When King and Queen quarrel on wedding
Anniversary
Sisiku Ayuk Tabe |
In 2017…people from the grassroots decided
to stick together to say “enough is enough”. They are asking for their freedom
from this modern day slavery in the grip of the government of the Republic of
Cameroon. This was triggered by the Teachers’ and Lawyers’ strikes at the close
of 2016… As this stalemate continues, popular opinion on the streets of
Southern Cameroons is tilting in favour of outright separation.
…A day of joy for one and a moment of pain
and regret for the other.
I. A King and his Queen had a quarrel on
their 56th wedding anniversary, on the 11th of February. Below is an excerpt of
what ensued:
King:
Happy anniversary.
Queen:
What is happy about this anniversary?
King:
Dress-up, let’s go and celebrate our wedding anniversary.
Queen:
You rejoice today because it is day that you discovered milk and honey in your
neighbour’s land, got it for free, claimed it and made it yours. This day
reminds me all of our biggest error. Henceforth on every 11th February,
starting from today, Saturday 11th February 2017, I will join my children, we
will dress in black, we will start the day in prayer, we will pray until noon,
have lunch and get back to prayer from 2:00pm until 6:00pm. My people and I
have declared this “the day of indoor mourning and prayer”. We mourn the death
of a romance which never was and we pray to God to get us out of this marriage.
I want a divorce. I have already filed for this divorce. Today, my people and I
will remain indoors because we do not want to get out of our houses and be
beaten, raped, tortured and killed.
King:
Shall we go and join the celebrations?
Queen:
What is there to celebrate?
King:
Why are you dressed in black and holding a prayer book?
Queen:
I am dressed in black because I am mourning.
King:
Why are you mourning?
Queen:
Because you are killing my people. You are raping our girls, maiming and
torturing us. Why are you committing these atrocities on our people?
King:
The people that are being tortured, killed, raped and maimed are not my people;
they are your people. Don’t you see how determined they are to force the school
year 2016/2017 to be cancelled by UNESCO? I cannot let that happen under my
watch.
Queen:
Is that why you got your CRTV to announce over the weekend that schools will
reopen on Monday? Look at how you are embarrassing yourself and those of my
people that you appointed. Most of them have not done anything for their people
for years. They watched your ill-treatment of their brothers and sisters but
they accepted it because you have transformed them into house-slaves. God is
watching. He will lead us out like He did the people of Israel out of Egypt.
King:
But they asked to be treated as such. I wonder why these young ones now refuse
to be cajoled to my side. They are resisting every attempt to bribe them, so
that they can bring this strike to an end. I need schools to resume. I cannot
have an academic year cancelled in this country, especially after winning AFCON
2017.
Queen:
Why don’t you release all the students who were arrested in Buea and Bamenda so
that the Consortium will come back to the negotiating table? By the way, why
did you outlaw the Consortium, days after failed negotiations with them? You
turned around and arrested its members, to the point where some are now hiding
in a Western embassy in Yaoundé? Do you think that anyone would believe your
sincerity when you call for negotiations again?
King:
I cannot release all the students because I do not have all of them to release.
Queen:
What do you mean by that? Where are my peoples’ children?
King:
Some have died.
Queen:
We hear that you approved of their murders and that they be buried in mass
graves.
King:
I did not kill your people. It was done by the police, gendarmes, and soldiers,
especially those called BIR. These my forces of repression have been ordered to
ensure that schools reopen and that the courts restart, at all cost. I guess
some of them would go beyond the call of duty to satisfy me.
Queen:
Why have you cut off the Internet to the people living in my land since the
17th of January 2017?
King:
So that anything I do there will not be seen by the rest of the world. I will
not have these Google-generation children dictate how I run my country.
Queen:
If I knew then what I know today, I surely will not have gone into this
marriage.
King:
Why would you not have gone into this marriage?
Queen:
Because over the years, you have changed the marriage from a “monogamy with
separate properties” into a “polygamy with all properties belonging to the
King”.
King:
Well, this is to show that we are all one and indivisible and you have never
complained about anything.
Queen:
When I complain, you pretend not to hear. When my people ask loudly, you term
them extremists. For years I have tried to make this work, pretending that
these things are not happening. However, the more I try to make it work, the
more you take advantage of me.
King:
But why are you complaining now after 56 years?
Queen:
Whenever I try to tell you that you are unfair, you come down on me and my
people with force. You have taken away our education system, you have imposed
the French civil law on my people, replacing our British common law. You have
brought your people to rule over my people in our land, and in your language.
You now treat us as second class citizens and increasingly we see ourselves as
your slaves.
King:
When did you notice this?
Queen:
Over the years. Each time I watched as you gradually but surely eroded all
signs of my peoples’ identity from the face of the earth. You have even placed
road signs in our land in your language. The police, gendarme and army speak
your language when they are sent to work in my land.
King:
Is that why you are grumbling? I have created a commission of bilingualism and
multi-culturalism to take care of that.
Queen:
You decreed decentralisation in 1996 and not much has happened on that front
since.
King:
I signed that to please your people and some of my people. I really did not
intend to implement it.
Queen:
I have been sad and sickened all these 56 years.
King:
But you have never complained.
Queen:
Whenever my people do, your forces of repression kill our children, rape our
girls, torture our people and declare some of them wanted. They have become
slaves in their own land. This is killing me but to you it is all a game. You
are playing with the future of my people and to you it is only a game. Let’s
look at this sector-by-sector:
II. On Resources
Queen:
About 90 percent of the oil of this nation comes from my land but all its
revenue are paid into your land. Almost all the workers at the refinery, from
those at the gate to the Managing Director, are people from your land. The
refinery is on my land but the depots are on your land.
King:
This is the life-wire of the nation’s economy, so I have to personally keep an
eye on it.
Queen:
What about the gold, bauxite, iron ore, coal and granites in my land?
King:
I am yet to access these and other resources of the land. When I do, I will
naturally manage them as I manage SONARA.
Queen:
What about the timber, as you are deforesting our land?
King:
The same thing, I am not answerable to anyone in this country.
Queen:
What about the agricultural produce that are mostly from my land?
King:
Are you seriously asking me to explain this?
Queen:
Why have you abandoned the natural waterfall in my land that can produce
electric power for the entire West Africa?
King:
Because I want you to remain in this marriage. That is also why I carried all
the thermal generators away from your region, so that I can decide to switch
you off.
Queen:
Is that why you have switched off Internet from my region?
King:
I do not want the world to see what atrocities I am doing to your people. If
your people do not get back subserviently into this union, I will charge them
with treason, judge them in a military tribunal and sentence them to death or
life imprisonment.
Queen:
I want a divorce.
King:
You cannot have a divorce. We are one and indivisible and this marriage will
remain for ever.
Queen:
What is happening to CDC and PAMOL?
King:
I am planning to move their HQs to my land.
III. On Education
Queen:
What have you done with the report from the Cameroon Education Forum (CEF) of
January 2016? It contained 17 recommendations to address the Anglophone
education sub-system.
King:
I have kept in where I always keep recommendations that challenge my thinking,
like the memorandum presented by the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of
Bamenda in December 2016 – in the trash.
Queen:
Why are you sending your people to my land to teach children history,
geography, chemistry, physics, etc. in your language?
King:
Because you and your people accept it and because your people are not admitted
into the teachers’ training schools, so they are not qualified.
Queen:
Why don’t you admit them into those schools. My people are about eight million
of this country’s 28 million, yet you admit two students out of 132 into the School
of Sports, even though the school is situated in my land. Less than 30 of the
250 students in the School of Engineering in my land are my people.
King:
Because you and your people accept it.
Queen:
Why do the Vice Chancellors of Buea and Bamenda allow forces of repression to
enter their universities, rape girls, torture students and even kill some?
King:
I appointed them to follow in the footsteps of Dorothy because when a woman
decides to be mean, she forgets that every child is born of a woman like her.
The forces of repression were invited into each school by the individual VC. In
this case, they have to take their responsibility. You should ask them and not
even my minister of higher education, talk less of me.
Queen:
We hear that your people are bribing newly self-appointed leaders of the
teachers’ trade union to call of the strike. Do you realise that it is not
working?
King:
I now realise that the people are bent on waiting for the leaders of the
Consortium before they can listen to anyone, even to me. I tried to appease
them with the commission of bilingualism and multi-culturalism but no one seems
to be swayed by it. Your people are still bent on their strike and the ghost
towns. These ghost towns are making me sick.
IV. On Law
Queen:
Why do you place Magistrates and State Councils trained in the Civil Law in
courts in my land to judge my people. Our lawyers and people follow the Common
Law system. You should know that the Civil Law is diametrically different from
the Common Law in principle.
King:
Because the two legal systems are diametrically opposed, I have decided that
the entire country will apply the civil law system in all courts.
Queen: So you see nothing wrong in the
demands of the lawyers?
King:
The OHADA law code has been translated into your language.
Queen:
Why did your forces of repression arrest Justice Ayah Paul, a Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, from his home without a warrant of arrest?
King:
Because he is stubborn and I want him and all of you to know that I dictate the
law in this country. I am the law in this land.
Queen:
Is that why they are taking Barrister NkonghoBala, Dr. FontemNeba, ManchoBibixy
and all our freedom fighters to your military tribunal?
King:
In this country, I decide which court tries whoever, regardless of what the
international human rights laws say.
Queen:
Is it true that you allowed the arrest of 90 year old MolaNjohLitumbe?
King:
I am yet to confirm where that old man is, at the moment, but he was trying to
reveal the truth of what happened in the beginning.
Queen:
And what is wrong in what he did or incorrect in what he said?
King:
Now woman! it is either my way or the high way to death.
V. On Governance
Queen:
This our marriage is actually “njomba marriage”. Are you taking advantage of us
because this our “come we stay marriage” in which the King refused or neglected
to do traditional, civil status or even church blessing is something that was
always going to fail?
King:
I have always prepared myself for the worst in this relationship.
Queen:
When we started you agreed that both our peoples will always be represented in
the first two positions in this nation. Today my person is the fourth authority
in this country.
King:
I understand this lame point of yours but you see, when I took the position of
prime minister from the North and gave your people, I had to compensate them
with the speaker of the Assembly. By the time I approved the Senate, the
Bamelikis were becoming restive and I decided to offer them that one. Things
just happened that way!
Queen:
While we are in parliament, where is Hon. Wirba Joseph? Rumour has it that you
have arrested him. Is it because of the speech that he made at the House of
Assembly last year? Are you saying that even with his parliamentary immunity
you still arrested him?
King:
He is at large. We will arrest him on sight. Do you know that he stubbornly
organised a rally in his place on Saturday January 14, 2017?
Queen:
When will you ever appoint an ambassador form my land to represent us at the
United Nations?
King:
Never. Your people will go and dig out our marriage files, if they exist, and
expose us.
Queen:
What about sending any of my people to represent us in the USA?
King: Never, that country is too big and
important.
Queen:
To France?
King:
I will not. On second thought, I might because when such a person gets to
France, s/he will know who my mentor is.
Queen:
To Nigeria?
King:
Never, too near and could let your people back in, then I might lose Bakassi.
Queen:
Since you mentioned it, what have you done to the people of Bakassi, since they
joined us from Nigeria?
King:
The treatment that is being given to you is the same which we are dishing out
to them: Bring them in, get authority over their oil and abandon them.
Queen:
Is that fair?
King:
The world is not fair. If you want something, you have to fight for it.
Queen:
When will you appoint a person from my land as minister of Finance?
King:
Never. I give you the director of customs and impose high targets so that he
can collect the money, which the minister then makes available to me.
Queen:
What about the armed forces?
King:
Never. Even the few of your people who I appoint as Generals, in return for
some huge service rendered, I am now watching very closely. If any of them is
sympathetic with this your peoples’ silly cry, I will lock him up.
Queen:
What happened to the Two State Federation that we agreed upon?
King:
I am now considering a Ten State Federation, just to please your people because
even I acknowledge that there is a problem in this country. Contrary to some of
my over-ambitious people, some from your land, I now agree that there is an
Anglophone problem.
Queen:
What is going to be different now compared to all the other times that you have
signed your degrees? Ten State Federation is worse than the situation we found
ourselves in 1961. That is why I am now filing for divorce.
VI. On Transportation and Tourism
Queen:
What happened to the Tiko and Bamenda international airports, in my land? What
about our airstrips in Besongabang, Bali, Wum, Kumbo and Nkambe?
King:
I abandoned them so you won’t fly away.
Queen:
What happened to the railways from Kumba to Muyuka to Buea to Tiko to Victoria?
King:
The same as above – abandoned.
Queen: What happened to the river ports in
EkondoTiti, Mamfe and Abongshe?
King:
Same as above – abandoned.
Queen:
Why have you abandoned the natural deep sea port in my land and we are paying
millions to dredge a man-made seaport in your land?
King:
Because I do not want to develop your region. I am the King. Enough! forget
about these complains and let’s celebrate our wedding anniversary on the 11th
of February.
Queen:
I told you before. Let me say it again, you rejoice today because it is day
that you discovered milk and honey in your neighbour’s land, got it for free,
claimed it and made it yours. This day reminds me of all of our biggest error.
Henceforth on every 11th day of February, starting from today, Saturday
February 2017, I will join my children, we will dress in black, we will start
the day in prayer, we will pray until noon, have lunch and get back to prayer
until 6:00pm. I have declared this “the day of indoor mourning and prayer”. We
mourn the death of a romance which never was and we pray to God to get us out
of this marriage. I want a divorce. I have already filed for this divorce.
Today, me and my people will remain indoors because we do not want to get out of
our houses and be beaten, raped, tortured and killed.
VII. The foregoing speaks to the story of
the wealthy region known as Southern Cameroons, sandwiched between Nigeria to
the west and the Republic of Cameroun to the east. After World War I, this
nation was given to Britain. During the years of independence, it was
considered too small and unsustainable to be an independent country, in spite
of its institutions that had already been setup (the legislative, executive and
judiciary) as early as 1954. On February 11, 1961, in a well choreographed
referendum, in which only two options were presented to her people (be
independent by joining Nigeria or by joining the Republic of Cameroon), 60
percent of her people voted to join the Republic of Cameroun.
In
the last fifty-six years, the people of Southern Cameroons have watched in
dismay, shock and horror how their value systems have been eroded, their
culture assimilated and their way of life abused. In 2017, their people from
the grassroots decided to stick together to say “enough is enough”. They are
asking for their freedom from this modern day slavery in the grip of the
government of the Republic of Cameroon. This was triggered by the Teachers’ and
Lawyers’ strikes at the close of 2016. Negotiations by the striking workers and
government failed on Friday January 13th. On Tuesday January 17th, the
Consortium through which the government was negotiating was banned and the
arrests of its leaders started. On the same day, Internet access was suspended
throughout that region of the country and the stalemate persists till this day.
As this stalemate continues, popular opinion on the streets of Southern
Cameroons is tilting in favour of outright separation. The more arrests and
torture of their people, the stronger their resolve to go all the way to
achieve what they want. They are vowing to keep up resisting until the
government truly realises their plight, releases their leaders and all those
arrested in the course of this struggle so far. They are reminded and fortified
by the fact that blacks in America boycotted public buses in Montgomery for 381
days to end segregation in public transport. Ironically the road on which the
American Embassy is built in the Republic of Cameroon is named “Avenue Rosa
Parks”.
VIII. A Brief History of Southern Cameroons
Southern Cameroons has always had
international legal status:
•
It had a British Mandate under the League of Nations in 1922;
•
It became British Trust Territory under UNO in October 1947;
•
It attained self government with an Assembly and a Premier in September 1954;
•
The UNO Plebiscite on February 11, 1961 voted 60 percent to 40 percent to gain
independence by joining La Republique du Cameroun;
•
It gained independence through the United Nations Organisation General Assembly
Resolution 1608 (21/04/1961) on the independence and union with La Republique
du Cameroun;
•
Annexed by Republique du Cameroun on the September 30, 1961;
•
The Referendum of 1972 dismantled the Federal character of the form of the state
in violation of art 47(1) of the Federal constitution, to the United Republic
of Cameroun;
•
In 1984, through Law No. 84/01, the United Republic reverted to Republique du
Cameroun;
•
In 1993, the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) was formed. There are
other groups such as the Southern Cameroons Peoples Organisation (SCAPO) that
have been seeking the separation of the Southern Cameroons from the Republique
du Cameroun;
•
Since it is not yet a member of the United Nations, Southern Cameroons cannot
report a case for deliberation in the floor of the UN General Assembly.
Therefore, they could pass through a third country. SCAPO has sued at the Abuja
High Court. The court ruled in favour of the Southern Cameroons;
•
In 2003, SCAPO sued La Republique du Cameroun to the African Commission on
Peoples and Human Rights at Banjul. The court ruled in favour of the Southern
Cameroons and called them “a people with right of self-determination different
from the people of La Republique). The
ruling recommended dialogue.
SisikuAyukTabe is a spokesperson of the people of the
Southern Cameroons.
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