Union Between The Two Cameroons: Are anglophones demanding a breakup?

So much has been said recently on the re-federation of East and West Cameroon; many words used and sometimes very little said, especially by those who debunk the idea of a possible separation of English and French Cameroon. Of the macrocosm of English Cameroonians, a microcosm have been clamouring despondently that, since the foundation of the State of Cameroon, equals have not been treated equally and others, especially those of civil society groups, who have a role to play in the efforts to get Cameroon back on the rails and positively influence the destiny of this potentially great country, have epitomised an unfathomable silence.

What is normally spoken too much is still unsaid if it conceals that which is the essence of the essential. Due to the amplification of despotism, much has been left unsaid, the perceptible has been made imperceptible and even the bearable has become totally unbearable.

A remembrance of Cameroon’s unity and the enslavement of Anglophones can be likened to a remembrance of a life between invalidity and genuineness; fairytale and actuality. Today, clearly or unclearly, there is a consciousness of crisis because of the unimportant roles assigned to many English Cameroonians, though some of them enjoy the pleasure of decay and destruction and are superficially comfortable in the beauty of evil as they celebrate the anomic.

This is, indeed, the right time for us to make a distinction between fine grains and chaffs and separate the intellectuals from the gentry of intelligentsias, whose knowledge is deprived of virtue and who, indeed, are guilty of the sin of pusillanimity; led astray by an unconscious motivation. It is a self-evident fact that good bread can never be made out of bad wheat.

Many Anglophone elite have been bought over, from chiefs to doctors and university dons and these now hope to use injustice to bring about justice. Ngute, Ngolle, Nji, Agbor, Musonge, Yang and even our big chiefs and fons and other flourishing Anglophones have failed their brethren, like those who allowed our people to fall into enemy hands and failing to fight back, even when these enemies provoked us the more by throwing sand into our eyes.

The more our elite have failed to see eye-to-eye about the Anglophone position in Cameroon, the more we have been subjected. Our prominent men have failed to see, like Josef Pieper, that existence and life almost always implies a struggle against evil in whatever form. All of us English Cameroonians have failed; we are guilty of the error of pusillanimity – underestimating ourselves and refusing to resist the one who has turned us into slaves so much so that the police force has been unsighted, the army has been bought over, our magistrates and lawmakers have become courtiers and self-seekers, making a mockery of justice every now and then, and even newsmen have been behaving like the crocodile who thinks he is a lizard. We have all forgotten that our existence is not just being there, but a mission.

Cameroonians need a leader to get us out of this pathetic mediocrity. One who, like our great men in history; Fonlon and Nyobe, Wambo, Ndongmo, Takala, with hands that can pen down and a tongue that utter wisdom; one who acts morally and knows how genuine glory is achieved; a leader who will teach us how to rightfully make the Cameroon nation shine in splendor.

Unfortunately, today has brought forth no such soul as we anticipated. Unceasing changes have been made, new names pronounced, yet, the perpetual emptiness has gone on with men who have no ethics claiming to be in charge. We laugh about what normally should make us cry and we praise ourselves for remaining in darkantiquity.

Most of those who could help us, in their failure to grasp the intelligible aspect of patriotism, have joined the other camp and let us down and many others, like Judas Iscariot, are ready to cross-carpet as soon as they are given fleshy bones by the one who knows full well how to pass across the children’s food to his dogs. But, one day, we shall have a genuine Anglophone leader, who will not fear to be flogged like a schoolboy, one who, like the motionless one of Xenophanes dwelling in the selfsame place, will not be moved by the steely police chains.

How can we trust Biya’s Government that has failed to give its people a new deal of change, hope and progress? There was once a time in this country when FCFA 1,000 could do everything, but in Biya’s time, that amount is useless and worthless like salt that has lost its saltiness. It is a fallacy for His Excellency, President Paul Biya, to think that he will achieve tomorrow what he has failed to achieve today after a thirty-two-year rule.

Recently, it is becoming evident that some Cameroonians have become tired of living like plants in an underground cave, with their legs and hands chained all this while. These must have the mettle to conquer the steel and the readiness to face every sort of difficulty.

There is an African proverb that asks he who prays for rain to also prepare for mud.

On October 25, 1961, John Ngu Foncha, the then Vice President of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, asked West Cameroonians to pray for a peaceful actualisation of independence and re-unification as he declared a three-day of prayer and thanksgiving from Friday, October 27 – Sunday, October 29, 1961. But many things seem to be menacing this fusion and there is considerable uncertainty about what the next few months or years will bring.

While officials in Yaounde have always cast-off the whole idea of an Anglophone problem, and gone on to chisel those who imagine any potential breakup, we must clearly state that the breakup is a being in potency, even though it may never be actualised. As the private press has gone on to present visions of Cameroon’s anomic and betrayal politics, it has become clear for most Anglophones that Biya’sGovernment is a parasite, apredator and even a vampire: displayed by its adept approach, misleading even those privy about its ways and backed by dishonest followers, men who, until recently, have fallen passive and silent before its rituals.

Today, the separatist are arguing that the Northwest and Southwest regions stand to reap major benefits from liberation. For them, Paul Biya has moved this country from some prosperity to virtual bankruptcy. Well into the 1980s, there was enough for most Cameroonians to eat and drink, or to aspire to do so, both literally in a food-sufficient or surplus economy and figuratively in a carefully articulated State. Then, Cameroon was an African example.

The “paternal premise of government” which we recently invoked, by and large, worked then, satisfying a complex and largely unarticulated moral atmosphere of legitimate governance. But by 1992, as Biya sought ways to consolidate his hegemony, he became like the other African fathers in the presidency and high offices, who fattened up on sons left with little or even no nourishment or visions in the future; those who eat up their own people as though they were eating bread.

Others, who aresimply critical of the marriage between the two parties, contend that, all this while, the lion's share of investments in Cameroon has gone to the Francophone regions, a fact many critical Anglophones attribute to the bias of Mr. Paul Biya and his Ministers in Yaounde, rather than the demands of the market.

Apart from multiethnic and cultural differences, language disparity has also been fueling the feelings of incompatibility. It is an open secret that official exams into professional schools like IRIC, ENAM, CUSS, EMIA, ENS and others always favour French Cameroonians. Again, the unemployment rate of Anglophone youth is frightening. It is no news that all Anglophone Ministers only hold figure-head positions in Government, even the Premier, and to further complicate matters; it is always a nightmare for English Cameroonians to move over to Yaounde to follow-up integration documents, other dossiers and their accrued allowances.

Once upon a time, Friday, January 1, 1993 — against the wishes of many of its 15 million citizens, Czechoslovakia split into two countries: Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Cameroon too had been split in 1916 following the drawing of the Picot line. If West and East Cameroon ever split again like it happened in 1916, it should be clear that, this time around, Ewondo and Beti selfishness and phobia provoked it.

Unity is a good thing and we all as Cameroonians have had some good days, though the imperfections of our togetherness outweigh the perfections. And what if we all see those slim glories fade, those titles vanish and our strength as one people decay? We shall certainly have some tribute of regret when the long life of the United Cameroon reaches its final day; we are only men, and must grieve when even the shade of that which once was great is passed away.

The distant, arrogant Government of President Biya has, skillfully, been defendingthe interest of mostly his tribesmen, downplaying the concern of the other 240 ethnicities in Cameroon. His closest ministers, who are his tribesmen and childhood friends, delight in avarice and extravagance. Plain living and good thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause of patriotism has been forgotten; our peace and our fearful innocence as Cameroonians has vanished and religion has been rendered impure because of the selfishness of almost all Cameroonians.

With endless promises to stand up to Buea and Bamenda, and promises of ministerial portfolios, Biya has always had a mathematical formula to mesmerise Anglophones, passing the figurative Head of Government position from left to right and creating frictions among Anglophones who scramble for a position that has no substantial value. The unbridled and predatory violence of our political entrepreneurs has been debunking the apodictic truth that, though authority must be supported, it has to be also questioned and challenged. Well, as it is put in Pidgin English: “one day na one day, monkey go chop pepper.”