inter-
est in the life of the church. Gifford also claims with Bayart that it is la politique du ventre
which reigns among the Cameroon elite, an attitude that Gifford indirectly claims is the
attitude of many religious leaders in the country as well (Gifford 1998: 299–305).

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 91

influence was strong. The first church to be established was the Apostolic
Church, of British origin, which was brought to Cameroon from Nigeria in
the late 1940s. It gained a foothold and developed with the help of Swiss
missionaries; until recently, Swiss teachers were still employed at the
theological seminar in Kumba. For a long time the church was only pres-
ent in the Anglophone part of the country, but after the Pentecostal boom
following the democratisation processes of the early 1990s, the church
became a national church with congregations throughout the country.
The largest Pentecostal church in Cameroon is the Full Gospel Mission
which was the result of a Pentecostal missionary initiative from Germany
in the late 1950s. One of the missionaries originally sent to Nigeria, Werner
Knorr, crossed the border to Cameroon and with help from his Nigerian
assistants established the first Full Gospel Mission church at Mutengene
in 1961. The church was legally recognised in 1969, and a Bible school was
established in Bamenda in 1970. Later, English and American missionaries
from the Assemblies of God worked with the German mission instead of
creating a church of their own (Gifford 1998: 289–290; Akoko 2007: 68).
The church was also the first Pentecostal church to gain a foothold in the
Francophone part of Cameroon as well; during the 1990s it was a pioneer
among the Pentecostals in terms of church planting all over the country.
Contrary to most Pentecostal churches, the Full Gospel Mission has been
able to establish churches in big cities as well as villages, where the Catho-
lic, and often one of the Protestant churches, have until recently been the
only churches present. According to Robert Mbe Akoko, the Full Gospel
Mission is also the first church to be exported from Cameroon to Nigeria,
and congregations have also been established in Chad and the Central
African Republic (Akoko 2007: 68). One of the first Pentecostal churches
to be established without a foreign missionary initiative was the Vraie
Eglise de Dieu which was started by Nestor Toukea in 1959. This church
has also been driven by a strong emphasis on mission. In the mid 1990s,
it claimed to have more than 200 congregations in Cameroon, 16 in Chad,
and 10 in the Central African Republic (Gifford 1998: 290).
The Pentecostal churches mentioned thus far were traditional churches
in the sense that they were a continuation of the ‘holiness’ tradition they
inherited from the European missionaries. The focus was on living a life
where personal ethics were as close to the biblical ideal as possible. ‘The
ways of the world’ were to be discarded, and in both personal behaviour
and dress code modesty was to be promoted. With the Pentecostal devel-
opment from the 1990s, these theological ideas were to be seriously chal-
lenged. Akoko, in his doctoral thesis describing the changes within the Full

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 92 chapter three

Gospel Mission, the Catholic Church, and the Presbyterian Church in the
Anglophone part of Cameroon, claims that two developments have signif-
icantly changed Cameroon Christianity during the last decades. The first
is the move from ascetics to a gospel of prosperity within the Pentecostal
churches; the second is what he calls a ‘pentecostalization’ of the mainline
churches. Akoko argues that the main reason behind these changes is the
economic crises which Cameroon has experienced since Biya took power
in 1982. The gradual degradation of the Cameroon economy has forced the
churches to find new ways of acquiring funds and enable the believers to
contribute to the expansion of the movement. As the mission agencies
have also gradually reduced their support during the same period, the
church leaders have had to come up with alternative solutions in order to
secure their salaries and find money for the construction of new church
buildings. The focus on prosperity and on the church as a channel towards
material wealth as a sign of the blessings of God, from which the Chris-
tians have for so long been separated, has made large numbers leave the
mainline churches in search of greener pastures among the Pentecostals.
Akoko shows how the gospel of Pentecost has influenced the Presbyterian
Church since Zacharias Fomum started a ‘born-again movement’ in the
PCC congregation in Djoungolo in 1976. After much controversy Fomum
left PCC and joined the Apostolic Church before he, in 1985, founded
Christian Missionary Fellowship International (CMFI). However, the con-
stant pressure ‘from below’ did not end with Fomum’s departure, and in
recent years the leadership has accepted increasingly Pentecostal-like
practices in order to avoid more divisions and departures (Akoko 2007:
146–157). As will be discussed in the chapters to follow, most Pentecostals
have a background in one of the mainline churches21 which still make
up the vast majority of Cameroon Christianity, but these churches seem
unable to satisfy the spiritual and material needs of the new generation of
Christians and are therefore unable to profit from the numerical growth
the increase in population would otherwise indicate for them.
In a further search for reasons behind the Pentecostal boom in the
1990s, both Akoko and Gifford examine the role of the crusades held by
famous prosperity preachers in the southern part of the country. The first
major figure to visit Cameroon was Reinhardt Bonnke, who started his

21 In 1995, only 3 of the 27 first-year students at the Full Gospel Mission Bible School
had backgrounds from this church. The rest came from various other mainline denomina-
tions (Gifford 1998: 290).

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 religion and politics in northern cameroon 93

crusade-ministry in South Africa in 1975 and who, through his organisa-

tion Christ for all Nations (CFAN), has made a huge impact on the Pen-
tecostal movement throughout Africa (Gifford 1987). Through his ‘Fire
Conferences’ and ‘Pastors Workshops’, he preached to both the masses
and a selection of local pastors when he visited Kumba in 1989 and Bam-
enda in 1990. The Kumba crusade functioned as an appetizer for what
was to come, and Akoko claims that more than 65 churches and 250.000
people attended the five-day crusade in Bamenda. In the constant stream
of preachers coming to Cameroon from Nigeria, two pastors in particular
made a lasting impact. The first is the late Benson Idahosa, one of the
most famous Pentecostal leaders on the continent, who visited Cameroon
several times until he passed away in 1999. Many Pentecostal leaders in
Cameroon have been trained in the Idahosa Bible College and have been
inspired by visits to his ‘miracle-centre’ in Benin City. The other Nigerian
worth mentioning here is Tunde Joda, the founder of Christ Chapel Inter-
national Churches, which is among Nigeria’s fastest-growing churches
and has several congregations in Cameroon. In addition to sharing the
crusade-stage with preachers from all over the world, Joda publishes the
journal Prosperity Now which is widely read by Pentecostals in the Anglo-
phone part of Cameroon.
Another important person presented in some detail both by Akoko and
Gifford is the unorthodox personality of Billy Lubansa. Originally from the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Lubansa worked his way into the hier-
archy of the Pan African Institute of Development (PAID), a job which
gave him diplomatic status. He started his Flaming Fire of God Ministries
in Zambia in 1986 before his professional office was moved to Camer-
oon, where he encountered what he later described a ‘dead’ Pentecostal
movement. Due to the reluctant welcome in the country, Lubansa chose
to work with the Apostolic Church and the Full Gospel Mission instead
of establishing his own church, thereby changing Cameroon’s Pentecos-
tal churches from within. Lubansa has greatly succeeded in this project.
In addition to organising his own crusades, he has frequently spoken in
other Pentecostal churches and has done much to attract international
names to the crusade stages all over the country. ‘Super Papa Billy’ retired
from his PAID position in 2003 and moved back to Zambia in order to
take care of his church there, but he frequently comes to Cameroon to
organise the ‘fire conferences’ which regularly take place in Limbe.
The only Cameroonian to have reached the status of ‘stadium-pastor’
is the previously mentioned Zacharias Fomum, the former PCC member
who after some time in the Full Gospel Mission created CMFI in Yaoundé.

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 94 chapter three

Fomum, who died in 2009, was a university professor; this secular post
added credibility to his reputation as a spiritual authority among Pente-
costals. In addition, he ran the Christian Publishing House which also has
a branch in Nigeria, and he is said to have written more than 80 books,
the most famous being The Christian and the Money: Banking in Heaven
Today.22
By focusing on these stadium-pastors, Gifford and Akoko highlight the
importance of the theological influence of the prosperity gospel on the
Pentecostal churches in Cameroon, a theological interpretation devel-
oped across the Atlantic Ocean. Most preachers in these crusades openly
express their admiration for preachers like Oral Roberts, T. L. Osborn,
Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Copeland—pastors who are known to be
among the most influential figures in the development of a theology
where material wealth plays a significant role. Yet Gifford and Akoko’s
studies from southern Cameroon do leave several questions unanswered.
One is how this theology affects the everyday life of the Francophone
Pentecostal believer when the message travels a long way from the city
stadiums and when the Anglophone hallelujas from the loudspeakers can
no longer be heard. Another is what happens when the new Pentecostal
leaders engage in everyday encounters with political authorities, tra-
ditional chiefs, and pastors from the established churches. Do the loud
shouts for spiritual victory survive these encounters, or are they turned
into faint whispers? How is a faith-based business to prosper in an envi-
ronment dominated by Muslim merchants with a wealthy past and a
century-long spiritual authority? These, and other related questions, will
be discussed in the chapters to come.

22 For more details about the influence of the prosperity preachers on Pentecostalism
in Cameroon, see Gifford (1998: 295–298) and Akoko (2007: 73–78).

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