Newsmaker Profile
IBOKO, CAMEROON – After the chief of Iboko, a tiny village tucked in the rainforests of southwestern Cameroon, died in 2005, his people went eight years without a ruler while they debated a radical proposal: installing his only daughter as their first female chief.
Felle Nnenina, now 55, was the first child of the late chief. But because she was female, tradition dictated that only her younger brother, Balemba Balemba, could inherit the throne.
A council of kingmakers in Iboko, tasked with installing a new leader, summoned Balemba from his home in the United States. But he declined to return, saying that he could not balance chieftaincy with his career abroad.
As years passed without a ruler, citizens of Iboko debated the possibility of crowning Nnenina as their traditional ruler.
“Many people wished that I were a male so that I can become chief of Iboko after the death of my father,” Nnenina says. “Some even proposed that tradition be changed so that I can be crowned chief, but it wasn’t easy to change such age-old traditions.”
Chieftaincy is patrilineal in Iboko. Village elders say that if they crown a woman as chief, the ancestors of the land will be angry, and calamity may befall the people of Iboko.
Moreover, village leaders make all major decisions inside a traditional shelter known as the “etana.” New chiefs must enter the etana during carefully guarded coronation rituals. But custom prohibits women from entering it.
Kingmakers never convened to debate installing Nnenina, as they knew she could not become chief without first entering the etana, says Balemba Bekumaka, a member of the council of kingmakers.
Nnenina says she suspects that the community proposed her as chief because they learned of her soft heart and fondness for helping others.
“At first, I was scared at such unimaginable propositions, but my husband supported it,” she says. “My husband told me that they have seen something special in me.”
A mother of three, she and her husband live in Kumba, a city approximately 150 kilometers (95 miles) from Iboko. She works as a teacher at the Cameroon College of Arts and Science in Kumba and manages her father’s estate.
She says she is not a millionaire but is motivated to support others with the salary she earns as a teacher and with the wealth that her father left her from serving as chief and working as a farmer.
“I have given financial help to more than 200 family and nonfamily members,” Nnenina says. “It gladdens my heart to put a smile on the face of someone in need.”
Currently, there are 13 family members living with her and her husband. They feed, clothe and pay the school fees of the children of their extended family.
Nnenina is especially passionate about educating girls.
“If I have two children, a boy and a girl, standing in front of me in need of education, I will obviously support the girl child,” she says, smiling. “It is said that if you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”
In this way, she takes after her father.
“My dad had two of us as biological children, but he educated more than 30 extended family members, especially females,” she says. “My dad educated women in the era when female education in Cameroon was still lukewarm.”
Some kingmakers expressed regret that Nnenina could not inherit her father’s throne.
Bekumaka, who is also the oldest resident of Iboko at age 89, bore Iboko’s traditional staff, a respected symbol of chieftaincy, during the absence of a chief.
“Nnenina is a woman with a special heart,” he says. “She is a cheerful giver, a peacemaker and a loving woman. She has the heart of her father.”
Her attitude makes her a leader and qualifies her to be a traditional ruler, he says. On many occasions, she has give him financial and moral support.
“Every time I look at Nnenina, I ask God why he made her to be a woman,” he says.
If she were a man, she could have inherited her father’s throne. If there were a means to change tradition to allow Nnenina to become the chief of Iboko, Bekumaka says, he would have fought for the rules to be changed.
Willy Tabot, Nnenina’s husband, says he was not surprised when villagers suggested that they radically alter tradition to install her as chief.
“When I heard that some people were proposing her to become chief of Iboko, I did not doubt it,” he says. “She deserves it. She is a very good person.”
He says Nnenina is a blessing and that she has been both a wife and mother to him.
“Felle is the best thing that came to my life,” he says, grabbing his wife’s hand as she passes to go to the kitchen. “If for some flimsy reason I did not get married to her, I would have regretted it all my life.”
He says he would have supported her as the village’s first female chief.
“I would have given her my full support had she become chief of Iboko,” he says. “Well, tradition did not permit. Let’s respect tradition for what it is.”
Ultimately, village kingmakers selected Thadeus Naliembe, a cousin of Nnenina, as the new ruler of Iboko.
Naliembe formally ascended to the throne in a coronation ceremony on March 15 in Iboko. Nnenina prepared much of the feast and presented him with a gift of a carved wooden frame. The frame bore an inscription of the names of the four families that make up Iboko village, as well as the names of its past chiefs.
Nnenina says she fully supports Naliembe and that the Iboko kingmakers made the right choice.
“The new chief is a simple and kind-hearted man,” she says. “He deserves his appointment.”
