Since 2016, the editorial desk of the Cameroon Concord News Group has regularly expressed concern at the ill-treatment of Anglophone detainees in Francophone jails. Now it appears that over 300 persons arrested in connection with the recent Southern Cameroons uprising are still being held without being formally charged with any offence.

It is reported that many of those detained have since died, either as a result of torture or ill-treatment and lack of adequate medical care. The Francophone dominated government of Mr. Paul Biya has the duty to bring to justice the soldiers and police officers who killed innocent civilians in Kumba, Buea, Bamenda and Kumbo. This will never happen.

The trial of the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium will never be done within the rules laid down by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 5 states: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.  Article 9 states: No one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

In this edition of the The Agbaw-Ebai Debate, we are asking our readers what the interim leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium should do to ensure that all those responsible for the military courts in French Cameroun adhere strictly to the principles laid down by the United Nations.

A-Declare Southern Cameroons an independent republic

B-Launch an armed resistance

C-Continue with the strikes and the civil disobedience campaign

D-Plot the demise of Senator Musonge, Minister Atanga Nji and Mayor Ekema Patrick

Cameroon Tribune has reported a slight change of position by Moderator Fonki Samuel Forba of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon. The respected man of God was quoted as saying that the government should dialogue on what he stated as “points agreed between the State and teachers trade union leaders.”   The leader of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC) appealed for reason from all stakeholders in the saga rocking the English subsystem of education, reported Cameroon Tribune.

The Right Rev Fonki Samuel’s appeal stressed the need for necessary measures for schools to effectively reopen and ghost town called off as a matter of urgency. Rev Fonki Samuel Forba also appealed to the conscience of all stakeholders to give children a chance to exercise their rights to education. The PCC moderator further issued a political statement for those detained in connection with crimes within this period to be tried in regions where they were arrested. On January 27th 2017, the leader of the PCC saluted the 83 year-old Cameroonian dictator’s creation of the so-called National Commission on Bilingualism and Multiculturalism as a vehicle to bring about national and social cohesion and to create a climate of mutual understanding and patriotism among Cameroonians.

Rt. Rev Fonki Samuel Forba also sounded like the Francophone Roman Catholic Bishops by stating that the PCC cannot be happy that schools have not resumed in the North West and South West Regions. Like a CPDM Section President for Mezam or Manyu, Rev. Fonki committed the problems to God for a quick solution and prayed that the Internet network be reinstated wherever it has been embargoed to restore trust and help the nation’s emerging economy.

Anyone with eyes can see that there’s alarm and opposition to the Moderator out there over the Cameroon Tribune report. Certainly, signs of blowback are not hard to find. We of this publication believe that it’s time to put an end to Moderator Fonki’s ill-advised leadership of the PCC. Never, never and never again has the position of a Moderator been so confusing.

The Moderator’s change of position is understandable. The financial hub of the PCC is based in the Bastos-Yaounde congregation where all the chartered members of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate who are Presbyterians worship. So press briefings such as the Cameroon Tribune story are meant to appease the big men who attend church services with expensive smart phones pretending to be reading a downloaded version of the Holy Bible during service. Apart from the Synod Clerk, the Moderator has not personally condemned the rapes and killings that took place in Kumba, Buea, Bamenda and Kumbo.

A Cameroon Concord News global survey of Presbyterians in the Diaspora, found that the Moderator had an 85% disapproval rating over the Cameroon Tribune story, with just 6% saying their impression was favorable. If we project those numbers for all Presbyterians back home in Cameroon including those in other African countries, it will signal an urgent need for the Rt. Rev. Fonki to end the confusion by resigning.

As a historical matter, every Moderator should and must have a mastery of the Anglophone Problem and the resistance judging from the fact that the Francophone Presbyterian Church has never been one entity with the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon.

In a variety of ways, by calling the Southern Cameroonians arrested as criminals and asking the government to organize legal proceedings against them in West Cameroon territory has encouraged a let-it-all-hang-out style in the struggle, which probably means the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon is helping to criminalize innocent Anglophone citizens and the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.

The Consortium has nothing to fear from robust and open discussion with the Yaoundé regime to get the schools running again!! Rev. Moderator, this can only be done when All Anglophone Demands have been met including the release of all those detained since 2016. The Cameroon Tribune story is an indication that the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon vis-à-vis the Anglophone Crisis is moving the goalpost.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium is about protecting Southern Cameroons and improving the lives of its people. It is thanks to the careful management of the Consortium that we now have a beaming Head of State signing an empty decree to promote bilingualism. The leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium have been arrested for demanding a return to the 1961 two state federal structure.

Southern Cameroons covers a huge area on Cameroun’s west coast and billions of dollars of profit is being made from West Cameroon oil and agro-industrial plants but the people have been excluded from every economic benefit the nation can offer. Instead their well established economic institutions inherited from the British, the German and the Dutch which had sustained livelihoods have all been devastated by the Francophone political elites. The West Cameroon Shipping Company, the West Cameroon Ports Authority, the Tiko International Airport, the West Cameroon Power Authority, the West Cameroon Bank, the National Produce Marketing Board, the PAMOL Plantations, the CDC etc

The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium is simply calling for a more humane environment to live in and a measure of political autonomy for Anglophone Cameroonians to manage their own affairs. The 83 year-old Paul Biya and his Francophone army generals, Governors, SDOs and DOs are saying that asking for federalism is sacrilege.  To the Francophone political elites, giving West Cameroon a share of their own wealth means reducing the profits that goes into their private pockets.  Giving Southern Cameroons any form of federalism means questioning the exploitative colonial, political and economic structures bequeathed by the French. Such demands have to be brutally repressed.

The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium has deeply crafted what we can now call the Southern Cameroons Bill of Rights to Resistance and it has captured the economic, cultural and political aspirations of every West Cameroonian. To be sure, the Consortium has put an end to the North West/South West divide and provided a road map for a Southern Cameroons nation where people will have the right to control their own resources and political life. The leaders of the Consortium believe firmly that Southern Cameroons and its resources belong to the Cameroonian people, not the Francophone political elites.

The Southern Cameroons resistance is not against Biya and his CPDM crime syndicate. It is not against the so-called Anglophone political elites in Yaoundé! It is a call to action to the people of West Cameroon to reject the French imposition of a colonial structure such as the appointments of Governors, SDOs, DOs and District Heads. It is a call for Southern Cameroonians to seek political autonomy and to be represented in all Cameroonian institutions as English Speaking Cameroonians rather than in two regions dominated by the Francophone political elites.

This bold demand is not a direct threat to ELF as the Francophone political elites want the French to understand. The call for self determination is only growing due to the delay and bad faith manifested by the regime in Yaoundé. The French government has the power to stop these arrest and extra judicial killings going on in Southern Cameroons. They can stop it at any time if they want to; the French have that kind of power in Yaounde. But from every indication, the French embassy in Yaoundé is basically encouraging state violence against the people of Southern Cameroons.

The Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC and numerous Anglophone groups fighting for the independence of British Southern Cameroons should know that history often raises certain people over others, but the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium have all been equal in this struggle and West Cameroonians have shown that they are a formidable force.

The repression in Southern Cameroons has not stop with the arrest of the leaders of the Consortium-the resistance too will not stop. The Francophone government has set up a fierce crack team of police officers and soldiers with the single duty of uprooting dissent. Military checkpoints have been erected all over Southern Cameroons and anyone suspected of being a member of the Consortium or SCNC is arrested and detained. Many of those arrested in 2016 have never been seen again. Women are being raped and properties looted.  Those who can find their way out of Southern Cameroons are going into exile.

Southern Cameroons is the most deprived region in Cameroon. Schools in Ndian, Akwaya, Menchum, Bui and Fontem areas look like they belong in the 18th century. The roads are bad and medical care almost non-existent. The general hospitals in the divisional capitals can hardly be called a hospital. To have a minor medical procedure in places like Mamfe, Wum, Bali, Kumbo, Ndop Kumba, Ekok, Akwaya, Eyumojock, Njakiri people must provide their own power generator.

The government of La Republique and its French ally, ELF are thinking that if they killed the leaders of the Consortium and other Anglophone activists, the struggle would be over. It is not true as their blood will water the seeds of the revolution. The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium is teaching us to KNOW WHERE YOU STAND; how to take on the devil without losing your moral belief in the tools of nonviolence, the power of resistance and the power of people.

This is the plan of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium:

1. 1. We continue keeping our children home to ensure that no school resume.
2. 2. We continue observing Ghost towns on Mondays and Tuesdays
3. 3. We prepare for the final destruction of 11th February by ensuring that on that day, it is very ghostly

All these actions are meant to ensure that the school year becomes blank which will soon happen, then the dynamics will change. It will also frustrate Government to call for a genuine dialogue as well as releasing our leaders unconditionally. Additionally, the Diaspora continues its pressure in foreign embassies.

The consortium is also putting and gathering a diplomatic push to some quarters as well as investing in media relationship especially foreign. The twitter strategy is also getting more foreign media involve in our case. Let us continue ensuring that schools remain closed, Ghost towns continue respectively, tweeting and preparing for 11th February boycott while diplomatic push continues in the background.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

The non-respect of the bilingual, bijural and bicultural character of Cameroon presented by the Anglophone Consortium of Civil Society associations was one among a plethora proofs that a supposed union that was contemplated in 1961 between the Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroun had failed.   The Consortium in taking this position was merely conveying the position of a majority of the people of the Southern Cameroons who alone voted in a plebiscite to attain independence by joining the Republic of Cameroun in Federal Union founded on the equality of the two states.

Whereas the non-violability of the federal character of the country was enshrined in article 47 of the supposed federal constitution, other provisions of the constitutions protected the bijural, bicultural and bilingual nature of the federation;  re-enforcing the sacrosanct character of this inviolability clause.   History will hold Babatoura Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya responsible for their treasonable conduct in destroying this fundamental basis on which this experiment was anchored.

Southern Cameroonians are justified in holding firmly that with the collapse of the purported federation, the bilingual, bijural and bicultural character of the country, and a return in 1984 of East Cameroon to its name and identity at independence on January 1960, the putative union was dead.  They were entitled as a matter of international law, to regain their own identity at independence on October 1, 1961.

The actions by Paul Biya in disbanding the Consortium, kidnapping its leaders and other significant Southern Cameroon leaders and charging them on spurious politically motivated charges before a Francophone court-martial for presenting the very grievances which he has trivialized by decreeing a so-called National Commission on Bilingualism are to say the least infantile and laughable.  Not only are the Consortium Leaders, Barrister Felix Agbor Nkongho and Dr Neba Fontem along with Mancho Bibixy, Hon Justice Chief Paul Ayah, Mola Njoh Litumbe and hundreds of Southern Cameroonians still in detention, the perpetration of  widespread and systemic crimes against humanity and genocide of the Southern Cameroons is ongoing with impunity.

In this situation, the question may be asked, for what purpose is a so-called Commission on bilingualism wrapped in the blood of Southern Cameroonians when there is an internet blockade of the territory, egregious crimes and violations against armless civilians, the continuing detention and trial of its citizens?  Of what importance we may ask, is a supposed decree creating a consultative Commission on bilingualism when Mr. Paul Biya the supposed guarantor of the Constitution has over the past 34 years failed to enforce the Constitutional provision on bilingualism.  So therefore, in the estimation of Mr. Biya a right which the Constitution has failed to afford at the detriment of Southern Cameroonians will be obtained by a mere decree?

So for Mr. Paul Biya has come to the conclusion that Southern Cameroonians have become so malleable, gullible and dispensable to the extent that not satisfied with the crimes that have claimed the lives of many, the impunity with which these crimes are perpetrated, he, through this ridiculous commission intends to move a step further in dancing on the graves of the slaughtered and spitting in the mouths of the kidnapped and the detained?.

This decree is a belated admission of failure and a public confession of Mr. Paul Biya’s treasonable violation of his own Constitution over 34 years for which he should be arrested and prosecuted.

The so-called Commission established by decree is a nullity and of no legal value whatsoever because it cannot and will never attain the results which the failed Constitution failed to attain.  If anything, considered within the backdrop of the resistance of the Southern Cameroons against annexation and colonial rule, this decree along with the consistent pattern of crimes, systemic violations and the bastardization of our cultural values, this decree is one among many actions taken by Paul Biya to give effect to the end of the putative union as we know it.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

After forty five years of enslavement, second-class citizenship and forceful administrative integration of Southern Cameroons with Nigeria, the General Assembly of the United Nations came face to face with the reality that the people of Southern Cameroons were capable of terminating their marriage with Nigeria – against the wish of the mighty British Empire.

In May 1953, there was a serious leadership crisis within the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), resulting from the limitations of the Macpherson Constitution. The Constitution gave Legislative Supremacy to the Central Government of Nigeria and made Regional Assemblies powerless.

During the height of the crisis, 13 Southern Cameroons Members of Parliament elected into the Eastern House of Assembly on the NCNC ticket understandably adopted a neutral position on the grounds that they were not Nigerians. The dismissal of Southern Cameroons Government Minister Hon Solomon T. Muna, by Prime Minister Michael Okpara, who rejected all calls to have Muna reinstated aggravated matters.

Dr. Emmanuel Mbela Lifafa Endeley, the leader of the Southern Cameroons Parliamentary Group in the Eastern House came to the conclusion that separation from Nigeria was the only appropriate answer to the crisis. Angered by discrimination and the domineering behavior of Nigerian politicians, the Southern Cameroons representatives, declared “benevolent neutrality” and withdrew from the Assembly.

Southern Cameroons’ withdrawal from the Eastern Nigerian House of Assembly in Enugu generated a new spirit of nationalism amongst Southern Cameroonians – who resisted all forms of Nigerian intimidation and committed themselves to the achievement of self-government for Southern Cameroons.

In May 1953, Dr. Endeley convened a broad based meeting of all native authorities and political organizations in Southern Cameroons in Mamfe. During the meeting, Southern Cameroons leaders decided to bury their differences and fight for a separate region for the Southern Cameroons. In June 1953, Kamerun National Congress (KNC) – the first indigenous political party in Southern Cameroons was created with Endeley as President.

Following the bold, courageous and daring actions of Southern Cameroonians leaders, Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttleton agreed that the Nigerian Constitution be redrawn to provide for greater Regional Autonomy. He summoned a constitutional review conference of all Nigeria parties in London. Dr. Endeley led the Southern Cameroons delegation to the London Constitutional Conference from 30, July to 22 August 1953. The Lyttleton Constitution which emerged from the Lancaster Conference had one significant difference from the Macpherson Constitution that it replaced.

Residual powers were transferred from the Central Government to the Regions, areas of exclusive and concurrent legislative competence defined, and Regions endowed with a Premier and a Cabinet. On his return from London, Dr. Endeley received a warrior’s welcome. He went on to win the 1953 General Elections, become Leader of Government Business, and negotiated for the creation of the autonomous Region (Statehood) of Southern Cameroons in 1954.

Following Southern Cameroons’ reunification with La Republique du Cameroun, their leaders Prime Minister John Ngu Foncha and President Amadou Ahidjo respectively agreed in Foumban that the Federal Constitution of 1961 would preserve the statehood of Southern Cameroons which became West Cameroon and La Republique du Cameroun which became East Cameroon within the Federal structure.

That was the spirit of Article 47 of the Federal Constitution. President Ahidjo however used Article 2 of the Federal Constitution to super cede Article 47 and call for the 1972 referendum. The violation of Article 47 dismantled the Federal Structure of West Cameroon and East Cameroon. The autonomy of West Cameroon under a Prime Minister was reduced from Statehood to a Minority-hood referred as provinces (North West and South West). Today, the provinces are referred as regions. This is the root cause of the Anglophone Problem which has led to the submergence of the Anglophone Educational, Legal, Economic and Socio Cultural Systems (not exclusively).

After fifty five years of union with La Republique du Cameroun, the current political crisis in Cameroon is reminiscent of events that prompted Southern Cameroons to end its forty five years of marriage with Nigeria.

By Emmanuel Nebafuh.

Permanent Representative

African Parliamentary Alliance for UN Reforms – Geneva