*The internet generals leading us over a
cliff*
By Julius Wamey
 |
| Julius Wamey
|
The current situation in the Anglophone
regions reminds me of a military joke I read in Readers’ Digest decades ago. It
told the story of a squad of British soldiers whose sergeant had become so
confused in his orders that he was marching the squad towards a cliff. Seeing
what was to become of the squad, one of the soldiers implored the sergeant.
“Sarge, please say something, even if it’s only goodbye,” the young soldier
cried.
Ordinary
Anglophones have now been placed in the position of the young soldier, being
marched towards a cliff, ordered by a sergeant who can no longer say ‘right
turn’ or ‘left turn.’ Only in our case, it is not a confused drill sergeant
marching our people towards certain doom, but a ever growing group of Anglophone
Internet generals, reveling in their new-found power to control the daily lives
of their people with the click of a computer mouse.
The
latest example is one that should strike terror into the hearts of those who
dream of an Anglophone country that believes in strong community spirit, simple
human decency and the Anglophone respect for the rule of law.
On
Sunday July 30, an announcement from the bishops of the Bamenda Episcopal
Province was read in all Catholic churches to the effect that all Catholic institutions
of learning would reopen on Monday August 7. In the church where I attended
mass that Sunday in Kumbo, there was cheering from the pews. I heard that in
other churches children were jumping up and down in joy and relief.
But
then the Anglophone generals on the Internet swung into action and Facebook and
WhatsApp exploded in manufactured outrage. In Kumbo, someone, no doubt acting
at the direction of our fearless, faceless leaders residing online, set fire to
the Catholic primary school in Tobin, burning the head teacher’s office and the
nursery school classroom. Experts of early childhood education will tell you
that children who attend nursery school do much better in the rest of their
educational careers than those who don’t, so this assault targeted the very
foundation of these children’s futures.
The
same act of vandalism was carried out at a second Catholic primary school about
a mile away.
For less than the price of a bottle of beer
(600 francs for a liter of ‘funge’ the smuggled Nigerian petrol and a box of
matches) our great leaders of Anglophone ‘liberation’ succeeded once again in
putting the hopes and aspirations of the next generation on hold. For this
Monday morning, there wasn’t a uniform to be seen on the streets of Kumbo. The
schools remained desperately shuttered as teachers and kids stayed away in
droves.
This
is the reign of terror our people now live under. This was especially
highlighted on Monday as the aborted Catholic school reopening fell on a “ghost
town” day, the now completely pointless and ultimately self-destructive
shuttering of shops and other businesses for a goal no one can any longer
define. We see shopkeepers lurking by their stores, looking like thieves,
hoping to dart in and serve one or two customers in order to make enough money
to provide a meal for their families. Parents, who know better than most, the
importance of education to children in a region that offers them nothing else,
are still so scared for the safety of those children that they prefer to keep them
home from school. Their fear is not occasioned by LRC gendarmes but their own
young men, indoctrinated by delusional people motivated by dreams of their own
grandeur. The fear in the Anglophone community now is greater than it ever was
during the state of emergency of the 1990s.
Our
online ‘liberators’ call these ‘necessary sacrifices’ for the eventual
liberation of Southern Cameroons or Ambazonia or whatever other name they shall
impose on us next, without benefit of asking our opinion. In this they are like
the workman whose only tool is a hammer and who sees every problem as a nail.
When you ask them why they cannot find another road to the Utopia they seek,
apart from riding on the backs of our children and those of hapless merchants,
they challenge you to propose another solution. Why should I propose a solution
to a problem you raised? I’m a Federalist and believe the teachers and lawyers
gave us an opportunity to work towards another federal system, which the
megalomaniacs of the rejectionist front seized and promptly squandered.
Those
of us who dare to disagree with them are branded as ‘traitors to the cause,’ or
as greedy bribe takers doing the bidding of LRC. Many of these same people have
well known histories of personal corruption which they often disclose when the
fighting starts about sharing the booty from their numerous fundraisers. They
remind you of the profound saying of our people, best rendered in Pidgin as
“thief man i farm full up with trap.”
The
action of the teachers and lawyers panicked the government into caving to most
of their demands and made other concessions that were not even among the
demands. The regime in Yaounde might now feel free to take back their
concessions, thanks to those ‘liberators’, who think they can throw an internet
tantrum, stamp their feet in anger and be handed their own state to play with.
I
read the August 2 “address” to Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia by His Excellency
Chief Chairman/President Julius Tabe in complete amazement. This our ‘leader,’
whom I hear is an IT professional of high standing, seemed completely
unfamiliar with such basic computer tools as grammar and spell check, as the
address was so riddled with errors as to sometimes be incomprehensible. Coupled
with the astounding illogic and the evident rambling thought process behind it,
I was left wondering if this was an internet joke.
These
are the people who want to lead us by sending young men (and probably young
women) to carry out acts of vandalism that could lead to their deaths at the hands
of pitiless gendarmes or to long prison sentences; who are destroying the
economy of our area by terrorizing our communities with arson and threats of
murder.
The
most painful part of this whole exercise is that the regime in Yaounde no
longer seems to care whatever is happening to the Anglophone area. Once they
realized their mistake and restored internet service to our territory, the
international community lost any interest in whatever our ‘liberators’ are
shouting about. If the leaders and believers of Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia
think they shall gain us independence by recruiting the international community
to their cause, they need to sit down with the Dalai Lama and the people of
Tibet, who have been clamoring for their own right to self determination and
their own country since 1912.
Enforcing
illiteracy on our children and turning our small merchants into paupers does
not ensure a sustainable future for Anglophones. On the contrary, it is the
surest way to make sure that we remain second class citizens, only poorer and
more uneducated. May be that’s what our liberators want, since such a community
would be even easier to control, intimidate and exploit.
Pic
Julius Wamey
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