An Anglophone President in 2018 is
imperative
By *Ngwain Colbert in Bamenda
 |
| Biya should consider handing over to an Anglophone |
The lawyers and teachers strike that has
been rocking Cameroon right to its very foundations for the past two months and
counting…has demonstrated in triumphant detail that the policies articulated by
the two successive francophone-led regimes of Ahidjo and Paul Biya have
failed. What this means is that our East
Cameroon-inspired leadership should be honest enough to admit that beyond the
public discourse, they have failed to build the kind of ‘one and indivisible’
country they claimed they were building. In societies that profess to be
democratic, when leaders fail in implementing a public policy that has consumed
tax payers’ money even for a Presidential mandate, they throw in the towel.
That is the only thing that is left for the CPDM regime to do come 2018.
The
criminal stupidity and the stupid criminality of the francophone-led regimes of
Presidents Ahidjo and Biya has for the past 55 years pushed the nation further
apart rather than pulling it together. The leadership’s arrogant and adamant
refusals to benefit from the rich experiences of the political culture of the
Anglophones so as to reshape the crooked form of state that Cameroon inherited
in 1960 and 61 only distanced Anglophones from central government.
The
francophone-led regimes’ refusal to remind themselves that West Cameroon and
East Cameroon came into the UNION as equal partners with equal rights as agreed
in Foumban and that before the UN’s two-options for Southern Cameroon’s to become
independent by either joining La Republique or the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
came after Southern Cameroons had already started experiencing self rule for
over four years during which period six democratic elections were organized
with an effective change of leadership, has made Anglophone Cameroonians in
today’s arrangement look like a captured and marginalized people.
Failing
to realize that the triangular patch-up called Cameroon has only had a
semblance of a ‘one and indivisible’ nation because of the crucial wedge
offered by the Anglophone factor, is failing to understand the bare simple fact
that if Southern Cameroons did not choose to becoming independent by joining La
Republique du Cameroon, that entity called La Republique would have been embroiled
in an internecine war between the traditional Moslem Northern parts of Cameroon
and the traditional Christian Southern parts of La Republique du Cameroon in
much the same way the Central African Republic has been. The Kenya-based International Crisis Group,
ICG, has over the years been articulate on this point.
Given
La Republique’s brutal culture of civil wars leading to their independence from
France and the subsequent massacring of freedom fighters in the Bassa and
Bamilike lands with support from France, there is enough jurisprudential
evidence to support the fact that it has been the uphill task and challenges of
taming Anglophones considered by the francophone leadership over the years as a
common enemy that has put them patched together than the fact that innately,
they have the patriotic feeling of being ‘one and indivisible’. Proof positive is that ever since the 1984
abortive coup, Northern Cameroonians have never been in the good books of the
ruling elites from the South and that only the Anglophone factor continues to
keep them together.
There
is no gain saying the fact that if the current francophone-led Yaoundé regime
continues with its official policy of adamancy and arrogance toward the people
of West Cameroon who joined the UNION as an equal partner under international
law, Southern Cameroonians would have no choice than to restore the nationhood
as obtained before 1961. It will be at this time that La Republique and the
rest of the world would realize what a critical wedge the Anglophone factor was
and remains in the unity of Cameroon.
As
the campaigners for an Anglophone for Presidency 2018 have for the past two
years been articulating, supporting an Anglophone for Presidency 2018 by the
majority francophone electorate, would not only be an act of poetic justice but
a balancing act after 55 years of francophone leadership. As it was stated then
and now, an Anglophone Presidency from 2018 would be the beginning of the
inauguration of a rotatory Presidency between Anglophones and francophones.
The
current ‘divide and rule’ system where the Presidency is reserved for
francophone elites and where the Prime Ministry is being wielded as a bait and
a prized jewel between the North West and South West, is not only diabolic in
its nature but a deliberate attempt by the francophone-led leadership to
permanently reduce Anglophones to second class citizenship. Even if this worked
out with the older generation of bellicose North Westerners and Southerners who
permanently discredited each other to gain the francophone leadership’s
favours, the current events in Anglophone Cameroon, are proof positive that the
youths would not settle for such cheap gimmicks. Reason-why they have been
unanimous in rejecting the demeaning post of Prime Minister and have resolutely
set their eyes on the Presidency in 2018. No more, no less.
Already,
campaigners for an Anglophone for Presidency 2018 since muted the idea that it
was also time our francophone brethen enjoy the fruits of being Prime Minister,
Head of Government, beginning from 2018.
After
all, is it not Adolf Mongo Dipoko, author of the bestselling book: The
Anglophone Soul who wrote that: ‘When the Prime Minister is Francophone; he
wields real power and authority? But when that office comes to an Anglophone,
he is hedged in-between a francophone Secretary General at the Presidency and
another at the Prime Minister’s Office. At the same time he is saddled with not
one, but two, Deputy Prime Ministers on whom real power devolves’?
One
only needs to assess the manner with which francophone ministers were declaring
in Yaoundé that the demands raised by Anglophone teachers and Common Law
Lawyers were baseless even as Philemon Yang was burning the midnight oil in
Bamenda struggling to appease the protesters. If Issa Tchiroma of
Communication, Laurent Esso of Justice and Fame Ndongo of Higher Education
knew, even remotely, that Philemon Yang as Prime Minister and Head of
Government wielded any power and authority beyond that name, they would have
for courtesy sake, even waited for him to return from his fact finding mission
in Bamenda before making any declarations engaging the government.
Yet,
they went ahead and stated an official government position against Anglophones
that have not changed till date, even as the strike persist, and even as
Anglophone youths are being brutally killed, maimed and raped by Gendarmes
under the pretext of maintaining Law and Order.
Given
the extreme radicalization of Anglophone youths through the official policy of
arrogance by the francophone-led Yaoundé regime to an extent that they are now
ready to sacrifice their lives for either a federation or the restoration of
the Southern Cameroons nationhood; and given the level of conscientization of
Anglophone masses, as well as the vivid memories of the fact that if SDF
Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi would have become Cameroon’s President in 1992 if he
was a francophone, Cameroon can only remain ‘one and indivisible’ if an
Anglophone is elected President in 2018.
Truth
be told, the only way for Cameroon to remain ‘one and indivisible’ is when it
moves fast to transform the form of state from the failed unitary state that
has only succeeded in dividing and pitting Cameroonians against each other into
a Federal system where every region manages its local development and where the
Federal government in Yaoundé controls sovereign ministries, territorial
integrity and foreign affairs. And only an Anglophone President in 2018 can
ensure this.
‘Whoever
tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve
it’
Luke 17:33
*Gwain Colbert is an avowed campaigner for
an Anglophone Presidency in 2018
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