The incoming British threw blame on the departing Germans, most especially for their method of administration which the British termed 'Direct Rule' and claimed was responsible for the destruction of some indigenous institutions. The British saw their task in terms of educating the natives to manage their own affairs and to evolve from their own institutions a mode of government which would conform to civilised standards. In Cameroon this went further to become:

... an endeavour to rebuild the (indigenous) institutions which had to some extent suffered disintegration during ...German administration, to find the hereditary native rulers and to educate them in their duties in that capacity, and to seek their co-operation and help, and to maintain their prestige in all matters concerning the areas under their control (Gardinier 1967: 531).

This was to be effected by the administrative policy of 'Indirect Rule' which at that time was being introduced into Southern Nigeria. The system was regulated by laws in which some powers were delegated to a chief or group of individuals termed a 'Native Authority' to maintain law and order through native courts, to collect taxes and eventually to operate a treasury.

Indirect Rule had to be introduced in stages while the German system was gradually phased out. Its application in the Bamenda Division was affected by various adverse factors. The most glaring were the great geographical and ethnic diversity of the area, lack of personnel, a disorderly transition from German to British administration, the remoteness of the Division and the problem of maintaining law and order. To counter these problems the British sought to involve natives in the administrative process. It was the view of the Resident, E.C. Duff, that in order to make native administration a success it was necessary to enhance the powers of the principal chiefs. Initially they were to be given judicial powers by being made presidents of the native courts. Lesser chiefs, and even ward-heads within the principal communities, were also recognised and brought in to support the chiefs as court members.

This idea was put into practice in July 1917 when G.S. Podevin, the District officer, inaugurated an 'Instructional Court' in Bamenda. This was an assembly of chiefs from surrounding communities who were summoned to be instructed in the new native court ordinance and to go on to form the new courts. The membership of the court consisted of 27 chiefs with the Fon of Bafut appointed as president and that of Bali Kumbat as vice-president. If the court were to prove successful then other courts would be established in other parts of the Division.

According to reports, the court functioned as well as circumstances permitted but there were many problems, in particular the large extent of the area served by the court. Another was the difficulty of getting clerks and at first Podevin, himself, was the court scribe. The only locally available people were the ex-German functionaries who had served as interpreters and messengers. It was only in November 1917 that the first person was employed. This was a Bali Nyonga man, Maxwell Fohtung who had earlier worked as a clerk for the Germans in Victoria (Fohtung, Njie and Chilver 1992). Until 1922 the implementation of the native courts ordinance was only partial and many areas remained without a court. The implementation of the Native Authority ordinance, too, was delayed by a dearth of political officers exacerbated by the influenza epidemic of 1918 which carried off Podevin and led to the virtual breakdown of the administration in 1919.

In 1921 an instruction was issued from Buea to the effect that the principle of indirect administration should be applied. To this end the Divisional Officer undertook some provisional classification based on language and came up with 14 groups with Bafut within the Mogimba grouping. In 1922 the future of the former Kamerun was determined as a mandate of the League of Nations to be administered by Britain and France. Following this the Secretary of State for the Colonies directed that the principles of native administration as laid down by Lugard were to be applied in the British mandated territory. This necessitated the introduction of the method of tax assessment then current in Northern Nigeria. Lugard considered that the assessing officer in the course of obtaining his reports was brought into close relations with the local chiefs and people and 'had opportunities of learning so much about their history, origins and affinities that the occasion should be taken to write a concise historical and ethnological account of the people' (Lugard 1970: 194). Hence Hal Cadman was sent from Northern Nigeria and given the preliminary task of preparing a 'Report on Ancient Tribal Machinery in the Cameroons Province' (Cadman 1922) as a guideline for administrative officers.

Assessment of different peoples in the Bamenda Division on the Cadman model started in 1922. The Bafut area was assessed by E.G. Hawkesworth, Assistant Divisional Officer, in 1926. He discovered that the 'Mogimba' area was not an ethnic unit but an area of language diffusion and that the chiefly dynasties of Bafut, Babanki, Babanki Tungaw, Bafreng and Bambili claimed common Tikar origins. On account of these 'links' the British decided that a clan organisation had been identified and that a viable native administration could be established with Bafut as the centre in respect of its size.

Following these reports an enlarged Bafut native administration area was established with an area of about eight hundred and seventy square kilometres containing a population of about twenty thousand with the Bafut comprising half of that number. The Bafut 'District' became one of fifteen Native Authority areas in the Bamenda Division. This Native Authority was gazetted as 'Boombi' (Abumbi) Chief of Bafut and 'Vugar' Chief of Babanki for the Bafut Native Court area.

It had been the hope of the authorities that in a few years that Fon of Bafut would become the head of the area holding a position equivalent to a District Head in Northern Nigeria. However, the Bafut Native Authority never really functioned as the British envisaged. In addition to the maintenance of order, the Native Authority was charged with collecting taxes from subordinate chiefs and paying them to the Political Officer. It was thought that the payment of taxes through the Bafut Fon would foster loyalty to him as ruler but other chiefs were reluctant to do this as they feared it would make them subordinate to him. So the consolidation of units under the Fon of Bafut did not materialise although District Officers continued to nurse the hope and spoke optimistically of co-operation between the different units of the Bafut Native Authority.

When the British undertook to re-examine their policy in Southern Nigeria as a result of the Aba riots (also known as the 'women's war': see Gailey 1971: 97-134) the review was extended to the Cameroons. Donald Cameron (1965: 198ff), the new Governor of Nigeria, advocated a new policy of native administration according to which the real authority should be in accordance with the people's own idea of authority, that it should actually exist and be accepted by the people. In his view a Native Authority not accepted by the people and maintained only by imposition was almost certainly bound to fail. The attempt to extend the powers of the Fon of Bafut as a Native Authority was based on the notion that the people had once obeyed this authority in the past. According to Cameron, however, the contemporary generation might be quite ignorant of tradition and if ancient authorities were to be resurrected it must be certain the people would obey. Cameron's idea of native administration was introduced to the Cameroons in the course of a new round of re-assessment and intelligence reports.

Bafut experienced one of the most far-reaching re-organisations affecting the Native Authority and court. The difference between the Assessment Report of 1926 and the Intelligence Report of 1934 lay in the points which were emphasised. The earlier report stressed historical links between different chiefdoms with the expressed purpose of re-establishing clan ties. The 1934 report was more concerned with the analysis of the indigenous administrative structures on which to build native administration. R.J. Hook, the Divisional Officer, acknowledged the fact that there were seven independent chiefdoms. He recommended that the new Native Authority should be the seven chiefs-in-council. The British authorities had, therefore, abandoned the idea of uniting the area under one chief and instead were discussing confederation with each unit maintaining its own autonomy.

For the judiciary it was proposed that each chief would hold his own court in his own palace. In this regard the authorities were grudgingly acknowledging the fact that such courts continued to operate despite their prohibition by the ordinance. At the same time there was to be a central 'clan' or area court to serve as a headquarters for the seven units. This would be a court of the first instance as well as a court of appeal.

The implementation of these recommendations embodied Cameron's principle (1937: 3-4) that each chief with his council was to be the highest functioning unit. In the reorganisation no single unit was made into a Native Authority; rather all seven chiefs were constituted into a single Native Authority. This was certainly an advance over the former system when only two chiefs were involved. However, the location and population of Bafut would continue to be a factor such that the Fon would continue to exercise much influence. Hence, the old problem was not entirely solved.

While this reorganisation was taking place, important events were also occurring in Bafut and Babanki. In August of 1932 the Bafut Fon Abumbi, who had resisted the Germans for so long, died and was succeeded by his German-educated and literate son Su Ayieh, who took the regnal name of Achirimbi and who ruled for the remaining years of British administration. In 1936 Fon Vugar of Babanki also died and was succeeded by his son Vubangksi similarly educated in a German (Basel Mission) school. Under normal circumstances the accession of these two relatively young and educated chiefs to two linked chieftaincies in the Bafut area would have been expected to boost the new system. However, this was not to be so. The depression of the 1930s brought disruption and the Second World War further economic hardship leading to the virtual abandonment of the system. After the war the energies of the authorities were largely absorbed by constitutional changes affecting Nigeria (Crowder 1966: 273).

When the necessity for change arose as a result of developments in Nigeria in 1929, the main problem in the Bafut area was not taxation but the exercise of authority. Respective chiefs guarded their autonomy so jealously that any talk of co-operating with another chief was viewed as a surrender of sovereignty. Cameron's reforms aimed to bring the administration closer in line with indigenous institutions, but these changes were not far-reaching in the Bafut area and simply involved shuffling personnel and bringing in a few village heads into the system as courtmmembers. The element of Bafut paramountcy remained with the Bafut Fon who was regarded as the most important dignitary and received the highest stipend. This situation was reinforced by the establishment of a treasury in Bafut in 1941. Above all the tight control of the Divisional Officer did not lessen. A former treasurer of the Bafut Native Authority summed up this situation with the remark that before 1949 there was only one Native Authority in Bamenda Division - the Divisional Officer who ran the show from the Native Authority section of the Divisional Office in Bamenda. This implies that the different authorities had little or no autonomy. The period prior to 1949 therefore coincided with what Nicolson described as the 'Era of administocracy' (Nicolson 1969: 216-50) in the history of Nigerian administration.