Basinjom and the Witches

The Basinjom cult is one of the two most important traditional societies of the upper Cross River in Nigeria. The origin of the cult is Ejagham. “Basinjom” in Ejagham literally means “the future brought by God.” 1 an allusion to the divinatory powers of the spirit and the belief that the goodness of his power, to heal and protect the people, stems ultimately from God. The Basinjom cult seems to have emerged in what is now southeastern Nigeria in the Oban region about 1909. It was then called Akpambe; 2 there were cognate societies with masks of a similar kind in existence in that area at the time. Thereafter it spread, to the northeast, so that by 1930 the cult was present among the Ekwe Ejagham near the present Nigerian border, in Cameroon

Anthropological Studies and Insights · History