MAMBILLA, AMANA AND A RAY OF HOPE

After decades of neglect, there is a glimmer of hope in Amana region, writes JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA

I turned down an all-expenses-paid trip to watch Arsenal play PSG in the UEFA Champions League final at the Puskas Arena in Budapest. Abdulrahman Usman Leme was being turbaned as Madakin Mambilla in Gembu, Taraba State, and he had earned my presence. He is a friend and brother in the truest sense; the kind whose humanity and sense of community to people and country makes adjusting your calendar not a question but a natural response. Arsenal could wait. Leme could not. That is not to say this was an easy decision, especially as this was a sacrifice being offered to a Chelsea fan.

I could not have envisaged what I was about to learn. I expected a celebration. What I got, in addition to that, was a history lesson, a geography lesson, a governance lesson, and a reminder of the kind of promises Nigeria makes and the kind it keeps and the kind it does not.

On February 11, 1961, a United Nations referendum was held in British Cameroons to determine whether the territory should join neighbouring Cameroon or the Federation of Nigeria. The territory was divided into two: Northern and Southern Cameroons voted separately. Southern Cameroons chose Cameroon. Northern Cameroons chose Nigeria. That decision is the foundation of what became the Amana Region, located across what is now parts of Adamawa, Taraba and Borno States, with Mubi as its historic capital.

The people of Northern Cameroons voted to join Nigeria on specific terms; that their area would remain autonomous, with Mubi as its capital. When the Sardauna, Sir Ahmadu Bello, made the journey to persuade the people of the region to be part of Nigeria, a compact was understood. The construction of the road through their territory was, in fact, one of the conditions the communities presented at the time of the plebiscite. That road was never built. The autonomy was never formalised. The capital was never designated. There are 36 states in Nigeria today with 36 state capitals. The Amana Region is not one of them. Mubi is not a state capital.  

The Republic of Cameroon, by contrast, fulfilled its obligations to Southern Cameroons by creating two regions from the former trusteeship territory. Buea remained a regional capital, and Bamenda was created as a new one. Their cousins who chose Cameroon got what they were promised.

This is the context in which I walked across the Donga River Bridge and was driven along the highway that is slowly carving its way through the hills of the Mambilla Plateau. The Gembu-Mbamnga-Yang-Lip road project commenced in January 2025 and is scheduled for completion in July 2027. One bridge is now completed and a second under construction along the corridor. The project links the Mambilla Plateau to the Cameroon border. The very road that was promised 65 years ago and is only now being built.  

What struck me most was not the infrastructure itself, impressive as it is. It was the human cost of its absence. In the past, pregnant mothers from Lip Village and surrounding communities who needed medical care beyond what their primary health centres could provide had to cross the Donga River by canoe, by foot bridge — the Gada Raga — and sometimes by bicycle. During emergencies. In all weather. People died on journeys that a road would have made routine. That is the price of a broken promise measured not in political terms but in human ones.

The villagers I spoke to were careful with their optimism. They said that even the road in its current, incomplete state already feels like a breath of fresh air compared to what existed before. I found myself wondering what they will say when it is done. The ₦71 billion Gembu-Mbamnga-Yang-Lip project, under the Tinubu administration, is doing something that budgets and press releases rarely accomplish: it is making people feel seen. It is making these Nigerians who chose Nigeria feel, for perhaps the first time in a generation, that the choice was worth making.

My route to Gembu via the Bali-Serti-Gembu road did not offer the same comfort. That road tells a different story entirely. One of the world’s most extraordinary natural landscapes, the Mambilla Plateau, with its rolling hills, lush green pastures, and views that make visitors question whether they are still in Nigeria, is flanked by a road that has been failing for decades. It was first constructed under the Ibrahim Babangida administration in 1991 and 1992. Interventions since then have not kept pace with the decay. Some former Nigerian leaders acquired ranches on this plateau. They came, they saw, and they left the road to deteriorate.

I sent videos of the plateau’s scenery to a friend from the road. He accused me of having left the country again. The views, at times, felt less like Nigeria and more like somewhere the world has curated carefully for human appreciation. But the road beneath the scenery told Nigeria’s more familiar story; breathtaking potential, administered into irrelevance.

The Amana Region’s agitation mirrors that of its counterparts across the border, with one critical difference. In Cameroon, Southern Cameroonians are agitating for their own country. In Nigeria, the people of the Amana Region are asking for their own state. The Sardauna Local Government, named in honour of the man who came to them with a promise, stands as a reminder of what was offered.

The Donga River Bridge is not a solution to 65 years of unfulfilled obligation. But it is something. A road being built at last through terrain that was always worth connecting. A government making visible, physical commitments to a people who made their choice before most of the current political class was born. In Gembu, over Eid, amidst turbaning ceremonies and the warmth of a community that receives guests as though they are gifts, I saw a Nigeria that does not always make the news. A Nigeria that is beautiful, complex, and still, despite everything, remains proudly Nigerian.

They chose Nigeria. Nigeria is, at long last, beginning to choose them back.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing