Some few days after President Biya took over from the late Ahmadou Ahidjo, he announced that Cameroon will never go to the IMF or World Bank to beg for money. Biya had been handed over everything including the country’s reserves. Some months before the former head of state was lowered into an early grave in Dakar Senegal, Cameroon was already seeking first and second standby World Bank accords. Cameroon Tribune, the nation’s national daily newspaper wholeheartedly approved of the relations with the IMF and the World Bank.

The country’s lead editorialists such as Charles Ndongo, Eric Chinje, Ful Peter, Boh Herbert, Lawrence EyongEchaw, Ntemfac Ofege, Abel Mbida,  Emmanuel Wongibe and Ebonkem Forminken went on to threaten anyone, like Paddy Mbawa and Chief Bissong Etahoben who campaigned against the IMF.  The super editors made sure positions and ranks were terminated as a result of any political discourse on the IMF/World Bank.

That was in the early stages of rigor and moralization when no one anticipated a vicious salary cut and an unprecedented devaluation of the FCFA including the emergence of Ni John Fru Ndi and the Social Democratic Front. Civil servants regularly told those in the private sector that “after all my salary is passing”. From what we now know, neither these Cameroon government media gurus nor the super editors have been charged for deceiving the Cameroonian people.

The celebration of the coming of the IMF’s privatization has continued ever since. So today we can sing with pride of the collapse of the Cameroon Shipping Lines, Cameroon Airlines, Cameroon Bank, Cameroon Railway Company, Cameroon Aluminum Company (CELLUCAM), the Public Works Department, Cameroon Transport Company (SOTUC), the Cameroon Cotton Company (SODECOTTON), Preventive Medicine Department, Produce Marketing Board, Chantier Naval, the CDC, SOCAPALM etc

The Supreme Court has been replaced with the Special Criminal Court. French speaking state counsels and judges with no mastery of the English language are being appointed to head courts in Anglophone Cameroon. Cameroonian prosecutors turned up in court because of fear for their jobs. Nationally, the arrest of highly placed government officials has been greeted with cold-hearted intolerance from rightwing CPDM politicians – several of whom say they got what they deserved for embezzling state funds.

The truth is all too clear. Who is responsible for the collapse of Cameroon as a nation? Some of the very politicians like Garga Haman Adji, Fru Ndi, Maigari Bello Bouba, Jean Jacque Ekindi, Diakolle Daisalla, Akoteh, Dr Aka Muan, lawyers and journalists who championed the cause of democracy and the rule of law against the Biya dictatorship. Now they support, or fail to speak up against anything about the Yaounde regime. Where is the movement that was seeking justice for Captain Guerandi? Where is the Union for Change? Where is the real UPC that represented the late Um Nyobe and Dr Felix Moumie? Where is Laakam? Where is the Anglophone National Congress? Where is the SDF? Where is the SCNC?

In a nation where laws are widely abused to settle personal scores and to discriminate against minorities, no answer is needed. Any anti Biya official can be sent to jail and yet Europeans and US diplomats are busy romancing with this consortium of CPDM crime syndicates operating in Yaounde, the nation’s capital. The French can free anyone sentenced in Cameroon and they are making a mockery of our already poor and corrupt judiciary system.

Former barons of the regime have spent years in Cameroon’s most hellish prisons some in solitary confinement. Amnesty International reported today Thursday the 14^th of July 2016 that more than 1000 people are being detained in a prison facility in Maroua meant for 350 persons. Many have been killed while awaiting trial.

Cameroon now has two specific problems: what to do with an 83 years old frail leader and a government that has no succession plan. But Cameroon also has surely larger problems. Every time a Cameroonian civil servant, radio and television commentators, lawyers, judges, politicians, human rights activists, the business community and the clergy appease the leadership of the ruling CPDM party, the social space occupied by them grows widely. The only solution left is for us to sell Cameroon and share the money. If it does not work for you with money after the sale, former Cameroonian citizens will of course have the resources to relocate in other countries such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Nigeria, and Ghana and why not in the West.

The very slow and agonized fissuring of the state of Cameroon is to be measured not only in the arrests of senior government officials and Biya’s continued stay in power, nor only by entertainment coming from Brenda Biya and her mum, Chantal Biya. It can be measured, too, by a moral collapse and a cowed ambivalence of the silent majority. Those who are too frightened to confront the West backed Biya crime syndicate today will find themselves being consumed by it tomorrow. Inoni, Marafa, Mebara who is next? But before that happens, it will be good that we sell the country and share the money.

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai (Cameroon Concord News Group)

Prime Minister, Head of government, Philemon Yang, yesterday July 11, 2016, urged newly promoted personnel to be assiduous and expedient in carrying out their functions. The cabinet hall at the 6^th floor of the Star-Building hosted the ceremony to install newly appointed officials in the Prime Minister’s Office. The officials included 11 Technical Advisers, 33 secretaries, 47 roving officers known as attache, five Directors and their deputies, appointed both in the Cabinet and the General Secretariat of the Prime Minister’s Office on July 4 and 5, 2016 by the President of the Republic.

Commissioning the officials, the Prime Minister, Head of Government, Philemon Yang, urged them to be assiduous, hardworking, determined and courageous as they carry on with their tasks. He reminded them of their role in assisting him achieve the mission entrusted by the Head of State. “We are there to help the President of the Republic in his mission”, he stated while exhorting the newly promoted officials to shun all that can tarnish the image of the country such as corruption.

 The Premier said they must give their opinion on each file that is sent to them, while admonishing the senior officials not to keep files for too long. Philemon Yang insisted on hard-work, stating that they must show their know-how in order to merit the confidence of the Head of State. Their appointment, the Prime Minister remarked, comes within a particular context of the Emergence Plan put in place by the Head of State and the country’s hosting of the 2016 and 2019 African Cup of Nations tournaments.

With these important events, the Prime Minister told the promoted that the Head of State and the government count on them for the success of the plan and the hosting of the continent’s biggest football events. While the official phase of the commissioning was on in cabinet hall of the PM’s office, family members and dance groups thronged the parking lot of the main entrance of the office where they celebrated with their loved ones.

Cameroon Tribune

Ntemfac,
I am concerned that this question of proving an alleged consent of parties out side a treaty framework conflates the international law basis on which the creation of states and the right of trust territories to independence clearly laid out in the UN treaty regime must firmly be considered.  The voting pattern of the Republic of Cameroun against the plebiscites in the territories of the British Cameroons ie Northern and Southern Cameroons is irrevocable proof that the plebiscites themselves cannot be considered as evidence of consent by a non consenting party, non participating party to the plebiscite.  Nor can the opinion of some individuals no matter how influential they might have been at the time be relied on to conclude that the consenting and non consenting parties were ad idem on a supposed union and the terms of the supposed putative union.

The committee of experts established by the Republic of Cameroun as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the independence of the Republic of Cameroun considered all the arguments which some have considered as evidence of a union and come out with the conclusion that no treaty of a union exist leading Professor and expert in the committee to construe the so-called peaceful revolution in 1972 as the creation of a new nation called then the United Republic of Cameroun.  That was a smart attempt to interpret history  because absent  a union treaty as mandated by article 102 of the UN Charter, and absent an informed consent of the parties  reduced into treaty specifying the terms of the treaty relating to the nature of the relationship of the supposed parties,  Ahidjo purported to seek the franchise of the people of both the Republic of Cameroun and the Southern Cameroons about the putative union through a referendum.

That was the intendment of the referendum and those who have eyes should access the records and read for themselves. His clear intention was to correct the absence of a union treaty on the basis of which the occupation of the Southern Cameroons was anchored through purportedly seeking the consent of the concerned parties through a referendum.  Unfortunately this referendum which he called the peaceful revolution suffered even more illegalities: It was conducted under  a state of emergency and violated Cameroun’s treaty obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  There was therefore no  valid franchise  as Kale Kales were organized to intimidate the population before, during and after the poll. The abolition of political parties in 1966, the abduction  of Ernest Ouandie in 1969 and his assassination on 15 January 1971 formed the basis of tighten the state of emergency which was extended to the Southern Cameroons since 1963.  The right to boycott or abstain the pool was not allowed or tolerated.

Due to the state of emergency, there was no citizen education about the options available if any. The decree calling for the poll was immediate and the supposed vote of OUI and YES in many polling stations were clearly an imposition on a quarantined citizenry.  If this referendum was called and imposed to legitimize the annexation, it failed to conform to or comply with the requirements of the Geneva Convention on the Law of Treaties and article 102 of the UN Charter.  The treaty basis of this mandatory treaty obligation is intended also to notify the UN  about the alteration of the colonial boundaries of a member state which unless modified by treaty, remain sacrosanct as inherited at independence.  This is consistent with the African Constitutive Act as well. Denis Atemkeng, Professor Anyangwe and many international law experts have written on this and I totally associate with their opinio juris.

Before even Ahidjo or Biya could take any move to validate the annexation through the 1972 referendum, Paul Biya stepped in and nullified it in 1984.  That fraudulent attempt to whitewash   the annexation of the territory of the Southern Cameroons through the illegal referendum to obviate its UN treaty obligations against the resort to force and colonial imposition to annex territory was subverted by the vitiation of the criminal referendum and its legal effects which reverted LRC to the status quo ante at its independence on January 1 1960.  Since  the  fraudulent 1972 referendum or peaceful revolution never succeeded in providing a treaty base  duly registered at the UN pursuant to article 102 of the UN Charter for the annexation of the Southern Cameroons or the modification of the boundaries of LRC  through a purported consent obtained through that referendum that in 1972 even before it was nullified by Paul Biya in 1984, the status quo ante of LRC at independence remains. That status quo is the affirmation and recognition of its international boundaries in January 1 1960.

I have stated that consent in law is not a mere assertion of a set of facts and say this fact constitutes consent and this does not. If consent is derived on some inferences made, the inferences must be the only reasonable inferences to be made in the circumstances. For example some persons have jumped on Muna’s committee speech to the UN to purport to find consent without having the benefit of  reading and knowing what Charles Okalla and a huge delegation of LRC said in contradiction.  They must go back to 1952 and read the forceful arguments of Um Nyobe for Unification before independence and that of LRC other leaders in opposition. They must read the UN fact finding mission reports the last of which was in 1958 which advised against unification.
We must therefore assess the basis of the current situation  in which we find ourselves outside the considerations of alleged consent as there was none and none can legally be inferred in a legal context which mandates a treaty,  We must first as good scholars first characterize our present predicament as that of colonized or territorially annexed people.  I know that the inadequate knowledge of the French language and the French component of this case by some has forced them to consider but a piecemeal approach to understanding this case. But no reasonable lawyer makes a case based on the relations between parties without a detailed understanding of the case of one of the parties.

The case made out by LRC lies on their construction of the alleged referendum of 1972 which was quickly vitiated by Paul Biya in 1984  even before it was formalized at the UN as mandated by article 102 of the Charter and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.  LRC’s case does not lie on alleged inferred consent or some other tenuous legal constructs. It is  the alleged referendum 1972, 1972 and 1972 which they celebrate every 20th May and call it ” fete de l’unite nationale”.  This is as clear and as obvious as day follows night. They sing it, they celebrate it and we are witnesses to this provocation year in year out. Do our people need any lawyer to explain to them what they are living through and the song of provocation and the feast of annexation they witness and even forced to celebrate alongside the armed forces and the colonial administration of its colonizer?   Why attempt to look elsewhere for reasons which they have carefully considered and rejected to justify their claims to the territory of the Southern Cameroons?

 Biya was aware of this when he failed to acknowledge and celebrate the anniversary of the so-called reunification in Buea on October 1. Neither he nor Ahidjo considered October 1, 1961 as a reunification day because prior that date and event Ahidjo had already sent in forces to annex the Southern Cameroons. Besides LRC was not a party to the event on October 1, 1961. It voted against and did not recognize it as such.  It indeed resent October 1, 1961 because it forms our very basis for our claims of external self determination and the respect of international legality. It indeed forms the basis of our assertion of independence with the blessings of the international community.

As Mola Njoh Litumbe has said again and again they resent this date because it forms the very basis and justification for our quest for freedom and independence. That is why rather respect that event, it modified its constitution to annex the territory even before the event.  What event therefore can be construed or inferred as consent to a purported union even if that were possible in the law of treaty which it is not?  I beg to ask.
Our duty is to look for ways of means of resolving this problem rather than preaching a litany of uninformed sermons to those who are living the reality of the annexation and colonial rule.

His Royal Highness Chief Charles A. Taku