My dear young compatriots,

In recent years, I have continually urged you to spare no effort to overcome the obstacles that could stand in your way. I also encouraged you to use your resourcefulness, your creativity and your courage, to secure your future.

I think I have been understood by many of you, like our dear INDOMITABLE LIONS, whose remarkable victory at the recent Africa Cup of Nations brought great jubilation to our people.

The new feat achieved by the Indomitable Lions barely a few weeks after the equally remarkable performance of our Women’s National Football Team in a similar competition, confirms the vitality of our youth and demonstrates to the world that “impossible is un-Cameroonian”.

During these two competitions, we all admired the talent, courage and patriotic commitment of our young footballers, as well as their capacity to unite in order to defend the national flag.

This determination to serve the Republic is also celebrated day by day among our defense and security forces, as well as vigilante groups which are fighting in unison to protect our country from the Boko Haram terrorist sect.

My dear young compatriots,

Your enthusiasm to join the defence and security forces at this moment bears eloquent testimony to your attachment to the peace and stability of our country, as well as your burning desire to serve your fatherland.

You demonstrate similar commitment in your various activities which contribute to our country’s inexorable march towards emergence.

I would like to congratulate you on that.

My dear young compatriots,

As we prepare to celebrate your Day, I cannot fail to mention the challenges faced by your brothers and sisters in the North-West and South-West Regions.

Due to the strike actions initiated by some trade unions, classes have been disrupted in these regions for several weeks now. I ordered a constructive dialogue between the Government and the trade unions concerned in order to find consensual solutions to the problems raised. These negotiations, which took place within the framework of the ad hoc committees set up to that end, helped to define the issues and determine ways and means to address them.

The Government has already taken some actions to implement the recommendations made by the committees I have just mentioned. Other actions will follow soon. These efforts notwithstanding, there have been lingering difficulties, especially owing to the emergence of political demands by extremist and separatist organizations. Preaching hate and violence, these organizations have committed or caused serious atrocities against citizens and damaged their property, as well as public buildings and utilities. They have embarked on a campaign of intimidation, threats and violence to disrupt the normal conduct of business and school activities.

Faced with this situation, the Government had to take measures to maintain order, protect citizens and their property and hand over to the judicial authorities those who committed or were suspected of committing these criminal acts. This necessary action will continue, in compliance with the laws and regulations of the Republic.

Obviously, the Government will continue, in a methodical and orderly manner, to work towards finding appropriate solutions to the justice and education concerns raised by trade unions of English-speaking lawyers and teachers.

Together, we will also continue to work towards finding solutions to maintain peace, consolidate our country’s unity and strengthen our desire to live together and our day-to-day experience of togetherness, in compliance with our Constitution.

In fulfillment of my commitment to that end, I have set up the National Commission on the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism. Its members will be appointed soon and I expect the youth to play an active role therein.

My dear young compatriots,

The Government’s readiness to dialogue with the trade union organizations and, with them, seek common solutions to the problems raised, recently led to the signing of a declaration by some of them, calling off the strike action. I congratulate them on that.

Efforts in that connection will continue. As I have said before, every citizen has the right to express his opinion on any issue of national life and to take part in a peaceful strike.

Conversely, it is unacceptable to use threats, intimidation or violence to compel anybody to heed a call for strike action. It is also unacceptable to hold the education and future of our children hostage, in the vain hope of pushing through political demands.

While the right to strike is legitimate, the right to education is even more so. It is a fundamental right. Like their brothers and sisters in the other regions, the pupils and students of the North-West and South-West regions have a right to education. They have the right to prepare their future in peace. Therefore, the Government will take all the necessary measures to ensure that this right is respected.

My dear young compatriots,

In the twenty-first century, our bilingualism is a major asset which we must leverage. By providing us a window on the world, these two languages constitute for our youth and ourselves an invaluable asset which only needs to be used. They are a precious communication tool. Therefore, they should not become a bone of contention between Cameroonians.

My dear young compatriots,

Each of you is a star in our sky. You are the ones who light up Cameroon. You represent the positive values of a radiant and winning Cameroon.

This is why the Government is not relenting in its efforts to ensure that you play your rightful role in shaping the future of our country. Once more, I encourage you to be daring, to be courageous and to take initiatives. The Government will do everything to assist you.

In this respect, I am pleased that the implementation of the CFAF 102 billion “Special Youth” three-year plan has started. It will support one and a half million young people aged between 15 years and 35 years, at a rate of five hundred thousand youths annually, in various areas of interest such as agriculture and digital economy.

Regarding the digital sector specifically, the National Youth Observatory will soon have a platform for meetings and discussions. Guides will be developed to assist and support youths seeking entrepreneurship training, vocational qualification, employment or self-employment.

My dear young compatriots,

The current difficulties notwithstanding, your future remains foremost among our concerns. Look around you. Look at the hydro-electric dams under construction, the roads, the ports, the motorways being constructed, the factories and the stadiums being built. They provide employment and various opportunities for our youth.

Our country is undergoing transformation and development. Be part of this wonderful and extraordinary adventure.

Feel proud to be Cameroonians! Continue to be daring in creative activities, to be courageous in your work, and to hone your different skills in your respective fields of endeavour.

Together, we will continue to move from victory to victory.

Together, we will continue to be a strong nation.

Happy YOUTH DAY to you all!

Long Live Cameroonian youth!

Long Live Cameroon

The demands of the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium highlighted the fundamental fallacy underpinning the Cameroon state. While some of the demands appear even-handed and altruistic, any authentic eye witness would detect the selfishness that binds the South West elites and their failure to forge a diverse polity that can deliver greatness. Cameroon’s crisis of development, however, is located firmly in its distorted unitary form of government; correcting it is the only guarantee of lasting peace with Southern Cameroonians.

Cameroon’s fiscal system identifies it as a Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo state pretending to be One and Indivisible. The reality is stark. Cameroon Common Law Lawyers, Anglophone Teachers Trade Unions and the Southern Cameroons business community under the aegis of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium called upon the Yaoundé regime to stop the marginalization of the West Cameroonians by adopting a two state federation.

The Francophone dominated action instead encouraged a kind of devastating vandalism and sabotage of the peaceful process initiated by the Consortium. For a country that is at war with the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram, the numerous armed groups in the Central African Republic and in the midst of a recession, and partly dependent on oil and whose prices have fallen by 50 per cent, the impact of shutting down the internet services in the Anglophone regions has brought the economy to its knees.

The Buea Declaration by the so-called South West political elites is a form of criminal activity that has conflated with politics, corruption and the divisive tendencies of the key ethnic segments of the state of Cameroon.  The Anglophone Roman Catholic Bishops and the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon have all identified widespread alienation of Southern Cameroonians from the centre as providing a fertile ground for violent extremism and demonstrations.

Having so far failed to put down the strike action and the civil disobedience campaign since 2016, the dialogue option was an opportunity for both sides to correctly diagnose the root causes of the problem and proffer lasting solutions. But the Francophone regime arrested the leaders of the Consortium including prominent Anglophone personalities. The Peter Mafany Musonge gangs passing for elites have turned a blind eye to the numerous rapes, arrests, torture and extra judicial killings currently going on in the Anglophone regions.

It is evidently clear that the North West/South West divide and rule tactics has outlived its usefulness and the South West people like those of the North West are now reading from the same script and the two Anglophone regions including their religious leaders support the call for true federalism and have urged that the Francophone Government should treat the matter expeditiously.

Unlike the North West region, the South West CPDM group lacks visionary leaders.  Their emphasis on painting the strike action and the ghost town operations on the North West people are self-serving. SONARA has never cleaned up its waste that has been killing slowly but surely hundreds of Bakweris. All what the Francophone government claims to have done for the people of Ndian particularly those of the Bakassi communities ranges from plain fiction to the most absurd. The People of Akwaya ever since independence have never been linked by road to the rest of Manyu. The Kupe Muanengubas only exist during CPDM conferences. The Lebialems have nothing to show the world that they belong to a region that has produced top political elites like Musonge. To be sure, because the South West and North West CPDM elites have over the years been ineffective, Southern Cameroonians have replaced them with the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.  Biya and his Francophone political elites must sit and talk with the new leadership of Southern Cameroons.

The recent pronouncements by men like Chief Tabetando, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, Peter Mafany Musonge and the Chief Atem Ebako has justified why Cameroon has found itself faced with a national crisis as CPDM gangs of criminals take on the state, hiding behind regional agitation.  The first wave of the strike action in 2016 did not feature bombings, kidnapping, robberies and pitched battles between Southern Cameroons freedom fighters and government forces. However, the arrest of prominent Anglophone personalities and judging from the Buea Declaration, it is evident that Musonge and his CPDM elites no longer have legitimate authority.

Several Anglophone leaders and innocent citizens are suffering in Francophone jails.  The trial of the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium will provide the spark for a return to this time around an armed conflict. There can be no end to this cycle unless Cameroon is governed as a proper federation. Fiscal federalism is the solution, not an aside, as the Yaoundé regime appeared to suggest. The Biya regime no longer has the luxury of taking resources from one part of the country and dispensing crumbs to the indigenes.

The People of the South West region are now aware that the Musonge gangs of political elites are made up of a few millionaires created by the Biya Francophone government who have left the mass of the people further pauperized.  Other federations, such as Canada, India, Malaysia, Switzerland, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, provide worthy templates of resource control that Cameroon should emulate. As the strikes continue, every region will soon join the clamor for fiscal federalism to avert a bloody conflagration in our increasingly wobbly unitary contraption. The Buea Declaration is therefore null and void and Anglophones will continue to listen to the Consortium.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

So, asking for a two state federation caused Mr. Biya to dispatch a team of bloodthirsty malevolent maniacs to West Cameroon to slaughter as many Southern Cameroonians, humiliated our Common law lawyers, ridiculed our much respected teachers and gained as much publicity, as possible by arresting our leaders. Minister Atanga Nji say so.

Who remembers when members of the French Cameroun army raped our children in Buea and Bamenda universities, placed our young men and women in military trucks like sardines and ran the military vehicles over many students popping them like balloons and then the CPDM regime posted on CRTV bragging of it? Federalism made them do it. Minister Fame Ndongo says so.

How about when troops loyal to the Francophone regime corralled a group of girls living in Buea and Bamenda raped a goodly proportion of them infecting some with HIV and shot a few others for fun? Federalism again. And let’s not forget the many times French speaking soldiers have killed Southern Cameroonians in Mamfe-Besongabang, Bali, Wum and have gone scot-free!! No! Two state Federation!

This isn’t us saying it. It’s Minister Laurent Esso and Minister Issa Tchiroma. They said Anglophone extremism is the biggest threat La Republique du Cameroun faces. But the Francophone cabinet ministers were only echoing their better who has headed the country for the last 34 years.

They passed a law against Hausas and Fulanis in the Far North region who have been cooperating with the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram and in some few days they will gather in Yaoundé to decide the pre-determined conclusion that the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium are a security threat of great magnitude. The Boko Haram law will of course be applied on the Anglophone leaders.

What a sight it is in Southern Cameroons today! Peter Mafany Musonge, Atanga Nji, Philip Ngwese, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, Paul Ghogomu Minglo and Ekema Patrick have been marching somberly through blood-stained streets in Southern Cameroons, file past the many graves from the Francophone army attack and proceed to bribe Anglophone opinion leaders and parents to send their children to school.  They are announcing to the world that the horrors they have witnessed in West Cameroon were caused by the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium. And that if they don’t act now, the two state federation will cause more Southern Cameroonians to suddenly wake one morning and say to themselves, “I will kill in the name of the Consortium.”

Two State Federation and the Consortium! Is there nothing it cannot do?

Federalism and the Consortium can do anything. Well, any bad thing. Federalism cannot do good things. The only problem is, there hasn’t been any federalism for almost 56 years. Not only is actual federalism deadly, even the thought of it can cause Francophone political elites to kill.

Federalism, we’re told, is also going to cause more disintegration as the Betis too are planning to secede if a two state federal structure is accepted. It hasn’t done so yet, but it will. Actually, Francophone blood is more superior to Anglophone blood in Cameroon. Listen to the Consortium. We wish you a Happy Ghost Town come Monday and Tuesday!!

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Dear Mayor Ekema,

Let me congratulate you for the efforts you are making to ensure that the economy of your city does not take a nosedive due to the strikes and ghost town operations taking place across the English-Speaking part of our country. I do agree that as a mayor, the plight of your city should be a constant concern to you, especially at this time when the country has been caught in a downward political spiral.

As you know, I am also an eminent son of the southwest region and I should be concerned as well that our region will be caught in the throes of an economic crisis if urgent measures are not taken to get businesses back to the level they were before the outbreak of the people power revolution in Southern Cameroons. However, your approach is a huge cause for concern for many honest and objective citizens of our region. Based on pictures I have seen on national television, you have been using measures that smack of dictatorship and this is helping to fuel radicalism in the region.

I strongly believe that you should moderate your ways and seek to persuade the residents of Buea that it is in their best interest to get back to business rather than threaten them. Your attitude speaks to your ignorance of the radical changes that have taken place in Cameroon. Please be advised that intimidation clearly belongs to the past and you cannot use it as a political tool to achieve whatever goals you have set for yourself. From the population’s behaviour, you should figure out that the wall of fear has collapsed and that dialogue has validly replaced intimidation.

I would also like to use this opportunity to address your purchase of taxis in preparation for the ghost town operations called by the Consortium. As you know, the current situation in Cameroon is a people power revolution and not even soldiers and murder squads can stop the people from expressing their frustration with a government they hold has failed to live up to their expectation.

Of course, there is nothing wrong for a municipality to invest. It is always a laudable idea for a municipality to have multiple income streams, but the timing of your purchase of taxis calls into question your intentions. However, I hope you understand that while your taxis will be plying on the days when the peaceful and responsible people of Buea will be helping to enforce the Consortium’s call for ghost towns, you will not be able to oblige anybody to jump into your taxis. Rather than project yourself as a thug, it will be proper for you to tread the path of peace so as to avoid any confrontation with the local population.

I understand you are a career politician and your future depends on you proving to your masters in Yaounde that you are doing a great job. I have no issue with that if only you conduct yourself as a democrat. However, from the look of things, you are slowly running out of luck as the party you represent is no longer popular among Southern Cameroonians. The next elections are around the corner and given the way things are playing out, the ruling party is headed for a crash in the English-speaking part of the country. If I were in your shoes, I would tread very carefully in order not to make a bad situation worse. A good politician is he who knows how to exercise restraint, he who knows when and how to speak and he who can win hearts and minds even during challenging times.

Your approach to the issues affecting our country leaves much to be desired. As a career politician, you must learn how to address these issues without declaring war on those who disagree with you. You should learn to refine, not only your language, but also your ways, so as to win hearts and minds. Political thuggery has no place in today’s Cameroon. You stand to gain if you tread carefully.

The world is watching you. The manner in which you deal with these issues will either make or mar you in the upcoming elections. You either seek to endear yourself to the people’s mind or declare yourself a relic of an outdated brand of dictatorship. Moderation is an idea whose time has come. I would suggest you make the most of it.

Sincerely,

Joachim Arrey

About the Author: The author of this letter has served as a journalist and editor for many news organizations and institutions in Africa and North America. He studied communication at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom and technical writing in George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. He is also a trained translator. He holds a Ph.D.

There are very urgent and compelling reasons why the strike action and resistance to the colonial rule and the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity to enforce it on the Southern Cameroons must continue and continue with more intensity. The collective punishment of Southern Cameroonians through the disconnection of internet facilities and electricity to ensure that the ongoing  elaborate genocide and crimes against humanity are no longer recorded and shown to the world; the arrests and charging of  Lawyer Felix Agbor Nkongho, the President of the  Consortium of   Civil Society Associations,  Dr Neba Fontem, the Secretary-General of the Consortium, Hon, Justice Paul Ayah, an Advocate General at the Supreme Court  and Mancho Bibixy a community activist, and  the programmed abduction and trial in a Military Court of many more Southern Cameroonians  in French and away from the territory of the Southern Cameroon is  a declaration of war warranting sustained resistance.

It is commonsense to venture a speculation that by now, even die heart Iscariot’s like Atanga Nji  have realized that the ongoing war aimed at exterminating Southern Cameroons instead of frightening the people to capitulate in fear, have rather emboldened the peoples’ resolve to unite and resist with their last energy. The people have comprehensively demonstrated that they will not succumb to perpetual enslavement through the blackmail of criminality, blood baying military, paramilitary and police bestiality.

Though the people have endured significant loss of life and limb, there are encouraging signs that the Southern Cameroons like the phoenix will emerge from this senseless invasion and slaughter a free, dignified and more united people. The people are more than ever unity in their resolve to attain their freedom no matter the sacrifices and no matter the costs. The time to put an end to the humiliations and criminality of annexation and colonial rule is now.

The collective punishment inflicted on the Southern Cameroons without distinction on political grounds and ethnic affinity has helped Southern Cameroonians to rediscover the blessings of unity among its citizens. Unity of purpose and action are the sole panacea towards securing our common existence and survival. For this purpose, the people of the Southern Cameroons have discovered strikes and ghost towns as a powerful weapon of resistance which the enemy cannot break.  Therefore the strike action and ghost towns called to reclaim our right to life, dignity, freedom and the pursuit of happiness within our own territory and survive on our good given resources must continue.

The voices and wailing of our children, women, mothers and boys and fathers as they are bludgeoned to death in cold blood dragged from the sanctity of our homes and streets will torment our individual and collective consciences if we do not pursue the cause of justice for which they gave their lives.  Let the strike proceed until all our people are freed and the blood of our loved ones accounted for. For it makes no sense to send our children to schools to be raped, killed and kidnapped to please a sanguinary despotic colonial regime.

Lest we forget, the genocidal forces deployed by La Republique du Cameroun to rape, maim, destroy and kill did not distinguish a Bafren person from a Banyangi or a Bangwa; a Moghamo from a Bakweri, an Oroko from a Banso, a CPDM militant from SDF. Rather the instructions to kill, rape, humiliate, and brutalize was aimed at indistinguishably on their common Southern Cameroons identity. Government Ministers and some Iscariots in Southern Cameroons have publicly congratulated themselves for the zeal with which they have executed these crimes against the unarmed people Southern Cameroonians.

Aggravating these criminal conduct, is the humiliating kidnapping and transfer our people to be tried and possibly executed by a Military Tribunal whose proceedings will be in French and whose outcome has already been made public by officials of La Republique from Governors to Ministers.  Under these circumstances, there is no reason for Southern Cameroonians to send their children to school to be raped and killed.  The internet and electricity blockade of the Southern Cameroons and the collective punishment of our people have comprehensively emphasized the divide between La Republique and the Southern Cameroons. The wound inflicted in these acts of bestiality may never heal and so the pathing path should have been negotiated and not at the cost of so much blood.

For the above reasons, the strike and ghosts towns are justified and should continue.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group