Vaulting Insensitivity:

CPDM hirelings deny there’s an Anglophone problem

Five government ministers last Thursday turned a press conference in Yaounde into a huge joke when in their effort to explain government’s response to recent events in “Southern Cameroons” all denied there is an Anglophone problem in Cameroon. These New Deal lackeys gave their listeners the impression the memory of the CPDM regime is defective; it only chronicles convenient events, while deliberately avoiding those it finds unpleasant, no matter how recent. But the grievances of Anglophones are objective and legitimate, and the buck stops at President Biya’s desk!

By Ojong Steven Ayukogem in Yaounde

These New Deal diehards say there is no Anglophone problem in Cameroon

If there is one thing Cameroonians unanimously concede to Biya it is his ability to have kept Cameroon together and in peace in spite of the cultural and other objective diversities. But today no one can boast of or be sure of peace and stability anymore. And the future does not seem to promising.

                Recent happenings in the country are pointer to the very discomforting fact that the ship of state is gradually but surely gliding into murky waters. And instead of the authorities taking urgent measures to redirect the boat towards the right path, they have opted to play the ostrich. (We are told that when confronted by a prey, the ostrich buries its head in the sand believing that it is protected. But it fails to realize that it only exposes the rest of its body and especially its usually filthy posterior.)

                It was no wonder therefore that five government ministers shamelessly told Cameroonians on Thursday that there is no Anglophone problem in Cameroon. And they said so after announcing that the streets and people of Bamenda are on fire; that courts in NW and SW are literally dysfunctional and have virtually grounded to a halt; lawyers of the English expression have boycotted the courts for weeks running and are being brutalized and maimed in their chambers and on the streets by brutal, gun-totting soldiers; pupils, students and teachers of primary, secondary and university institutions are staying at home in the Anglophone regions while their ‘brothers’ across the Mungo are going about their studies normally etc etc. These CPDM hatchet men find nothing wrong with these unfortunate events in Southern Cameroons; the only reading the make of it is simply that Anglophones want to secede.

Embarrassingly and shamelessly even Prof. Fame Ndongo, who has made harmonization of university education his major agenda at the Higher Education Ministry, also made bold to say in public and to journalists for that matter that he has never talked of harmonizing academic programs in Universities in Cameroon. In his selective amnesia, Fame Ndongo failed to recall that in the past recent months he has convened several meetings and granted several interviews to journalists to explain why harmonization is imperative and inevitable for state universities in Cameroon.

                That Fame Ndongo should publicly pronounce today that he has never heralded the harmonization of university studies and concludes that “iln’ya pas un problem Anglophone au Cameroun” simply smacks of bad faith and intellectual dishonesty. Somebody said the Minesup may be suffering from “ndongolaria”.

                And this is not all! That the Minister of Justice Laurent Esso so easily transformed himself into a law professor overnight as to bully eminent and internationally acclaimed Anglophone lawyers in public (several of the lawyers his seniors in the law profession), under the guise of teaching them legal procedure and practice, was intriguing; it portrayed how dialogue in Cameroon has been transformed into a spectator sport where only one party has the onus to talk, while the other party must stay quiet and only applaud intermittently, if the need be.

                Maybe one could condone the Minister of Communication, IssaTchiromaBakary, who was only playing his role as the self-acclaimed New Deal propagandist (somewhat like Joseph Goebbels of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany or Saddam Hussein’s gulf war propagandist, Ali Triky). IssaTchiroma used the occasion of Thursday’s press conference to reduce the tension among the Anglophones and to explain, even if unconvincingly, the reason for government’s vaulting insensitivity to the plight of Anglophones in Cameroon.

                Yet, there is no gainsaying that Tchiroma’s proven ability to transform serious issues into laughing matter and his penchant to reduce his action from the sublime to the ridiculous, has easily made him an indispensible asset to the CPDM regime. Even though Tchiroma’s audience hardly takes him seriously whenever he talks, he has still succeeded to implant himself somewhat as a veritable therapy for the frustrations of Cameroonians.

                So, it was no surprise to anyone that the New Deal spokesman re-echoed Fame Ndongo’s claim that “there is no Anglophone problem in Cameroon”. Tchiroma as usual, simply made the regime to appear ridiculous and unserious.

                But which ever way we want to look at it, the levity with which the government is dealing with the grievances of Anglophones only betrays the vaulting insensitivity of the Biya regime in the face of compelling problems in the country. Yet giving that Cameroon is essentially a presidentialist system, the buck stops with President Biya: When the President passes the buck to his ministers he only tries to postpone the solution for grievances that he and he alone should address..

                Even though it is understood that President Biya is slow in acting and that he has a knack to sleep over problems, no matter how pressing, it behooves the President to pronounce as a matter of extreme urgency, on the Anglophone question. Biya should do this if he must continuously be accepted by the bulk of Anglophones as the head of state and leader of the re-unified republic of Cameroon, and not just the president of La Republique du Cameroun.