The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium should be wary of signing agreements with the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime because it has a track record of negotiating in bad faith and then moving the goalpost. Conflicting reports had surfaced that soldiers from the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) were deployed to force the Anglophone leaders to endorse a document putting an end to the strike action. The leaders responded by appealing for calm.

However, the reaction of Southern Cameroonians in Bamenda where the meeting is holding has once again signaled an urgent need for a major Southern Cameroons Conference. It is evidently clear that 99.9 per cent of Southern Cameroonians no longer want any union with La Republique du Cameroun. Our statistics is based on a poll conducted by reporters of the Cameroon Concord News Group throughout Southern Cameroons territory and even beyond.

We understand the Yaoundé regime is still arresting many Southern Cameroon young men and women and detaining them in Francophone prison centers.  Paul Biya and his gang of Francophone political elites have lost control of Anglophone Cameroon and are now planning to impose financial sanctions such as salary cuts and summary dismissal of many Anglophone teachers from the public service amid growing tensions.

Judging from what the members of the Ad Hoc Committee have tabled so far in Bamenda, Southern Cameroons will never get what it wants and La Republique will continue to plunder our resources to the benefit of their own children. The general opinion is that Southern Cameroons should be recognized by the United Nations as a member state. What is actually going on in Bamenda now places some restrictions on this demand.

The suggestion from Minister Fame Ndongo that federalism and other Anglophone demands are political and can only be dealt with by the National Assembly it’s just more proof that you can’t trust the Francophone political elites in negotiations. They are not sincere in their dialogue and they don’t want what they say they want. They want to continue to marginalize Southern Cameroonians.

The Ad Hoc Committee is not fighting to reopen schools because Biya and his Francophone regime cares about Anglophone children. They only care about their children studying in Southern Cameroon schools and the billions of FCFA they are making from students coming in from Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, the Central African Republic and Chad to study in the Universities of Buea and Bamenda.

This is absolutely the reason for the creation of the Ad Hoc Committee. Their job description is to negotiate in bad faith, and then move the goalpost. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group think the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium should be very wary of setting agreements with the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime.

What the Anglophone leaders need to do is to develop more cooperation with the Southern Cameroons Diaspora and proceed with the restoration of West Cameroon political and economic establishments in concert with the African Union, the UN, EU, US and the United Kingdom so that any kinds of financial sanctions such as the one that took Justice Ayah Paul back to La Republique will be toothless as they have been largely with Sudan against South Sudan, and then Southern Cameroonians will be able to free themselves from this kind of Francophone bullying and blackmailing.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group