Look at Ahidjo’s body language on Jan 1, 1960; the day French Cameroun was granted independence and you can see the master-servant relationship between Francophones and France. From Jan. 1 1960 to February 11, 1961, Southern Cameroons was then a self-governing British UN-mandated territory with all the trappings of a nation-state, including its own internationally recognized borders and never part of French Cameroun.

If Britain had availed itself of its obligations towards the Southern Cameroons people, the 3rd option of independence agreed by the 43 delegates at the August 1959 All Party Conference in Mamfe, chaired by Sir Sidney Phillipson, Acting Southern Cameroons Commissioner, would not have been rejected by Andrew Cohen, Britain’s representative to the UN Trusteeship Council. The time has come to right this historical wrong. Biya should stop reveling in self-delusion; we are no longer in the 1970s. The regime can say what it wants, but nobody is fooled anymore.

Biya’s nepotistic abuse of presidential power to favor his Beti kith and kin is beyond clannishness. This generation of Anglophones are well-educated and know that the issue at stake here is their natural resources, which Biya exploits to feed his kleptocratic regime of tribal jingoists. The Ambazonia resistance speaks directly to the Anglophone resolve to fight and die for their future and there will be no peace, until Biya and his Beti cabal understand that Anglophones never voted to become the footstool of French Cameroun exploitation and plunder. Anglophones have rejected a system where a small clique of vampire elite are stealing the nation blind with impunity while the president looks the other way. Just look at the scandalously inflated AFCON 2019 contracts and ask yourself whether such monumental corruption could happen in Ambazonia?

The only thing that will bring unity in Cameroon is for the government to eschew this conquest mentality and dialogue with Anglophones where both sides will renegotiate the unity and the future of Cameroon as equal partners or revert to the status quo ante Feb 11, 1961

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai