Let’s Not Be Stupid!

Are Ghost Towns Helping or Ruining “Ambazonia”?

Ghost Towns have ruined businesses and social life in NW & SW

The SDF National Convention scheduled for the 22nd to the 24th February 2018 in Bamenda, has ended. Ghost towns were imposed for the same period, designed to make nonsense of the SDF Convention. I do not claim to be more perspicacious than most but in my humble opinion, we are being stupid!

            How have the ghost town affected the convention? The delegates met and whatever decisions had to be made were made. So what exactly have we achieved except punish ourselves without in the least affecting he “traitor”? back in the day we had a saying: too much of anything is a disease!

            When ghost towns started, the people decided to sacrifice to signal their dissatisfaction and discontent with a system that was driving them into the ground. The point has long since been made. Children voluntarily decided to stay home from school in a show of solidarity with their teachers who were protesting against what they perceived to be unacceptable conditions of work. Again, the point has long been made. Yet ghost towns continue and children are being deprived of the only thing that assures them of a potentially bright future; all in the name of “the struggle”. The question is how do these activities advance the struggle?

            Not only is the struggle becoming a bad odour, a stench in the nostrils, but the same people who stood for it are being wearied by the protracted meaningless misery imposed on them. And the operative word here is imposed.

            The call for ghost towns is now dreaded because it comes with a threat – “defaulters shall be treated accordingly”. The threat is necessary because even the “organizers” know that the people are weary. Try giving them a choice and the reality will become obvious. Just tell the people that they are free to stay home or not according to their convictions and see how many stores will stay closed!

            “We will live free or die!” has become a slogan for the so-called Interim Government. But this message is plunging a great number of Southern Cameroonians into untold misery and sending not a few to untimely graves. A slogan glibly repeated by advocates of a struggle in which they are not struggling.

            How many of these “Ambazonia patriots” are in Cameroon? How many of them have had to shut down businesses or face an enraged army? If they are serious, let them keep their children home from school in solidarity with the struggle! If they are serious, let them stay away from work on Mondays in solidarity with the ghost town back home! It is very easy to live free or die when someone else is taking the risks. It is very easy to sit back in safety and donate money for arms. Come home and live the struggle and I will happily sacrifice my salary for weapons! For three days I have been unable to get my medication for hypertension because the medicine stores are closed and no pharmacy is open. If my case was more serious and I had to have that medication or die, I would be a corpse already! We will live free or die. That should be every individual’s choice, not one imposed by a governing body which does not yet have the people’s mandate.

            Back in the day, to be Anglophone meant to be honest, respectful and respectable. It meant being truthful, and dependable. It meant being a gentleman. These in very large measure were the qualities which made the Anglophone the Anglophone!

            Today, it has become common practice to lie, shamelessly lie, to “promote the struggle”! So someone unconscionable lies about the SDO of Ndo and six BIR eliminated by Amba soldiers! Another, the so-called Amba Critic declares that the Regional Governor has called on Bamilike people to report Anglophone activists to the forces of law and order – all this in a bid to radicalize and stir people up to unthinking anger and xenophobia. Nothing that is built on a lie can succeed.

            In Kumba, a poor teacher was killed for urging children to go to school.

            Where is the famous Anglophone respect for other people’s opinions? Where is truth? Where are honesty and considerateness? A group of individuals have hijacked a peaceful, popular outcry.