Peace-Building Mechanism Among the Widikum of the Bamenda Grasslands, Cameroon, 1870-2014

Abstract

The quest for sustainable peace is the primary objective of every nation or society. For any society to progress, peaceful co-existence become imperative. This article examines peace building mechanisms employed by peace actors in efforts to promote peace among the Widikum of the Bamenda Grasslands,Cameroon. Though several actors to promote peace have been deployed to scale down the multifaceted land and or chieftaincy conflict in the area under study, their efforts have registered limited success as the conflicts kept resurfacing after peace agreement because most peace effort were constructed from “top to bottom” rather than from “bottom to top” to include the indigenous mechanisms, their custom and tradition and primarily the failure to use powerful and skilful experts as mediators. Both primary and secondary sources were used in the writing of this article. An analysis of the data reveals that the British approach was the best for using alternative methods of both conventional and indigenous mechanisms. The British scale down the chieftaincy and or land conflicts,as justice was dispensed based on the native custom and tradition and sustainable peace was observed.