Abstract

This paper analyzes the extent to which the unrecorded cattle business across the Nigeria-Cameroon border facilitates the provisioning of social utilities such as potable water, electricity, and healthcare to traders. It uses primary data obtained from 480 traders in 8 cattle market centers in Nigeria and Cameroon, and secondary data on the trade activities. Both the descriptive and inferential methods of data scrutiny are employed to achieve the aims of the investigation. Results of the paper reveal that the trade empowers only a few among the traders to easy access to social utilities in the study area due to misplacement of priorities and under-utilization of available resources in both countries. As a result, the paper recommends to Nigeria and Cameroon to reflect on how to enforce the proposals of the resources availability and vent-for-surplus theories of trade with little amendments based on their prevailing specificities to make the trade official.

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