- Lawyer IkomiNgongi Esq., ASG Bakweri Land Claims Committee
Interviewed by Ayukogem Steven Ojong
*Much
is being said today about a land crisis in Fako Division. The problem is the
subject of heated debates in political circles in the SW region and beyond. Can
you enlighten the public on the what has come to be known as the Bakweri land
saga?
 |
| Bar. Ikomi Ngongi Esq |
Let us
start with the “Stranger Problem”. After
having seized vast lands from the Bakweris, the German colonizers set out to
make vast plantations on them. They
tried to force our ancestors to work on these plantations as slaves. Of course, the proud, noble Bakweri people
would not be subjected to such humiliation. Many of them preferred to commit
suicide, die, rather than be enslaved as laborers on their own ancestral lands
by their conquerors. And so began the importation of much needed labour for the
German plantations; slave labor from North West Cameroon, from the then East
Cameroon and other parts of West Africa.
But the Germans had to pay these “imported” laborers salaries, which
gave them economic and social privileges only money can buy. This is how the
first aspect of the Bakweri – Fako - Land Crisis emerged. “The Stranger
Problem” as it was called by Messrs W.M. Bridges, Victoria District Officer in
1935 and D.A.F. Shute, Victoria District officer in 1938, both working under
the British Colonial Government in Southern Cameroons. In their “Intelligence
Report on the Bakweri”, prepared for the British Colonial Authority in London
and long before the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) was established in
January 1947, Bridges and Shute wrote this about the Bakweri land problem, in
paragraph 41, on pages 11 to 12:
“The
stranger problem now requires attention. Since the inception of plantation
work, an increasing number of native strangers have found their way to this
country [Fako]. Some remain continually
at work on the plantations and do not affect the local native organization at
all. Many others, however, give up their plantation work and settle down in the
various villages….Friction thereby ensues and the locals term the strangers
“strong-headed” while the strangers consider that the Bakweris are trying to
take advantage of their being foreigners.”
These
problems described above, and the practice of illegally selling off land that does
not belong to them, by these “strangers” has continued to this day here in
Fako. Today, it is done not only by
private settlers or “strangers” but by agents of the Government: SDOs, DOs,
lands surveyors, ministers, and, sadly, even by some of our own Bakweri (Fako)
elites and chiefs.
The
Second Facet is the “New Layout” Problem. It showed its ugly face after the
political independence of the then Southern Cameroons. Successive directors of
the Lands and Survey Department, in the then West Cameroon KNDP government, in
an effort to disguise, or cover up, “the Stranger Problem” I have just
described, started an unlawful program of creating so-called “New Layouts”. The
Director of Lands and Surveys of West Cameroon, created a “New Layout” in Great
Soppo, Buea, and proceeded to populate it, almost exclusively, with his own
tribe’s people. The evidence is there
for us to see today.
Incidentally,
the lands transformed into New-Layouts were appropriated ostensibly for various
purposes, most often without compensation or rents as leaseholds to the
indigenous owners – the Bakweris. Since
the early sixties a “new culture” of fabricating “New Layouts” has become a
popular, if offensive, practice of subsequent administrators – D.O.’s and
S.D.O.’s, especially. This has enabled
them to GRAB land in Fako with the complicity of a succession of some land
surveyors, elites, chiefs, businessmen and influence brokers of questionable
character, etc. This practice, in its many ramifications, continues to this day
with unimaginable impunity!
The
Third Facet of the Bakweri land problem is the Destruction and “Privatization”
of Government Residential Areas (GRA’s’), Federal Quarters and Clerk’s Quarters
in Fako. This problem constitutes the illegal carving out and making PRIVATE
property of Government Residential Areas (GRA’s) by some influential government
officials and private individuals.
Again, this practice is rife only in Fako. In Victoria, now Limbe, the GRA we all knew
and grew up in as children, has been decimated, totally destroyed. It is no longer the low-density residential
area designated for Government workers by the previous colonial
administrations. Through crooked
officers of the Lands and Surveys Department, with the connivance, support or
encouragement of successive administrators (SDO’s and DO’s and others, plots of
land are carved out from otherwise beautifully manicured government residential
compounds and made into private property for which land certificates are
hastily awarded overnight by the Ministry of State Property, Land Tenure and
Surveys . The same is true of Buea, where the Federal Quarters, Clerks’
Quarters and GRA have become the private property of some influential
individuals, both in and out of government.
The
Fourth aspect of this Fako Land Problem is the now infamous and notorious “CDC
Land Surrender”. While the previous instances of land abuse in Fako seem, on
the face, to be sufficiently egregious and blatant, this CDC land “surrender”
issue is the proverbial “nail on the coffin”.
It involves two thirds of the geographical surface area of Fako Division
and comprises the most fertile, strategically positioned arable land. While the first three abuses can be traced to
corrupt individuals both in and out of government, the CDC Land Surrender, one
of the largest and most shameful and disgusting abuses of a people’s ancestral
land rights, emanates, or seems to surge, directly, from our own Government’s
appointed agents in Fako and the South West Region.
In
1943, a movement of young, brave Fako nationalists was set up to advocate the
recovery of their lands that had been forcefully seized and occupied by the
Germans. This movement became the Bakweri Land Committee (BLC) (now known as
the Bakweri Land Claims Committee). The
founding members of this Committee were enlightened sons and daughters- elites-
of Fako. I personally knew and was quite close to some of them with whom I was
most privileged to hold long, educative discussions about this Bakweri land
problem. These founding members included such notables as the late Pa Rudolph
EsombiEffange of Small Soppo village (father of Dr. Dorothy LimungaNjeuma), the
late Chief Philip MofemaEwusi of Mokunda village, the Late Prince David Mafany
ma Lifafal’Endeley, to name a few.
In
1946, Prince David Mafany ma Lifafa l’ Endeley, the first Secretary General of
BLC, wrote and sent a Petition to the newly created United Nations
Organization, in which, on behalf of the Bakweri Lands Committee (BLC) and the
Fako (Bakweri) people, he demanded the restitution of all Bakweri lands that
had been forcefully taken, occupied and transformed into more than 23
(twenty-three) vast plantation holdings, by the Germans for over 50 years.
In
reaction and response to this Petition, the United Nations Trusteeship Council
instructed the British Administration in Nigeria to perform the following acts
in law:
(1)
This land, covering an area of approximately 560 square miles, was mapped out
and declared Bakweri Private Native Lands in the Lands and Native Rights Ordinance
of 1946. See: The Lands and Native
Rights Ordinance, (1958) Cap 96 # 3, Nigeria.
2. The
Governor General of Nigeria borrowed money from the Administration and paid the
sum of 850,000 Pounds Sterling to the Custodian of Enemy Property as compensation
for the crops that existed on this expanse of land.
3. This
land was then placed under the custody of the then Governor of Nigeria to HOLD
IN TRUST for the Bakweri people, who were deemed, at that time, not to have
enough trained and qualified manpower to manage these vast complex estates by
themselves.
4. In
the same year (1946), the CDC Ordinance No, 39 was passed creating the
statutory corporation called Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, to be
managed for the benefit of the Bakweri people.
5. In
January 1947, after ensuring that the legal ownership of these lands had been
transferred and secured to their rightful owners, the Bakweri people, the CDC
became operational. About 187 expatriate
British personnel were dispatched from the UK to Victoria to manage the newly
created Bakweri Corporation. Under the
CDC Ordinance No 39 (1946), a sixty (60) year lease was granted to CDC by the
trustee (The Governor of Nigeria) of Bakweri lands, on behalf of and for the
benefit of the Bakweri people. CDC would
be managed by an expatriate staff from the Commonwealth Development Corporation
(also CDC) with HQ at Hill Street, London, U.K.
6. CDC
would be managed for and on behalf of the Bakweri people for a sixty year
period, during which it was expected that the Bakweris themselves would have
developed enough manpower and expertise – managerial and technical- to take
over and manage their corporation, the CDC, without outside help.
7. CDC
would pay the Bakweri People land rents for all the lands occupied and
exploited as plantations for the duration of the 60 year lease. These rents would be paid to the Central
Bakweri Native Authority or Council.
8. CDC
was responsible for repaying the 850,000 pounds loan taken out by the Governor
of Nigeria. [Note that the loan was effectively repaid within a three or four
year period thus leaving CDC totally debt free for the Bakweris.] The CDC, now debt free, remained the
unencumbered and rightful property of the Bakweris-the indigenes of FAKO.
**Can
the CDC surrender land to just whoever it deems necessary, or only to the
Bakweri communities?
First
of all, CDC does NOT have the legal capacity nor authority to cede any of the
lands it occupies. CDC is only a tenant
on these lands. Can a tenant on your property or in your rooming house or “mini
cite” sell or dispose of your rooms without your knowledge or express
permission? Of course not!
Now,
were CDC to be given such authority or permission by the Bakweri (FAKO) people,
these lands, which are COMMUNAL, and not personal or individually-owned lands,
can only be ceded to Fako indigenes from whom they were illegally seized by the
Germans, and which have been held in trust by the Cameroon Government, the
successor of the British Administration in Southern Cameroons, since
1960/1. To answer your question,
therefore, these lands cannot be, and should never have been, ceded to just
anyone. They can ONLY be ceded to the
Bakweri community, collectively or jointly, not severally or separately as is
being done or has been done in recent memory by the successive SDO’s and DO’s
of Fako.
*You
just said the CDC is a tenant of the Bakweri people. Do you meantheBakweri
people are the owners of the lands presently occupied by the CDC, and not the
state of Cameroon?
If you
carefully followed my detailed historico-legal presentation at the beginning of
this interview, as I know you did, it should now be quite obvious to you that
these lands are legally owned by the indigenous Fako people. The facts surrounding the Bakweri land
problem eloquently speak for themselves.
Without any further explanation, any court of law would acknowledge that
the lands we are talking about today, the lands occupied by CDC, are
indigenous, native, Bakweri lands.
*Several
agencies are today fighting for the restoration of what they term the Bakweri
lands; who is legally mandated to speak and act on behalf of the Bakweri
people?
The
Bakweri Land Committee, now Bakweri Land Claims Committee, has always spoken on
behalf of the Bakweri people in respect of the reclamation of their ancestral
lands since 1946. This is
documented. It continues to do so
today…….On 4th August, 1994, led by HRH Chief SML Endeley, Paramount Chief of
Buea, HRH Bille F. Manga Williams, Paramount Chief of Victoria, Chief Philip
MofemaEwusi, Founding Member of the BLC, a strongly worded memorandum was
addressed to H.E. President Paul Biya, President of Cameroon, entitled:
“Memorandum of the Bakweri People on the Presidential Decree to Privatize or
Sell the Cameroon development Corporation”.
This memorandum, in no uncertain terms and in clear concise language,
expresses the position of the entire Bakweri clan as being vehemently opposed
to any form of privatization or alienation of CDC without the express
permission, agreement, involvement of the Bakweri people (the rightful legal
owners) in, and their ownership of, the process. In 2002, it was the Bakweri
Land Claims Committee (BLCC), which sued the Government of Cameroon at the
African Commission of Human & Peoples’ Right in Banjul, on behalf of the
Bakweri (Fako) people. The BLCC was
fully backed and supported in this venture by Fako chiefs, many of whom are
members of the BLCC Advisory Board.
*You
said the BLCC took the state of Cameroon to the Tribunal on Human and Peoples’
Rights in Banjul, the Gambia; what was the verdict, if any, from that tribunal?
Are the parties (BLCC and the state of Cameroon) respecting and applying that
verdict?
-At the
Banjul Commission, the matter was sent back to the parties to “exhaust all
local remedies” before they can come back to the commission. The Banjul
commission also passed an injunction for the ongoing lands surrender to be
stopped, to prevent irreparable damage being done to the interest of the
Bakweri people, until the matter was resolved.
The Commission also enjoined the Government and BLCC to engage in
constructive dialogue and negotiations to amicably resolve this matter. To the best of my knowledge, no such dialogue
has yet taken place.
NB: The above are excerpts of an interview that was first
published in The Median in 2013, in the heat of the scandals that characterized
the management by some local chiefs of lands ceded by CDC to some local
villages and communities in Fako division.
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