Simon Ngwa is a gentle and polite man, and he apologised to me first for what he was about to say. ‘I’m sorry if this upsets you, but we in Cameroon are very bitter towards Britain,’ he said. ‘As a child, I was taught to look up to the British Crown as a symbol of fair play and the Queen as a guarantor of moral values. But Britain is doing nothing to stop this genocide.’

Mr Ngwa and I had our conversation in a shabby refugee centre in the Nigerian town of Calabar, on Cameroon’s western frontier. Despite his impeccable manners, Mr Ngwa is a wanted man back home in Cameroon. His crime? To have been a member of the Southern Cameroons National Council, a group campaigning for independence for Cameroon’s English-speaking minority.

Compared with Boko Haram, the Niger Delta Avengers and some of the other outlaw crazies rampaging round this corner of West Africa, the council doesn’t sound like a very scary bunch. But right now, standing up for the rights of English-speakers in Francophone Cameroon can get you killed.

Did you even know there were English speakers in Cameroon? Most people don’t. They think of it as a French-speaking place that sends us the odd good football player. I suspect that most Britons are unaware that we even left a colonial footprint there, let alone a forgotten tribe of Anglophiles like Mr Ngwa. All that may be about to change. After half a century as one of Africa’s most stable states, Cameroon is sliding into a vicious, though largely unreported, civil war.

The majority English-speaking South West province capital Buea (Photo: Getty)

On one side are the five million Anglophones. Their region, they say, is under-developed, with all the best jobs in government hogged by French speakers. On the other side, meanwhile, is Cameroon’s strongman, President Paul Biya, who has clung to power since 1982, and who absolutely refuses to countenance any Anglophone demands for a fairer deal. The fissures in ‘La République’ first opened up in 2016, when Anglophones protested against plans to impose French-speaking judges on them. The government responded with a violent crackdown on protestors and the troubles began.

Some of the horrors are carried out by Mr Biya’s feared Battalion d’Intervention Rapide, a US-trained military force known by Anglophones as ‘The Beer’. Others are the work of Anglophone ‘self-defence’ groups, which have sprung up by the dozen in the past year. They’re not armed with much more than machetes, clubs and Dane guns — homemade muskets first brought in by Nordic colonial traders. So usually all they can manage is to kidnap, kill and occasionally behead the odd Beer member. They also organised a widespread Anglophone boycott of the recent presidential elections which did nothing to stop Biya winning again.

So where does Britain come into all this? Speak to any Anglophone activist, and you’ll soon find out. It all goes back to the end of the first world war, when what was then German-run Kamerun was divvied up into a big French chunk and a smaller British chunk, known as British Cameroons.

The latter was brought to life in the writings of Gerald Durrell, who spent much of his time downing gin there with the Fon of Bafut, a bibulous Anglophone chief who helped him collect green-leaf vipers and flying mice.

The British Cameroons ceased to exist in 1961, when there was a referendum and Anglophones had to decide whether to become part of Nigeria or join up with their French brethren. Many wanted self-rule instead, including the Fon, who famously described the referendum as a choice between ‘the Fire and the Deep Sea’. But independence was ruled out by Foreign Office mandarins, who traditionally frowned on plucky little statelets wanting to go it alone.

Times, though, have changed. With Brexit Britain now seen around the world as the champion of the go-it-alone cause, Cameroon’s separatists think they deserve our support. They dream of a breakaway state called Ambazonia, which, they point out, would have the same population as Scotland and even bigger oil reserves. ‘If Scotland can have independence, why can’t we?’ asked Mr Ngwa.

In practice, all Britain is likely to do is join forces with America and France to prod Mr Biya into giving some devolved powers, though he has not shown much interest so far, which is why ‘Ambazonians’ think their only option is to carve out a homeland by force. This plan doesn’t look very promising either, if their military field-craft is anything to go by.

‘Robert’, a fighter with an Anglophone group called the Red Dragons, told me that his unit had relied mainly on magic charms when fighting Mr Biya’s troops. By abstaining from sex and wearing no metal zips or studs in their clothes, they could make themselves bullet-proof, he told me. Then he added: ‘In my first battle, seven of my comrades died. Nearly every time we fight them, they win.’

Still, rather like the impasse in Catalonia, the heavy-handedness of the government response has all but ruled out a return to the status quo. And judging by the way Anglophones now spit out the word ‘La République’, there’s every chance the war will worsen.

True, it’s not yet at the stage of Rwandan-style communal violence. Day to day, Anglophones and Francophones still get on. But it’s hard to see a way back. A younger, internet-mobilised generation wants a better hand than history has dealt it, but Mr Biya, a throwback autocrat, sees compromise as weakness.

And this is one colonial legacy that Britain might feel a prick of conscience about. British student radicals might prefer to concentrate on lobbying Cambridge to return its Benin Bronzes but in Cameroon people are dying because they were lumped half a century ago into a state that didn’t fit them. Where’s the #BiyaMustFall campaign on the campuses? When Mr Ngwa told me how sad he was to be abandoned by the Crown, I couldn’t think of much to say in our defence.

Culled from The Spectator

When the Southern Cameroonian problem started, the general thinking in East Cameroon was that Anglophones could not change the form of the state without following the proper procedure which implied that the country’s so-called republican institutions must be used.

The Southern Cameroons problem was born out of frustration. The government, in its arrogance, had forgotten that the English-speaking minority had its own culture which needed to be respected. The government’s failure to get it right for half a century resulted in strikes by teachers and lawyers which, unfortunately, snowballed to become a civil war that has consumed more than 3,000 lives.

For long, the Yaounde government stayed mute about the gruesome film that was playing out in the two English-speaking regions. In the president’s mind, those who had protested and finally taken up arms were terrorists who had to be neutralized and dealt with according to the “law”. The Yaounde government has always believed that all issues must be dealt with militarily. It holds that killing a few citizens will intimidate the population into silence.

Unfortunately, it had not had the full extent of the frustration of the English-speaking minority. A lot had transpired over the last three decades that the Yaounde government had not noticed. The Southern Cameroons Diaspora had grown in number and many of its members had become wealthy and could help those on the ground to give the government a run for its money.

At its height, the Southern Cameroons crisis had become a millstone around the necks of the country’s politicians. Many questioned the government’s ominous silence. Their concerns had grown exponentially as many young Cameroonians were being mowed down by their own government. They felt that the conflict was unnecessary and could have been averted through inclusive dialogue, as urged by the international community.

It was on this ground that parliamentarians of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), the country’s leading opposition party, felt that it would be immoral and unethical for them to continue looking the other way while other Cameroonians were being slaughtered by a government whose conflict resolution tool of choice is the gun. They therefore decided to take the matter to the parliament where they thought the problem could be laid to rest once and for all.

But ruling party parliamentarians and their allies made sure the crisis was never discussed at the parliament. Despite efforts by SDF parliamentarians to force their way, they were unfortunately pushed to the wall by a government whose objective has never been to address the crisis using the country’s so-called republican institutions.

While the lower house had proven that it was not independent enough and could not address an issue that was putting the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, the upper house, the Senate, for its part, also refused to address this issue that has made its way to the global political arena as Southern Cameroonians across the globe worked very hard to influence global public opinion.

The Southern Cameroons crisis has not only proven that the government is ineffective and its objective is not to improve upon the people’s well-being, it has also proven that the country’s so-called republican institutions are toothless bulldogs that are being used and misused by the executive branch of the government for its personal purpose.

Of course, many French-speaking Cameroonians felt at the time Southern Cameroonians could still take their issues to the parliament even when the parliament was refusing to act. The parliament is supposed to be the place wherein the people’s problems should addressed, but in Cameroon, this august institution is simply there to do one person’s bidding.

French-speaking Cameroonians will, however, come to realize that their faith in their institutions was totally misplaced. They had lambasted Southern Cameroonians for choosing the war path without seeking to know why. They simply failed to understand that nobody in his right mind will prefer war to peace. They had refused to look into the mirror of history to understand that most human disasters are usually manufactured by politicians and the arrogance and power of these politician are usually to blame for the collapse of law and order in any country.

If the killings in Southern Cameroons could not change the minds of French-speaking Cameroonians, something else would. It was just a matter of time for them to realize that their country’s institutions were designed to meet the needs of their leader.  Southern Cameroonians have taken the heat for two years and they have proven to the world that when a people is determined to liberate itself from the yoke of dictatorship, it will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. With their hunting rifles, the fighters have given the government a true run for its money.

It is estimated that some 1,300 army soldiers have met their death in the jungles of Southern Cameroons and the number is growing by the day. Southern Cameroonian fighters, who are supported by the Diaspora, have clearly sent home a message to whoever wants to hear. The fighting in that part of the country will never be won through the barrel of the gun, but through dialogue; genuine and inclusive dialogue that will create the right atmosphere for peaceful co-existence.

Today, French-speaking Cameroonians know that they have nominal republican institutions. They know that going to those institutions to seek redress is a sheer waste of time. The 2018 presidential election has simply come to underscore that true political change will not come through those hollow paper tigers in the name of institutions that are being run to make a single person more important than the nation.

Right from the beginning, it was clear that beating the incumbent through the ballot box will be a Herculean task. The electoral code is beautifully written to ensure that the incumbent is maintained in power. Even the election organizing body, ELECAM, is replete with members of the ruling party and this makes it hard for real impartial elections to be held in a country like Cameroon that lacks basic infrastructure.

ELECAM is just another wing of the ruling CPDM (Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement), a party considered by many Cameroonians are a crime syndicate due to the type of people who are its members. This party’s membership comprises ex-convicts, hardened criminals, murderers, business-people evading taxes, people who are seeking protection against the population they have exploited and embezzlers.

ELECAM, by its very nature, cannot organize free and fair elections in Cameroon and this explains why there were many irregularities in this year’s presidential election, a fact recognized by the American government which clearly indicated in its congratulatory message to the contested winner of the rigged poll.

But the greatest drama that actually exposed the ineffectiveness of Cameroon’s so-called “republican” institutions played out in the Constitutional Council whose members were all members of the ruling party. The president of the Constitutional Council, Clement Atangana, a retired Supreme Court judge, who was struggling with life while on retirement, had clearly indicated that he was there to serve the president’s interest. His appointment was indeed a resuscitation for him as this could be seen in a video in which he was rejoicing after hearing the “good news”. Of course he knew from the beginning that one good turn deserved another and this was obvious during the Constitutional Council’s deliberations.

Other members of the Constitutional Council who did not inspire hope were Florence Arrey, a long-time girlfriend of the country’s justice minister, Laurent Esso; Foumane Akame, a one-time minster under Mr. Biya whose wife is also a ruling party parliamentarian; Joseph-Marie Bipoum  woum who was also a minster under the current president; Paul Nchoji Nkwi also  a former minister and Jean-Baptiste Baskouda who has also served under the same president.

The Constitutional Council, whose decision is final and irreducible, had been set up to ensure the incumbent stayed in power. Despite attempts by the opposition during post-electoral fraud hearings in Yaounde to have the Constitutional Council members to recuse themselves because of several conflicts of interest, their appeals clearly fell on deaf ears. Members of this body are eternally indebted to the country’s president who is mockingly known by the public as the “monarch” for his haughty attitude and incompetence.   

Not only was that application thrown out by the Constitutional Council for lack of any law to support the opposition’s claim of conflict of interest, all other applications by the opposition were also thrown out after a five-day deliberation. The presidential poll results that had been making the rounds on social media two weeks prior to the proclamation of the results by the Constitutional Council were simply confirmed and Mr. Biya who has been in power for 36 years, will be in power again for seven more years; a time many Cameroonians believe will bring more death and destruction to a country that is not only at war, but gradually heading to the bottom of the abyss.

With the Constitutional Council having delivered its verdict, French-speaking Cameroonians have now come to terms with the fact that they do not have reliable institutions. They now understand that Southern Cameroonians were not wrong when they showed clear contempt for those institutions.

French-speaking Cameroonians have been given a dose of their own medicine and many of them are incapable of swallowing it. They have been grumbling, but that is all they can do as they are not made of the stuff that makes brave people. The presidential election was not only a test of their institutions, it was also a trial of the oral bravery and intellectualism that they have been professing over the last two years.  

Prof. Kamto might have won the election on paper, but Mr. Biya will be at the Unity Palace for seven more years as French-speaking Cameroonians lick their wounds and accept their tag of cowards. Cameroon’s “republican institutions” are, at best, talking workshops. They have been designed to keep the monarch in power and anybody who holds that issues in Cameroon will be addressed by those institutions is simply living in the past. The truth is out and Cameroonians must start looking for new ways to address their issues. Their institutions are not for the people. They belong to the ‘monarch’.

By Joachim Arrey, Ph.D

Toronto, Canada

Dear Francophones,

I am indeed very pleased that you guys did not take to the streets today after the contested election results were released by a controversial Constitutional Council.

I was indeed scared that in the event of any violence, many of you who are all barks, and no bites, would simply pack up your stuff and head to the southwest as many of your Bassa, Bamileke, Ewondo and Batanga people did when Ahidjo and the French unleashed a reign of terror on you guys in the 1950s and 1960s when a few of your people thought they could fight for independence.

We, in Southern Cameroons, never had our independence through any bloodshed. We had a culture of parliamentary democracy wherein freedom of speech was key and elections were just an exercise in which the people sincerely chose who had to lead them.

We never used any brutality to address differences and we ensured that people were punished for the crimes they committed and not for the opinions they held. We were a safe sanctuary for many people who were unsafe in their country.

That is why there are many of your folks in the Southwest, a territory whose sub-soil is very rich, and some of them were foolish enough to betray Southern Cameroonians when we made up our minds to challenge the corrupt Yaounde government that had marginalized us for decades.

These folks whom I consider as Southern Cameroonians will continue to live with us, but I must be prompt to add that those who do not share our pain and aspiration should learn to be neutral. They must understand that the people’s pain is real and it could lead to violent reactions.

I would like to clearly point out that some of the most engaging of our supporters have been descendants of those refugees who fled to our land and I truly appreciate their contribution to our effort to make our problem known across the globe.

When we felt we had been pushed to the wall, we decided that it was time for the world to be aware of our pain and suffering. Our battle was also a fight against corruption, injustice and disrespect.

You simply did not understand us, and you were adamant despite our attempts to explain why we were reacting they way we reacted. Your all knowing attitude never allows you to humble yourselves. True wisdom, you should know, comes with humility.

Instead of joining us to help get things on the right path, many of you opted to side with the government. You called us names. You told the world we were arrogant and that we had little or no respect for your Republican institutions. While we were angry, we knew your time would come. It was just a matter of time.

Some of us understand that the noise you make is simply designed to hide your cowardice and ignorance. You are a people who can easily be intimidated and you are corruptible. It is therefore no surprise to us that your leaders always use bread and sardine to corrupt your minds during elections like the one that has just ended or when you are angry.

The past presidential election has simply proven that you lack the right mentality to challenge your tormentors. It has proven that we, Southern Cameroonians are not arrogant, but principled and determined to ensure errors of the past get corrected and this must happen sooner rather than later.

It now seems like there is a lull in the chaos in Southern Cameroons, but there cannot be any respite when there is no justice. Do not be mistaken. We still have unfinished business and we still have a stomach for a fight. As long as your government continues to run the show like a personal estate, we will continue to find creative ways to erode its authority.

While you continue to eat your bread and sardine, we will use all the means available to us to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.

The blood of those who have been slaughtered by your troops will not go in vain. We believe in the philosophy of one for all and all for one, and we will continue to work as a team to get the government to the negotiating table where we will find the ultimate solutions to our issues.

Your cowardice did not start today. Your government knows your weaknesses. You are all noise and no action. We, the minority, gave you freedom of expression. Today, you speak as if you were born with it.

In the process, we lost many of our brothers and sisters. We also gave you multiparty politics. In the process thousands were slaughtered in our part of the world while you spent your time drowning yourselves in alcohol. The physical scars are still there in cities like Bamenda and Kumba.

All you know is to gossip and seek to break down courageous men and women who really want to engineer genuine change within the country. You use your fake intellectualism to distort debates and bamboozle your own people. Your unreliable ways make it hard to work with you.

The mere sight of a police officer sends you into fear even when you have not committed any crime. Your leaders understand this and they are using it to their advantage. That is why prior to the proclamation of today’s election results, all your major cities were on lockdown.

I would not like to make this letter long, but will promptly advise that you are the architects of your own hardship and disappointment. You do not know how to work together. Every single one of you is more intelligent than the other.

You have to throw away your coat of self-importance if you must jettison the invisible shackles of slavery that have been put on you by your own people. Learn from us and you will deliver happiness to future generations.

Do not be scared of death, after all the Bible you read clearly points out that for you to go to Heaven, you must die. We, Southern Cameroonians, are prepared to lay down our lives to ensure our children do not experience the marginalization we have gone through.

You must muster courage if you must defend your victory. Prof. Kamto is your president. He won the election. Running away from soldiers stationed by the government will not take Prof. Kamto to the Unity Palace. If you need change, you must do the right thing. It never comes on a platter of gold.

Sincerely,

Joachim Arrey
Toronto, Canada

This presidential election has given the opportunity to Anglophones to send a very strong message to Yaounde and they have done so 500%. Anglophones don’t seem to realize how powerful a message they sent to the whole world by boycotting the election 100%.

A boycott is a very important tool that has been used successfully during the civil rights movement in the 60s by Dr Martin Luther King and black people in the United States. It was used by Mahatma Ghandi and his people in India during their resistance to British rule. In South Africa black people used it successfully against apartheid.

Let nobody fool you Anglophones. You have achieved a great goal in your struggle for freedom and justice. The world was watching, the UN saw it all and took special note. Yaoundé is panicking but won’t let you see it. The message was powerful and resounding. You have gained great respect even in the eyes of Francophones who laughed and mocked you as ” Anglofools” or as “les fauteurs de trouble” when you started this struggle and go rolled in mud, shot and maimed and tour businesses burnt or looted.

Now, I want to say this. Let no single one of you go out after the election results are announced, Biya or Kamto being the winner. If you get arrested in Yaounde or Douala and found to be an Anglophone then you are a terrorist that has crossed to the francophone zone to incite trouble and you know what will be done to you. Let Francophones feel the pangs of injustice and let’s see the look on their faces. I will also advise that everyone saves some emergency money to use for a quick exit if necessary.

Source: Anonymous

The judges at the Constitutional Council will go down in the nation’s hall of infamy and shame; the 10 senile-looking men and one socially-retired woman who validated the massive fraud that was perpetrated against the Cameroonian people by ELECAM.

As an uncircumcised appendage of the ruling CPDM party, ELECAM shamelessly falsified the results and gave victory to their paymaster, Biya. And despite the mountain of evidence presented by lawyers for the opposition candidates, the CC merely validated the ELECAM fraud.

This is how you win elections in Cameroon. Despite the huge material and financial resources at their disposal, CPDM elite showed little interest in Biya’s re-election and ran a lackluster “bread-and-sardines” campaign, so glaringly bereft of ideas and vision and generally lacking in depth of thinking as to answer the basic question whether Cameroonians were better-off now, than they were in 2011.

Biya lost at the polls but won at ELECAM! It is just a power grab by the vampire elite that has captured and taken the country hostage. Cameroonians must rise up in resistance and take back their country.

The hearings at the Constitutional Council continued on Wednesday with Prof. Kamto’s team producing more evidence to convince the Biya appointed Constitutional Council to understand that a decision other than the one that confirms the people’s choice might plunge the country into a spiral of violence and destruction.

The Kamto team, consisting of the country’s finest lawyers, proved that the country’s laws had been designed to favor a particular presidential candidate, as all their complaints before and during the presidential election had been clearly ignored by ELECAM, the country’s election-organizing body.

But the icing on the cake came when Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla spoke to the Constitutional Council, urging its members to listen to the people’s wishes and aspirations, as there could be consequences that might come with lots of regrets.

He called on the Constitutional Council to understand that when the people do not get listened to, there will always be adverse consequences. He recalled that since the government failed to listen to Southern Cameroonians lawyers and teachers in October 2016, the country has been going through a tough time and that the fear of a separation was real.

He underscored the point that no law or ordinance could be mightier than the will of the people. He recognized the capabilities of the members of the constitutional Council, urging them to prove that the country was bigger than any individual.

He pointed out that many leaders would come and go, but Cameroon will always be around and it will be prudent and wise for the Constitutional Council to take a decision that would give members of that august body an enviable place in the country’s history.

Another brilliant barrister who distinguished himself as a legal force to reckon was Barrister Ikome Mbella of the Southwest region who drew the Constitutional Council’s attention to the tragedy unfolding in the two English-speaking regions.  He advised Constitutional Council members to do justice to the people of Cameroon to prevent the country from being caught in the throes of chaos that might destroy and interrupt lives.

Other lawyers weighed in on the matter, urging the Constitutional Council member to do the right thing. Some advised them to understand that though they had been appointed by the country’s President, Paul Biya, they still had the right and obligation to exercise their right to apply the law as expected by the people of Cameroon.

It should be recalled that the Constitutional Council had been created by Mr. Biya and all its members are supporters of the ruling CPDM. The wife of the president of the Constitutional Council, Clement Atangana, is a CPDM parliamentarian, the wife of Mr. Fouman Akame is also a CPDM parliamentarian, and Professor Joseph Marie Bipoum Woum was a minister under President Paul Biya and chairman of the board of directors of several state-owned corporations.

For her part, Justice Florence Arrey, another member of the Constitutional Council, is the recognized long-term girlfriend of the country’s current justice minister, Laurent Esso, and the two have a couple of children from a relationship that has lasted decades. Laurent Esso, it should be underscored is President Paul Biya’s closest collaborator and he played a significant role in the establishment of the Constitutional Council and the appointment of its members.

This therefore compels many Cameroonians to think that the hearing at the Constitutional Council is indeed an exercise in futility as all members of the Constitutional Council are related to the ruling part and have all been compromised.

Meanwhile, after throwing out Prof. Kamto’s application for members of the Constitutional Council to recuse themselves yesterday in the morning because of the numerous conflicts of interest outlined in the applicant’s application, the Kamto legal team on Tuesday put up an impressive show on the irregularities that actually marred the October 7, 2018 poll.

The team’s lead legal expert, Barrister Ndoki, put the team’s collective effort and determination to expose the ruling party’s sloppy rigging strategy on display. The team outlined cases of massive fraud, with numbers for many polling stations not adding up and some results report signed without being properly verified if they had been signed by the right persons. The reported cases of fraud concerned, in particular, the Far North, the South, and the Northwest and Southwest regions.

In the two English-speaking regions, it was reported that since the population had been chased away by government forces that had resorted to shooting young men, army soldiers voted as many times as they could, oblivious of the fact that everybody was aware that the population had moved into East Cameroon and on voting day, there was no security for those who wanted to venture out to vote.

Some of the results reports did not even have the signatures of the returning officers and where there were signatures, the number of signatures on the first pages did not match the number of signatures on the following pages. Some results reports were produced based on the recommendations of the authorities who, in many cases, were ruling party supporters.

In the Far North region which has been given to Mr. Paul Biya, the number of votes cast was higher than the number of registered voters. The CPDM rigging machine in that region had actually worked overtime and it failed to take into consideration the number of registered voters.

But it was in the South region, which is the president’s region which the ruling party felt that it had a free hand to do whatever it wanted. Its sloppiness resulted in many mistakes, with even dead people voting.  The Constitutional Council session was put off to Wednesday after Council members were totally overwhelmed by the evidence Prof. Kamto’s team provided and this great legal team has continued on Wednesday to prove that the election had been marred by irregularities just to give Mr. Biya an advantage that might extend his stay in power.

Cameroon is at the crossroads. The country’s history is being rewritten and the Constitutional Council has a place in this effort to bring peace, stability and justice to a troubled country. Members of the Constitutional Council might have been compromised, but they still have an obligation towards the people of this country that has been in the spotlight for decades for all the wrong reasons.

By Kingsley Betek and Sama Ernest in Yaounde

Dr. Joachim Arrey, a Canada-based writer, journalist, political analyst and translator, has been one of the many people around the world who have been calling for dialogue as a means to address the Southern Cameroons crisis. A native of the Southwest region of Cameroon, Dr. Arrey holds that genuine and sustainable solutions to the destructive crisis can only be found at the negotiating table.  While in the UK recently, he took time off his tight schedule to visit the Cameroon Concord News Group’s (CCNG) global headquarters where he spoke with Group Chairman, Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai, on the goings-on in Cameroon. It was a pleasure chatting with him. Read…

Cameroon Concord News: Thanks for visiting us. A lot has been going on in Southern Cameroons and things appear to only get worse by the day. What do you think can be done to put an end to the reckless killing of young men and women in Southern Cameroons?

Dr Arrey: I have been following what is happening in our part of the country very closely. Things are not looking great out there. Our people are dying and it beats my imagination that we have not yet understood that all wars find their solutions at the negotiating table. There is no price for who can kill more people. Both parties must understand this. Let’s not let our emotions drive us to ridiculous extents. I have been urging both parties to head to the negotiating table and I still stand by that. The government has to find a way to bring these killings to an end. We are losing our human resources and this will come back to bite us some day. The financial resources we are using to buy arms could be diverted to real development projects that can create jobs for our youths. We have to be strategic in our thinking and we must learn from the mistakes of other people.

Cameroon Concord News: But the Yaounde government is not listening to any calls for an inclusive dialogue. What do you expect the oppressed people of Southern Cameroons to do?

Dr Arrey: Self-defense is a legitimate right of every citizen recognized under international law, but this does not imply that we cannot talk peace around a negotiating table during war time. A lot of atrocities have already been committed and I feel really bad that a small protest by teachers and lawyers has been allowed to spill out of proportion.  The gory images coming out of Southern Cameroons tell me that there are huge war crimes being committed by both sides. What both parties must understand is that at the end of the fighting, all these atrocities will be investigated and those who will be found guilty of gross human rights violations and war crimes will have to pay the price. I would like to use this opportunity to call on the government of Cameroon to reconsider some of its decisions. The truth is that military action will not give it the fast solution it needs. Southern Cameroonians have expressed genuine grievances and I think it is only proper for the government to listen to calls for an inclusive dialogue that will help to lay this matter to rest. The world has evolved and the days when military brutality was considered a weapon of choice to address national issues have long gone. We have to be in and of this world and this requires us to adopt approaches that other civilized nations have used to deal with their minorities.

Cameroon Concord News: You have always talked of federalism and you always point out that Canada holds an effective solution to our problem. Can you explain this to our readers?

Dr Arrey: Thanks for granting me the opportunity to discuss this particular point with your readers. I have always held that a well-structured federal system will spare Cameroon the type of crisis it is going through at this moment. The world has changed and the people want to take ownership of their own issues. They want to take control of their lives and this can only happen if a federal system is brought to our country. The current crisis in Southern Cameroons is a direct consequence of the over-centralization that has taken place over the last five decades. The development and management of any country in the world is always a work in progress and for that work to progress by leaps and bounds, there must be dialogue at all times. Cameroonian leaders must stop thinking that the top-bottom approach that has worked in the past will work in modern times. If we have to avoid situations like the current one that is tearing the country apart, we must adopt new and innovative approaches that will guarantee us peace and progress. No country develops when there are perceptions of injustice, nepotism, discrimination and marginalization.

This therefore brings me to the role Canada can play to help us out of this pretty mess. I have profound respect for the Canadian political system. It is a federal system that has brought peace to this great nation that has been the envy of the world for decades. It is a country that does not talk, but it acts. Its federal system grants the provinces autonomy over certain issues that could result in conflicts if not well managed. Let us not forget that Canada also has a minority – a French-speaking minority – Quebec – that has a totally different culture from the rest of the country.

The federal government has yielded a lot of ground to this province so as to bring peace to the country. The bright and praise-worthy management of the country by past and present Canadian prime ministers like Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau has helped to put Canada in the spotlight for all the right reasons. Cameroon should seek to find out how Canada pulled this off to the extent that it has become one of the best countries in the world to raise a family. The country’s bilingual nature should advise our leaders that we could have something in common with Canada. It never hurts to borrow from those who have posted great results.

Cameroon Concord News: You sound so informed and experienced. Will you be ready to go back home to give a helping hand if called upon, especially regarding the Southern Cameroons crisis?

Dr Arrey:  I am already preparing my retirement and I have made up my mind to return to Cameroon, especially to my native Ossing where I believe I have a lot to offer. I don’t need to be called up by anybody for me to return to Cameroon. There is a lot to be done out there and I think I will be more than happy to serve the people of my small city and division. I have a lot of experience in many areas and I am willing to share that experience with anybody who seeks to have a share of it. It is just but normal for me to give back to my people who were there for me during my hour of need.

I also have my father’s cocoa and coffee plantations to take care of. Those are the plantations that helped to give me the education that has taken me to all the nooks and crannies of the world. As for writing and politics, these two elements run in my blood. I will always be there to write in order to inform Cameroonians and to analyze political situations for many people to gain a better understanding of what is happening in their country. That is what nature wants me to do and that is one of the many things I will be doing upon retirement.

Cameroon Concord News: Still on politics, I understand it runs in the family. I have been reliably advised that your daughter who lives in Canada is already in politics. Is that true?

Dr Arrey: My daughter has chosen a different path in life. At the tender age of 14 she told me she wanted to be in politics and that she wanted to fight for immigrants after having noticed my own frustrations in life. I cannot but admire and appreciate her for understanding my pain. She immediately joined the Liberal party of Canada where she has been making her modest contribution. She has been participating in elections in Canada, not as a candidate, but a worker for her party. She is still in university and she must achieve all her academic dreams before becoming an active political player. I cannot but wish her the best and will always give her my entire support whenever she needs it.

Cameroon Concord News: What do you make of the political drama that is playing out in the nation’s capital at this time?

Dr Arrey: Cameroon is really going through a tough moment in its history. Boko Haram is still an active threat in the north, Southern Cameroons is still boiling and seeing what is almost bursting out of the ground in Yaounde gives me goose bumps. I sincerely hope that the truth will prevail. I really want the people’s choice to be respected so that we can have peace. If the authorities do not respect the will of the people, they should be ready to deal with the consequences. I have always said that Cameroon is a ticking time bomb and that if care is not taken, it could blow up one day and this will mean killing lots of people and destabilizing the entire sub-region. I want peace to prevail, but seeing what is already happening in Yaounde, I know we are in for tough times.

Professor Kamto has already declared that the people have given him a mandate which he must defend at all cost and that already sounds like he is preparing for a big fight. This, he says, is based on the results his party has. The government and the ruling party are struggling to prove that he is wrong and they are saying that only the constitutional council has the right to announce election results. I am on the sidelines and waiting for the official announcement. I only hope it will come to help Cameroonians live in peace. If things go the other way, then our country will have to deal with a huge crisis. I pray for the best for my beloved country. I just want my fellow Cameroonians to live in peace. This will surely require a change in the way the government has been running the show.

Cameroon Concord News: Thank you, Dr. Arrey, for sharing your perspective with us. We hope you will find more time to visit us in the days and months ahead.

Dr. Arrey: The pleasure is mine. You have been doing a great job and I hope I will continue to read your inspiring and informative editorials.

Prof. Maurice Kamto’s announcement on Monday, October 8, 2018, wherein he claimed victory following a presidential poll, has left government officials in a confused state. Kamto, a jurist and professor of law, understands the implications and consequences of his announcement and the timing of that announcement could not be better.

The international community is gradually taking a look at Cameroon and the elections are expected to produce a leader who can help address the conflict in the two English-speaking regions that is tearing the country apart.

Elections in Cameroon have never really been free and fair and Mr. Biya who has ruled the country with an iron fist for 36 years has used all the tricks in the book to extend his stay in power. But this year’s elections are surely going to undo him. At 86, Mr. Biya still holds that he could use those old tricks to obtain seven more years and his intimidation to silence the people who have all these years been looking for avenues to retire him.

Cameroonians have been robbed of many election victories by the Biya regime for decades and election rigging seems to be Mr. Biya’s stock in trade. In 1992, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), through its flagbearer, John Fru Ndi, beat Mr. Paul Biya in a highly contested poll that almost dragged the country into a civil war.

The victory was handed to Mr. Biya by a bunch of corrupt Supreme Court judges who had been appointed by Mr. Biya himself.  Ever since Prof. Kamto made his announcement, the Yaounde government has been trying to intimidate him and his collaborators.

Even before the announcement was made, the country’s territorial administration minister, Atanga Nji, an ex-convict, had been threatening to unleash the law against anybody who dared to declare himself as the winner of the presidential poll.

But his threats have clearly fallen on deaf ears. Prof. Kamto is a legal expert himself and he understands the law more than Atanga Nji who is simply a secondary school drop-out.

The territorial administration minister had said nobody was above the law, but failed to let Cameroonians know if any of his party members had been arrested for the vast electoral fraud orchestrated by his party.

The Internet is awash with videos of the fraud, but neither ELECAM, the body responsible for the organization of elections, nor the territorial administration ministry, had made mention of such fraud. Does this imply that ruling party members are above the law?

If government officials cannot respect the law, why do they think others must respect the law? Was it not on Election Day that Issa Tchiroma, the country’s communications minister, boastfully said after voting that Mr. Biya already had a majority? Why do government officials think that they are too intelligent for everybody?

The dark ages are behind Cameroonians and nobody, not even the country’s president can deceive the people into believing that he has won the election.

Issa Tchiroma can only cry about the situation. He knows that the match is over. They have mistreated Cameroonians for too long and their tricks are known now by the public and he cannot be taken seriously. The world knows his allegations are unjustifiable and baseless.

“”…..Kamto acted in violation of the rules and regulations governing the election…You cannot win election without obtaining an overwhelming majority of votes in the Far North region of Cameroon…the CPDM has the region in its palms,” he said.

He might think he is convincing anybody that Prof. Kamto wants to plunge the country into chaos, but Cameroonians already know the truth. Issa Tchiroma and Atanga Nji, it should be recalled, are among government officials who have actually caused the Southern Cameroons crisis to escalate.

The threat of arresting Prof. Kamto will surely not have any impact. The government knows that Kamto and his team are capable of putting two million Cameroonians on the streets if they play foul. They might have succeeded to contain John Fru Ndi in Bamenda in 1992, but 2018 is different from 1992. The advent of new media makes it easy for people to easily converge wherever they want and Cameroonians are prepared to defend their votes.

If they look into the mirror of history, they will find out that other dictatorial regimes have tried that but failed woefully. The case of Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire are good examples that can enable Atanga Nji and Issa Tchiroma to understand that the changing times require different strategies.

You can intimidate some of the people some of the time, but you cannot intimidate all of the people all the time. Social media is an important tool that has granted the people access to the public sphere as they are armed with the right information.

Mr. Biya and his collaborators must understand that if they do not act appropriately, the country might go up in flames. Cameroon is already bogged down in the north with Boko Haram, while Southern Cameroonians fighters are making life hard for the Yaounde government in a war that is not conventional. If the government is not careful, it will be caught up in another battle with the Francophone majority that has been silent for too long.

With diminishing resources, the Yaounde government cannot afford to fight a war on three fronts. And the third from could be very nasty, as it will be fought in the full glare of the international community.  The Kamto declaration should be seen as signal to the Biya regime that its time is over. It an alert to a regime that has lost its way and it is incapable of addressing the issues facing the country.

Mr. Biya and his men should see the writing on the wall. Their time is up and it is in their interest if they choose the honorable way out.  Mr. Kamto has decided to leave the door open for Mr. Biya and his men to walk out in dignity. He has advised them to come for negotiations on how the transition could be smooth.

If they fail to listen to Prof. Kamto’s wise counsel, they will have to deal with an angry crowd that might want to take its pound of flesh for the pain it has been put through for 36 years. Instead of being confused and trying to play hardball with the public, they should seize the opportunity offered to them by Professor Kamto.

If they push ahead with their plan through their questionable Constitutional Council, then they have clearly opted for a path that will expose them to violence and disgrace. There is still time for Biya and his men to put on their thinking caps.

Everything has its time. The time for tricks is over. It is in the interest of the regime and that of the country if Mr. Biya concedes defeat and congratulates Prof. Kamto on his success.  The world is watching and the international community is already nodding in approval and this is giving Prof. Kamto the courage he needs to move forward with his plan of action.

By Kingsley Betek and Irene Nanyongo in Yaounde

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By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Group Chairman