The Right to Citizenship of the People of the Former Northern Cameroons in Nigeria: Towards Remediation of the Constitutional Lacuna

The United Nations-mandated plebiscite of 1961, integrated the British Trust Territory of Northern Cameroons into the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a historic event formally codified in section 10 of the 1963 Republican Constitution. However, consecutive military and civilian regimes completely omitted these territory-specific clauses in the drafting of the 1979 and 1999 Constitutions. This deletion has engineered a profound constitutional lacuna. This article aimed at evaluating the legal vulnerabilities arising from this textual silence, focusing on the strict requirements of section 25(1) (a) of the CFRN 1999. Its objectives were to examine the right to citizenship of the people of the former Northern Cameroons in Nigeria and to explore remediation of the constitutional lacuna. The doctrinal research methodology was adopted because it relied on the primary and secondary sources from the physical and e-library. Primary materials such as the Constitution of Nigeria and other relevant Statutes, and secondary materials such as textbooks, articles in Journals, case law and online materials were used. This article found that by binding citizenship by birth exclusively to communities "indigenous to Nigeria" prior to October 1, 1960, it creates an administrative and political trap for the millions of descendants from this region, whose ancestral lands were geopolitically outside Nigerian borders on Independence Day. This loophole has resulted in persistent bureaucratic hurdles regarding state-level indigeneity certificates and has been repeatedly weaponised in election petition tribunals to contest the political eligibility of high-profile candidates seeking election to federal offices. It also found that while the general saving clause under section 309 offers basic preservation of previously acquired rights, it lacks the textual precision required to insulate these border populations from structural discrimination and statelessness risks. Thus, this article recommended a targeted legislative blueprint to amend section 25 of the CFRN 1999, providing a permanent statutory remediation that secures national integration and birthright certainties.