Fearless Akere Muna rattles Biya again,
warns of looming genocide
 |
Barrister Akere Muna
|
-Says the 84-year old is still hanging on
to power despite serving at the presidency for 55 years that is, since 1962.
-Says the current situation in the country
is such that it suffices for an Anglophone fanatic to kill three or more
Francophones, and the retaliation from the Francophones will be anybody’s guess
By Essan-Ekoninyam in Yaounde
Legal icon and anti-corruption crusader of
international repute and renown, Barrister AkereTembengMuna, has wondered aloud
why President Biya should still be at the presidency despite serving there in
different capacities for 55 years that is, since 1962.
AkereMuna
was speaking recently during a panel discussion on democracy in Africa. The
discussion that brought informed actors, observers and stakeholders on Africa’s
democratic process was organized by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.
Talking
about his country Cameroon, Akere said there was a serious problem of
management of diversity here and this poor management of diversity is the cause
for the present uprising in the Anglophone parts of the country. He said the
uprising has potentials to explode and excalate into something more serious if
something is not done soon.
Hear
Akere: “There is a problem of management of diversity in my country. I am from
Cameroon as most of you are aware. I know most of you know Cameroon only
through football. We just won the African football cup and bagged home four
million dollars, yet two weeks later we (our football team) were thrown out of
a hotel in Belgium for not being able to pay for breakfast. But seriously in
Cameroon there is a minority of English speaking Cameroonians, I am one of
those,….I am an Anglophone, I am a lawyer trained in England and I have been
practicing law in the French speaking part of Cameroon for forty years.
Sometime last year some Anglophone lawyers and teachers went on strike because
of the supposed marginalization of Anglophones. And the slowness of the state
to respond to this is slowly evolving into a movement for federalism or
outright secession. And really I have listened to the analyses that we always
have in this room about what went wrong, but my problem is not that. My problem
is rather what do we do especially in a country where there is total state
capture? You know that when there is state capture the parliament is loaded,
the civil service is loaded, the courts are loaded; so where do you go, how do
you really make things change. And that is the seriousness of the problem in
Cameroon. Recently i wrote an article about the inevitable nature of change and
I was called into the gendarme head office and interviewed by five colonels and
what have you. But being a lawyer there were two hundred lawyers outside banging
on the door. That’s perhaps what got me out. But as we speak there are at least
100 Anglophones locked up, our office is doing the case pro bono. That is a
serious problem, and it is supposedly going on the radar. I think we need to
have a system that permits the world to see this problem.…Unfortunately
internet in the Anglophone provinces has been knocked out for two months, and
that is happening in a world in which we are having this discourse about
democracy. We need to have a system where they can preempt such situations
because what is happening in Cameroon is a situation where some fanatic will
kill four or three Francophones and then there is retaliation and we are done.
It is very, very worrying.
And
all of this is happening when President Paul Biya has been in power for 34
years?
34
years that is if you want to be modest because he has been at the presidency
since 1962, so you can add up. So the question is how do we get out of that
after this state capture?
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