If given the opportunity again by the United Nations, Southern Cameroonians will overwhelmingly vote for independence. They actually do not want anything more to do with the shambles of today’s La Republique du Cameroun, whose head of state goes on holiday and stays in a five star hotel in Geneva for nine months during worst political crises.

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government and its leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is absolutely correct to reassure Ambazonians of their right to secede from La Republique du Cameroun. It is common knowledge that the supreme civil right is that to self-government, and the inferior tier of a federation is entitled to claim it, not the superior one to permit.

Southern Cameroons has now accepted the Ambazonia Interim Government unchallenged for 4 years. The exiled administration controls the entire rural areas of the territory, while support for independence is growing even among pro Yaoundé Southern Cameroonians.

The 86 year old French Cameroun dictator, Paul Biya and his acolytes are still thinking that Yaoundé has the authority to choose who to speak to in Southern Cameroons and who they should respect. That is exactly what the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime has been doing for 36 years.  They are choosing to ignore the Ambazonia Interim Government and its leadership and the consequences have been far reaching.

This crisis is a Restoration’s opportunity. Not much is certain in Yaoundé these days. No-dealers are fighting with no-confidencers. French Cameroun political elites are at daggers-drawn positions. The SDF, MRC and the ruling CPDM crime syndicate are fighting with national unity-all trying to get that taxi to the Etoudi palace. It is chaos.

Yaoundé now faces precisely the dilemma that confronted Sudan under Omar el Bashir: negotiate with the Ambazonia Interim Government, or face a break-up of La Republique du Cameroun.

Only one thing seems sure. In the coming 2020, either before or after the February counterfeit municipal and parliamentary elections, the economic side of the Southern Cameroons crisis ignored by the Francophone regime in Yaoundé will be able to hold French Cameroun to ransom mindful of the fact that investors in the world have very low appetite for Cameroon’s debt and corruption for which the government is known is making it hard for foreign money to make its way into the country’s economy.

Biya is a prominent member in a long line of French surrogate leaders determined to infuriate Africans and who do not think properly. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group are simply saying that Yaoundé has ignored the progressive disintegration of the giant of the Sub Saharan Africa. While bilingual countries in the world have steadily prospered, French Cameroun and its political leadership have wasted 57 years trying to assimilate British Southern Cameroonians. Through persistent, bumbling misrule it has alienated the so-called Anglophone CPDM elites, and fuelled the fires of separatism.

The ensuing bloodshed is going to lead to total independence in the nearest future if Biya is not removed from power. Southern Cameroons separatism, previously unthinkable has surged overnight and spending millions of US dollars to get President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides abducted and forcefully repatriated to Yaoundé had not worked.

State radio and television may continue to tell Southern Cameroonians that they are better off under Yaoundé and its FCFA. But Ambazonians are now more concerned with national identity, pride, self-reliance and local accountability.

A majority of Southern Cameroonians now support independence after Biya’s poor outing in France

Southern Cameroons has more population than Equatorial Guinea, with much the same resources, better infrastructure and talent. Once it was richer than Chad and even Benin Republic. Today its GDP per person is below one dollar a month with millions living far below the UN poverty line.

History teaches us that people who have pulled out of some funny political fabrications, have enjoyed small-state autonomy, and clearly prospered from it and are rich and happy.

Sooner or later, the French government backing the genocidal campaign going on in Southern Cameroons will be forced to grow up and recognise that French Cameroun has sacrificed the right to rule the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Southern Cameroonians are gone already! So, Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate should take the initiative and prepare a fiscal and legislative independence package; one that withdraws Anglophone MPs from the French Cameroun National Assembly and sees the Federal Republic of Ambazonia join the African Union, but keeps travel and citizenship ties in place.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai