Biya’s Safari to Buea: Disgraces UNO Cameroon State Propagandists, SCNC Activists

The President of the Republic of Cameroon, Paul Biya’s speech of Reunification in Emergence in Buea
yesterday left the propagandists of the UNO State of Cameroon, with a lot more of homework than they had expected. Prior to the empty speech, the rumour mill was at full gear churning out the hopes that Biya was going to declare the separation of the two states, as ordered by the UN. To their greatest dismay, and that of many gullible Southern Cameroonians, Biya completely ignored the issue. His speech even silently said ‘all the debates and roundtables that were organised were only window dressing’.

The SCNC activists, on their part, had at least expected Paul Biya to say something, at least to sooth their frayed nerves. Again Biya never cared a hoot about that, in fact to him the SCNC and the UNO State of Cameroon and the rest are “sans objet”.

From the speeches made especially the welcome speech by the Mayor of Buea Patrick Ekema Esunge, Biya’s visit was to Buea, not to celebrate the reunification. Or else how would you expect the Mayor to make a welcome address on such an occasion without mentioning anything serious about it? Instead he dwelled on panegyric on the Head of State, thanking him for rehabilitating old structures in Buea … Buea Mountain Hotel, etc. the only new thing being the Muea road linking Buea Town. Shivering over his address, an address that contained too little substance in too many words, Ekema only stopped short of kneeling before he could read through the address. Biya, on his own part, started jabbering in some approximate English, as Madame Foning Francoise in her usual style started her choir which she conducted, “Paul Biya …Biya … Notre President” and before he could cough the applause was thunderous. Ask what he
had said no one would tell you. At every move Madame Foning intoned the
applause. Apart from thanking the Mayor for his welcome address Biya never
mentioned any other thing. He was thankful and welcomed the “Southwesterners …
from Lebialem, from Manyu, from Ndian, from Meme, from Kupe Manenguba, and from
Fako,” then like an afterthought, “all other Cameroonians from other regions …”
Ekema’s lengthy Dicken’s Oliver Twist anecdote was drowned into oblivion.

Meantime like it or not
expectations were rife that Biya was going to say something at least to appease
the Southern Cameroons liberation propagandists. At least the debates prior to
this day raised lots of hopes. Intellectuals as well as senior citizens were
allowed to speak out their minds. It turned out to be a Trafalgar Square issue.
You could shout out your mind as much as possible and vent out your frustrations.
It ends there. Mola Njoh Litumbe, Dr Ndi, Prof Victor Ngoh, Prof Nkwi Paul,
Prof Fanso, Fon Angwafor, and the rest were all pulled out of their cosy
confines to come out and blow hot wind into the air. Biya never acknowledged
any of them in his elocution. Not even any of the ideas they discussed! It was
all a spending safari, as usual to compensate the organisers (his henchmen) and
let them have something in their pockets as the public treasury gets drier and
drier each day.

It is not clear what
the illustrious Prof Chia and his cohorts will tell the people now. The litany
of failed promises this group has made has beaten that of Ambassador Fossung’s
SCNC, noted in the early 2000s for raising the hopes of Southern Cameroonians
to fever-pitch. According to them 14^th August 2013 was the date
“important announcement about the UNO Cameroon State was going to be made in
Abuja”. The day came and passed. They then talked of sometime in December 2013.
It came to pass. Each day there is a new story.   Either it is a UN Army Commander installed
in a ‘hypothetical Bamenda Airport’ where according to them UN peace-keeping
troops are on one side and the BIR on the other side. The next is that the
Governor is now living in Kongbou, instead of Bamenda, the D.O. of Bamenda II
has sent all his family to their village, we already have our telephone code,
there are peace keeping forces in Man O’War Bay, UN officials occupied the
grandstand in Buea on 20^th May because Biya was planning to go there
… where were the UN officials when Biya was landing on the historic Tiko
airport? Where were the UN officials when Biya told people in Buea “here I am
at last in Buea”.

True, Ali Trika, gave
Biya two maps on 20^th May 2012 as a present. No one knows what this
signified. That Biya signed an accord to with draw to his boundaries before
independence is just a matter of conjecture as nothing as such has ever been
published anywhere. That the Green Tree accord handed Bakassi to La Republique
du Cameroun is no doubt. That Bakassi belongs to Southern Cameroons is no doubt
too. That the African Commission for People’s and Human rights declared in its
ruling that the Southern Cameroonians are a people by all definitions and, by
implication, deserve their independence is true.

Every cloud has a
silver lining it is said. Each of Biya’s moves to shade the Southern Cameroon’s
issue only throws more light and makes greater publicity. The cheap publicity
the Southern Cameroon’s issue has gained from this show or arrogance from Biya
is immeasurable. To have organised radio and TV debates on the issue would be
impossible under ordinary circumstances. But every radio station, every TV
station was broadcasting freely on the issue. Many people learnt many new
things and today the awareness is undoubtedly higher than yesterday.

However, independence
has never been served on a platter of gold. The late venerable Albert Womah
Mukong stated in one of his writings, “The UN is and organisation that has
never respected any petition unless it is signed with BLOOD”. It is not the
number of UN cars and helicopters that are moving over the territory of
Southern Cameroons or whatever you may choose to call it that will liberate the
people. Southern Cameroonians have shown no serious interest in liberating her
territory, and will not expect any outsider to weep louder than the bereaved.
Southern Cameroonians, Ambazonia, UNO State of Cameroon, … wake up from your
slumber and get courageous selfless leaders who have a vision.    

Biya’s idiosyncrasies and vicissitudes: serendipity?

In one of Thomas Hardy’s trenchant novels Far from the Madding Crowd, precisely Chapter 25, titled A New Acquaintance Described he paints the profile of a certain character thus:

“Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being. He was a man to whom memories were an encumbrance and anticipations a superfluity. Simply looking, considering and caring for what was before his eyes he was vulnerable only in the present. His outlook upon time was like a transient flash of the eye now and then; that projection of consciousness unto days gone and by and to come, which made the past a synonym to the pathetic and the future a word for circumspection, was indeed foreign to Troy. With him the past was yesterday, and his future tomorrow, never the day after…”

Mr Biya, 79-year-old President of Cameroon for the past 31 years seems to exhibit many of these characteristics of this Hardy-created character. Like this character, Biya causes a lot of chagrin to his opponents and competitors on an almost daily basis, as Hardy continues in his novel same chapter, “He was a regrater of other men … he would be eager to pay but anxious to borrow; he would visit the husband to look at the wife, …”. The political parallels in Biya’s 31-year eventful reign are many. Some political pundits have even said Biya is ruling Cameroon through instincts. He has more than time and again taken friends, foes and allies by surprise in the political calendar and game in Cameroon. 

Shortly after Mr Biya announced an attempted Coup in August 1983, Bello Bouba Maigari was dropped as PM and Ayang Luc appointed in his lieu. He also split the hitherto Northern Province into three Provinces: Extreme North, North and Adamawa.  Apparently shaken by this coup attempt that was botched thanks to the “state security” Biya demonstrated his first feat of idiosyncratic pattern of behaviour: he unilaterally abrogated the 1972 Constitution on the United Republic of Cameroon and reverted to the name République du Cameroun, which that French-speaking part of Cameroon had prior to their independence on January 1, 1960. To give it a semblance of legitimacy he rammed it down the throat of the parliamentarians who passed it as Law No. 001/84 of 6^th February 1984.

It is said when you cry foul when there is no foul, it will befall you. And true to this the Magidas, who still had a stranglehold of the Republican Guard, attempted a bloody coup d’état. Of course Cameroonians were still strong worshippers of Biya and the putchistes were mercilessly crushed by the loyal forces. Ahidjo and his cohort were accused. Ahidjo retorted that if they were his men they would have succeeded. May 1984 saw hundreds of them executed and buried in mass graves in Mbalmayo. Issa Tchiroma, Dakole Daisala and the others were incarcerated and General Asso Benoit Emane reportedly urinated in their mouths!

In March 1985 when the CNU Congress, programmed by Ahidjo took place in Bamenda he pulled another fast one by changing the name of the party from CNU to CPDM. New wine in old wineskins indeed! This change took place without any flinching knowledge of the rest of the party members.

Fast forward to 1990

 After the venerable Albert Womah Mukong, Yondo Black, Ekane Anicet and the others were arrested and temporarily kept under lock and key for attempting to form a political party, and the SDF was launched with the blood of six innocent Cameroonians, Benjamin Itoe of the “Dimabola” fame, orchestrated and led marches “against democracy”. In the June session of parliament Biya himself addressed the parliamentarians and announced they should “be ready for change and competition”, completely contradicting Benjamin Itoe and his sycophantic crew. 

In one of his end-of-year monotonous addresses he called on Cameroonians to fold their sleeves and be ready to brave the crises. However, the peak of it all was in 1992 when in July he cut down workers’ salaries. He boasted through his minister of finance that Cameroon shall never go to the IMF, but before the end of the year Cameroon became a victim of the Breton Woods Club, cap in hand. Then the violent salary cut by more than half that followed the devaluation of the FCFA and workers went for two months (September and October 1993) without salaries.

Sometime in the year 2000 Mr Biya threw out a test balloon to have a feel of how people will react to his death. He hid himself in a Swiss hotel room and sent out the news that he had died. There was widespread jubilation, even his CPDM pals were seen sleeping in gutters after drinking themselves into insanity rejoicing that Biya had died. Elvis Ngolle Ngolle was grilled by the BBC and he had tough times and thoroughly disgraced himself with his contradictory statements. A few days after Biya emerged at the Nsimalen airport and arrogantly told the press, “Those who want me to die should wait for another 25 years. It was thirteen years ago which implies he still has 12 years. Given that he is already 79 it means in 12 years he will be 91 years old and still the president of Cameroon. He would have been president of Cameroon for 43 years! Who says he is not the Fidel Castro of Cameroon?

The Most recent indicators

After the February 2008 food riots, coupled with the events in the Northern States of Africa (the Arab Spring) Mr Biya got up and announced the recruitment of 25000 young certified Cameroonians, without any adequate financial preparations as it would show later. Of course the exercise turned in quite some billions into the state treasuries through fiscal stamps. As usual those who were selected were selected in their own way but some of them up to this day have not yet received a mite from government!

Some time ago Mr Biya got up and claimed he had re-instituted the Five-year development Plan which Ahidjo instituted in Cameroon and Biya abolished. To date one does not know of what it has become. In another move the introduction of a three-year budget came in without any sensitisation and no training and no warning.  Idiosyncrasy!

One of the most recent ones is the implementation of the Senate close to 17 years after the 1996 Constitution was made, taking everyone – both opponents and allies by storm. They had been preparing for legislative and municipal elections. Even then he appointed Niat Njiefenji among his thirty appointees into the senate and again appointed him President of the Senate much to the chagrin of those who considered themselves the favourites! Then not long after he had prolonged the mandate of the parliamentarians and municipal councillors for the umpteenth time, he convenes the electorate for municipal and legislative elections, again taking even his CPDM acolytes off-guard.

OPEN LETTER TO BUHARI: Nigeria under state- sponsored tyranny

- Femi Fani-Kayode (Culled from the Nigerian Vanguard Newspaper)

Sunday, January 3, 2016 

Interview    Mr. President, as one of your most loyal and faithful subjects who has nothing but the utmost respect for your person and your office, I am constrained to write you this open letter. This is because there are issues I believe are important for you to clarify and to come clean on. I say this because some of your assertions of late are at best contradictory. Whichever side of the political divide we are on, I believe we can all agree on one thing: The prosecution of the war against terror is not something that any of us should play politics with. This is especially so given the fact that human lives are at stake and the very existence of our nation is under threat. Like much of the rest of the world, our country is going through hell at the hands of jihadists and Islamist terrorists. There is no gainsaying that we must all come to terms with the fact that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Al Shabab and Boko Haram are nothing but bloodthirsty murderers. They are indeed the scum of the earth, the troublers of humanity and the vermin of hell. It is with this in mind that I urge you to take the war against terror far more seriously than you are doing and plead with you to stop passing the buck. Your penchant for blaming your failings in this regard on the previous administration is simply nauseating and it does not serve you well. You continuously contradict yourself when it comes to this matter. We your subjects look up to you for consistency, strength, unequivocal commitment, a firm resolve and the ''leadership from the front'' that you promised during your presidential campaign in this war. We do not want and neither do we need doublespeak, lame excuses and buck-passing. Permit me to point out a few examples of your contradictory assertions and your buck- passing in this short intervention. Initially, you claimed that your predecessor in office, President Goodluck Jonathan, never bought any arms and that, instead, he squandered and stole all the money that was appropriated for the procurement of arms. Yet, when the British Minister of Defense visited you in the Presidential Villa the other day, the story changed. You did a u-turn and gleefully told him and the wider world that Jonathan bought arms with raw cash. One wonders which story you shall come up with next and which one you will conjure up in the future. Kindly tell us what the position is: Is it that Jonathan did not buy arms at all and stole all the money or is it that he used cash to buy arms? You cannot have it both ways. It is either one or the other. Glaring doublespeak Quite apart from your glaring doublespeak on this matter, there was another issue which you ought to have raised with your highly esteemed and respected British guest. You failed to tell him that his was one of the countries that not only refused to sell weapons to us during the course of this bitter conflict but that also helped to impose and enforce the international arms embargo on our country even though we are at war. This resulted in the unnecessary death of thousands of our people because we found it difficult to procure the weapons to protect them. Your guest's country insisted on toeing the American line and doing this to us, even though we were fighting a war against a relentless, well-motivated, well-funded and well-armed fighting force that Global Terror Index has described as the ''deadliest terrorist organization in the world''. One is forced to ask: With friends like this, who needs enemies? Given the fact that the embargo was in place, one wonders how we were supposed to procure arms unless we did so with raw cash in the black market. The alternative was to buy none at all, to do nothing and to allow Boko Haram to take Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Lagos. Perhaps that is precisely what your Western friends and allies wanted but, thankfully, it never came to pass. Despite the challenges and constraints Jonathan faced, instead of losing any more ground, he rose to the occasion and retook no less than 22 local government areas and virtually pushed Boko Haram out of Nigeria. The only place that they occupied by the time the election took place was Sambisa forest. The former President achieved this with those arms that he bought with raw cash. This is apparently what you are now complaining about. Permit me to remind you that it is those same arms that Jonathan bought with raw cash that your army is still using till today. Yet, sadly, since you were sworn- in as President, seven months ago, you have lost some of those same local government areas that were earlier recovered and they are now back in the hands of terrorists. 'Technical' victory Despite this, you keep telling the international community and the Nigerian people that we are ''making progress'' in the war against terror. As a matter of fact, you went as far as to say that we had ''won the war'' against Boko Haram and your Minister of Information, Mr. Lai Mohammed, echoed that grotesque mendacity and reiterated that sentiment by adding the words ''technically won'' (whatever that may mean) to the equation. Sadly, two days later, on Christmas day, in what can only be described as an eloquent response from the terrorists, scores of innocent civilians were killed by Boko Haram in Borno State and a whole community was burnt to the ground. Again, on Sunday, December 27, Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, came under heavy attack from the terrorists. Yet again, on Monday, December 28, in Adamawa State, Boko Haram launched a series of suicide bomb attacks in which at least 50 civilians were killed. So much for having ''won the war against Boko Haram'', whether ''technically'' or otherwise. Curiously, the next thing that you did was to tell Nigerians that you would ''persuade Boko Haram to drop their arms''. One is compelled to ask: Why would you have to persuade them to drop their arms if you had already defeated them and won the war against them? Persuasion as a weapon In any case, this would be the first time in the history of modern warfare that a sitting President has sought to destroy and defeat a vicious and relentless terrorist organization and win the war against terror simply with the awesome and devastating weapon of persuasion. Perhaps you should recommend that same tactic to the Americans and the rest of the international community as an effective and credible weapon to adopt in their war against ISIL, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab and all the other jihadist groups that plague the world. Whilst you are at it, perhaps you could also persuade Boko Haram to free the Chibok girls. It is disturbing to note that despite all your campaign promises and assurances that once you are elected President the girls would be rescued or returned, nothing has been done or heard about any of them ever since you were sworn- in. Worste still, the Bring Back Our Girls group, which was essentially an appendage of your election organization, together with its distinguished leaders and conveners, appear to have gone very quiet. I guess they are busy trying to persuade Boko Haram to drop their arms too. Sadly, you appear to be detached from reality. Instead of fighting the war against terror, you are making it worse with the killing of Shia Muslims in Zaria on December 12, locking up their leader Sheik Ibrahim El Zakzaky and opening yet another war front in our country. The last thing that we need is for Hezbollah or the Iranian Republican Guard to rise to the occasion, take up the challenge, jump into the fray and decide to protect and avenge their Shia Muslim brothers and sisters in northern Nigeria. Yet, despite the reprehensible and indefensible actions of your military commanders in Zaria, you have refused to show any remorse for what was undoubtedly a war crime against fellow Nigerians and you have not prosecuted the officers and military personnel that were involved in the butchery. Instead the homes of the victims and those that share their Shia faith have been burnt to the ground in Zaria and their graves and burial sites have been dug up and desecrated. Cameroonian attack Worse still, you have refused to defend our country. I say this because a few days ago the Cameroonian military invaded our country, violated our territorial integrity and savagely murdered over 70 Nigerians in their village before burning it down. Your government refused to acknowledge that this event even took place, despite media reports. You did not console or express condolences to the families of the victims or retaliate against the Cameroonians. You did not even warn them or demand an apology or reparations from them. It could not have happened under Jonathan, Obasanjo, Babangida, Shagari, Abacha, Abubakar, Shonekan, Mohammed, Balewa or indeed any other former Nigerian President or Head of State. If any of them had been in power and the Cameroonians cultivated the effrontery to do such a thing, there would have been consequences. Yet, you did nothing to avenge this affront or to defend our honor. What happened to the gallant and brave General Buhari that courageously led our troops into victory in Chad in the early 1980s? What happened to the man that we all admired and looked up to because of his military exploits in Chad? What happened to the war hero that gave the Chadians a ''bloody nose'' for daring to attack a Nigerian village and that almost took Ndjamena, the Chadian capital? What happened to the man who proved to the Libyans and their Chadian proxies that Nigerians knew how to fight? It appears that you have changed and that you are no longer the man that you used to be. State - sponsored tyranny You refuse to tell the world that our military is terribly demoralized, our soldiers are suffering heavy casualties and are not being paid their salaries regularly and, worst of all, you have failed to procure a single bullet or weapon for them to use in the last seven months since you came to power. Instead of deploying all the power of the state against Boko Haram, you have spent all your energy and resources trying to teach the former National Security Advisor, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, and all your other perceived enemies the lesson of their lives by misrepresenting them before the world, subjecting them to state-sponsored tyranny and the most insidious form of persecution, violating their human rights and telling the world that they stole and shared money that was meant for the purchase of arms. You have also misinformed the Nigerian people about the rules and conventions that are applied when it comes to the administration of security funds and about the fact that it is the National Assembly alone that has the right to probe the use of such funds as part of their oversight functions. To cap it all, you have claimed you did not receive any benefit from the NSA 's office whilst Jonathan was in power. This is an assertion which we all know is, at best, questionable. You must understand that any leader or government that is motivated by bitterness, fear, hate, vengeance and malice will eventually hit the rocks and crash like a pack of cards. You must appreciate the fact that God is watching and that He sees and knows all.

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