As the clock is ticking through out the territorial confines of the
beautifully unique Central African country, Cameroon, unarguably
described as Africa in miniature, all heads are uniformly turning
towards the nation's political capital, Yaounde as the count down to the
highly anticipated grand national dialogue tappers down to the D-day,
September 30th 2019.
At the tail end of 2016, lawyers and teachers across the two English
speaking regions of Cameroon took the government to task, requesting for
reforms in the educational and legal systems of the country that will
permit them to better practice in the language they master most. Their
demands had nothing to do neither with the form of the state nor
secession.
Meanwhile proponents of secession had long been nursing ambitions of
destabilizing the long reigning peace Cameroon had been priding itself
of. For years they'd incessantly been looking for avenues to push
through their agenda, reason why when lawyers and teachers later took to
the streets during the negotiation sessions with government ministers
in Bamenda and Buea that were at times ending in deadlock, these agents
wasted no time to hijack the peaceful street matches from the lawyers
and teachers and converted them into violent demonstrations involving
confrontations with the duty consciousness state forces.
In defending fatherland with honour and fidelity, the military was soon
taken aback when before the twinkle of an eye, incited and brainwashed
youths had picked up arms, mostly Dane guns and locally fabricated
pistols to face them. No nation in the world had ever folded it's arms
to watch citizens pick up arms to fight the army. Sooner, fire
exchanges ensued and before long a multiplicity of non state armed
groups sprouted up across the two English speaking regions. As days went
by they too began gaining possession of more sophisticated firearms.
It now became obviously clear that the bird had been dancing on the road
because there was a drummer hiding in the bush. At first the
secesionist fighters came like Messiah's to repeat Moses' legacy of
freeing the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land. They were
embraced, loved, cherished and willfully supported. No doubt on
September 22nd 2017, hundreds of thousands of Anglophone Cameroonian's
took to the streets for a peaceful protest. Some went as far as
hoisting flags and nylon papers saying their imaginary country,
Ambazonia was now in existence. Images emerged on social media
portraying the military accompanying the population to exercise their
constitutional and civic right of peacefully demonstrating.
Months went by till date, Ambazonia remained a white elephant dream.
The supposed Messiah's gradually metamorphosed into the complete
opposite of what they had portrayed. The population itself was taken
aback when they started facing the wrath of the fighters, Amba Boys so
they call themselves. After successfully installing themselves on the
ground, from thence henceforth they began showing their real colours.
First they shutdown schools then imposed ghost towns afterwards, weeks
of lock down. As if that wasn't enough they started kidnapping wealthy
citizens and asking for ransoms worth millions and hundreds of thousands
before freeing them. Those who can't comply to their demands are
killed or parts of their body chopped off. Anybody that tries to
criticise them is termed a black leg and his punishment is death or
severe torture.
In all of this, the Head of State never stayed indifferent to the
plight of citizens in this part of the nation. He kept sending his
ministers to the field to meet the people and ask them what they want.
In all the talks, they never mentioned secession. Yet the sessionists
kept pushing forth their agenda. It became glaring that abuses on the
ground committed by the armed fighters were masterminded from abroad.
Multiple fund raising ceremonies were organised by some unscrupulous
diaspora Cameroonians who've even picked up foreign nationalities to buy
arms and send to the ground fighters. Shockingly, financial squabbles
soon started erupting within their ranks as accusations and counter
accusations of embezzlement arose. Leadership tussles also erupted as
the quest for power became the order of the day. The angel the
population thought they had became the real devil they had never wanted
to ever have.
On the 8th of September 2019, the Head of State shocked all his
detractors who had judged him as a silencer. At 8pm on state media in a
30 minutes well loaded speech, he announced the convening of a Grand
National Dialogue to discuss not only the anglophone crisis but other
concerns plaguing the entire nation. The big bag announcement was
received with immeasurable euphoria nationwide and beyond. Many began
seeing it as the highly sort for light at the end of the tunnel that
shall get all and sundry Anglophones out of the ongoing quagmire. In
addition to the announcement he fatherly extended a hand of fellowship
to leaders of the various armed groups to come to the dialogue table for
as it is said, nothing pass arrangenent.
Unfortunately there are still those who've continued to give the dog a
bad name in order to hang it. Most of such are those who see an end to
the crisis as a termination of the benefits they've been reaping
especially through ill gotten money. Despite the good intentions of
President Paul Biya, they still carved baseless arguments like there
must be s must be a neutral third party, it must take place on a neutral
ground, this and that. Unfortunately all has been planned and come
Monday September 30th, the big history making event shall be held at the
Yaounde conference centre with close to 400 delegates to represent the
wishes of the Anglophones.
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