Minister ditches appointment of Notaries in Anglophone regions

The Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals, Lauren Esso, has abandoned a move to appoint Public Notaries in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon, which Anglophone lawyers protested against.

The Minister made public the decision on November 28, while responding to questions posed by Parliamentarians during a plenary session at the National Assembly.

Minister Esso stated, unequivocally, that Notaries Public will not be appointed in Anglophone Regions.

Speaking to The Post after the Minister’s pronouncement, the President of the Cameroon Bar Association, Barrister Francis Sama Asanga, congratulated the Minister for fighting against the appointment of Notaries in the Southwest and Northwest Regions.

According to the Bar President, the Minister’s decision will end the animosity among lawyers of the Common Law extraction, who recently embarked on a journey to Yaounde, to protest against allegations that the Government was scheming to appoint Notaries in the Anglophone Regions, a function which has been performed by lawyers of the Common Law extraction over the years.

“When it was rumoured that the Government was going to appoint Public Notaries in the Northwest and Southwest regions, we, lawyers of Cameroon met in Buea, and during that meeting, which was mostly attended by Francophone lawyers, we condemned this plan and after the meeting, I was delegated to table the resolutions of the meeting to the Minister of Justice. That is when he assured us that nothing of that nature was going to happen. In unequivocal terms, we stated that this section of the law, which is very obnoxious, must never be applied in Cameroon,” Barrister Sama averred.

The Bar President lauded the efforts of the lawyers of Common Law, who, he said, mounted a strong resistance to the appointment of Public Notaries in Anglophone Regions.

He singled out the President of the General Assembly of the Bar Association, Barrister Emmanuel Tang, for contributing enormously to the fight against what he termed the application of a bad law.

“Cameroon is the only country in the world with a rare bijural system. We must maintain this bijural legacy or we perish. We have the Anglo-Saxon or Common Law and French Continental Culture. So, if the Minister, by this declaration, maintains the bicultural nature of our legal system, then, we have to congratulate him and to request him to push further to kill this obnoxious provision in our Constitution,” Sama further stated.

The Bar Council President revealed that lawyers are preparing a bill for the Minister to present in Parliament, so that the obnoxious provision in Cameroon’s Constitution would be laid to rest.

Sama congratulated Parliamentarians for taking the Minister to task and for quizzing him to publicly make the pronouncement, “which would calm the tempers of Anglophone lawyers.”

Asked what will happen if the Minister turns around and appoints Notaries in future, Sama said; “Bar Council members will fight with the last drops of their blood to ensure that the bijural nature of Cameroon legal system will never be altered. I am very certain that the Minister will never dare to take such an unpopular move, given his rank and integrity as a senior Magistrate of high repute. I am sure he can’t do that,” Sama asserted.