Interviewed by Ayukogem Steven Ojong and Sarah Nkongho Ojong
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| Bar. Ikome Ngongi Esq |
*-There are several aspects of the Fako land problem or crisis: The first is what the British Colonial Administration in the British Southern Cameroons called “the Stranger Problem”. The second is the “New Layout Problem”. The third is the privatization of Government Residential Areas (GRA’s, Clerks’ Quarters, Federal Quarters, etc. The fourth is the CDC land “surrender”.
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 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 our Government: Civil administrators, 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 Esombi Effange of Small Soppo village (father of Dr. Dorothy Limunga Njeuma), the late Chief Philip Mofema Ewusi of Mokunda village, the Late Prince David Mafany ma Lifafa l’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 Cameroon Development Corporation became operational. About 187 expatriate British personnel were dispatched from the United Kingdom to Victoria to manage the newly created Bakweri Corporation. Under the CDC Ordinance # 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. Cameroon Development Corporation 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 said the CDC is a tenant of the Bakweri people; meaning the Bakweri people are the legitimate owners of the lands presently occupied by the CDC, and not the state of Cameroon as many are wont to believe. Can you justify this assertion?
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. I am its Executive Assistant Secretary General. I speak on behalf of the Bakweri People through the BLCC, and on behalf of the responsible chiefs and concerned, embittered, indigenes, especially our youth and women, our future, who have stood and continue to stand behind the BLCC both in Cameroon and in the Diaspora.
On 4th August, 1994 led by His Royal Highness, Chief Samuel Moka Lifafa Endeley, Paramount Chief of Buea, HRH Bille F. Manga Williams, Paramount Chief of Victoria, Chief Philip Mofema Ewusi, Founding Member of the Bakweri Land Committee, 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 HR 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 Human Rights 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, such a dialogue has not taken place. Government agents representing the State of Cameroon have refused to respond to BLCC’s many requests for constructive, meaningful dialogue with the Government with a view to resolving this problem amicably.
*But we learnt recently that Yaounde has finally picked up the Bakweri land dossier and has created a commission of enquiry to look into it. Is this not a move in the right direction?
I was invited by this Ministerial Commission of Inquiry and held an almost two- hour long discussion with the members. I was especially impressed by the declarations of its Coordinator, Mr. Jean-Marie Vianney Bendegue, who expressed his understanding, and admission of the fact that the Commission was not ideal. He said it was only an “administrative” Commission, with limited powers, not a legal or judicial Commission of Inquiry. I empathized with him but made it clear to him that we, the indigenes of Fako, are not satisfied with the nature and composition of the Commission, which comprised, exclusively, employees of the said Ministry. In addition, some members and soon to be co-opted members of the Commission are “persons of interest” in the Fako Land Crisis. These are persons about whom we have received several credible and verifiable ALLEGATIONS of wrong doing with respect to our Fako ancestral lands. They include the current Regional Delegate of Lands for the South West Region, the current chief of the Land Registry in Buea and a former Regional Delegate of Lands in the South West Region. In short, while we have promised to collaborate, and are collaborating, with the Commission of Inquiry, we, indigenes of Fako, are not satisfied with this move by the Government. We have expressed this dissatisfaction.
*Any suggestions for a lasting solution to the Bakweri land problem?
Sure. I have expressed my thoughts on this in the several articles I have written and published on the subject. Some of the suggestions are the following: (1)-Immediately STOP all surrenders of CDC occupied lands in Fako Division by the SDO or anyone else; (2)-Revoke all land certificates that have been issued deriving from land surrendered by CDC. This includes land certificates made on Fako indigenous COMMUNAL lands fraudulently made in the names of individual chiefs, successive SDO’s, DO’s, Land and surveys Directors, New layouts, Government residential Areas, Clerks’ Quarters, etc. in Fako since 1960; (3)-Turn All occupied lands in Fako into long term LEASES ( 15 – 20 years).
You talk so passionately about this Bakweri land matter; our readers may want to know who is behind the name, Ikomi Ngongi, Esq.!
Ikomi Ngongi is a blue-blooded Fako indigene both of whose parents are of noble birth in the Bakweri clan. Kuv’a Likenya, my great, grand uncle, was the General who led the Bakweri army in war against the Germans in defense of these lands for which I am now, quite appropriately, fighting, not with guns, this time, but with the instrumentality of the law. I am a parent, a Farmer, an Environmentalist and a Harvard, Georgetown, Brussels and Lagos-trained International Development and Human Rights Lawyer. I am a former U.S. Law School Visiting Professor, College and University Adjunct Professor, Legal Expert and Consultant for the United Nations, former Director General of several International Development Programmes in Asia and Africa and, currently, the Assistant Secretary-General of the Bakweri Land Claims Committee and an international legal and development consultant and practicing lawyer. I am a member of the Cameroon and Nigerian Bars and of the International Bar association.
*Thanks for accepting to talk to The Median.
I should be the one to thank you, most sincerely, for helping us educate the national and international public about my people’s hundred-year-old life-threatening problem.
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