The Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon: Back To The Future 2

As one-time secretary general of the now outlawed Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) I had reached the conclusion that Cameroon was one and indivisible as was being propounded by the ruling elite of this nation. This followed the response of the UN Secretary General, Dr. Kofi Annan, to the many supplications submitted to his office on various occasions by the SCNC. During his visit to Cameroon in August of 2000 he prescribed direct dialogue with the SCNC as a way of reconciling the people of the English speaking Cameroons with those of the French speaking to ensure a one united and indivisible country, rich in diversity.

At the end of that visit Dr. Annan invited the Head of State Mr Paul Biya to the UN to prepare and lay the framework for dialogue, a mission which Mr. Biya undertook in the company of Mr Simon Achidi Achu and Chief Endeley of blessed memory. I was to play a role in the organization of that dialogue but before it could take off my colleagues of the SCNC frustrated it by ostracizing me from t he Southern Cameroons aka Ambazonia. As a result we reached a dead end with that effort. The Governing Council of “SCACUF” has today reached its own dead end.

It is the same end that the founding fathers of Cameroon reached when they returned to the UN with the Conveners of AACI and AAC2 after their meetings in Buea and Bamenda in 1993 and 1994 respectively. It is the same end that Fon Gorji Dinka and Ambazonia reached; that Dr. Nfor Nfor and later Ambassador Forssung reached; that Prof. Chia and others like him reached; etc. There is no blue and white flag in the UN to be picked up by Southern Cameroons aka Ambazonia. The education of the children of the Anglophone Regions of Cameroon has been frustrated.

We were fooled into believing that UNESCO would award Anglophones with a Blank School Year if we followed the advice to keep our children out of school indefinitely; that international institutions will not recognize certificates from Cameroon if we allowed our children to write what was described as “political GCE”; and so on and so forth. In doing this we were forced to abandon the SCNC’s philosophy of the “Force of Argument” and accept the sacrifice of having our children maimed and our businesses paralyzed...