Former supreme court judge and political commentator, Ayah Paul Abine makes an incisive critique of the document and the likely motives of the authors. Please read the entire response, following.
There is a document in circulation drawn up by some individuals calling themselves SPECIAL STATUS WORK GROUP. Someone has been quick to describe it as striking… Striking or not striking is NOT of essence to us here. Nor do we propose to delve into the document’s semantic and/or grammatical inexactitudes…
In the present dispensation of acute individualism and selfish positioning, many are similar situations we have seen before. Let us hasten to say that it is everyone’s right to air their views in a democratic setting. But everyone else does reserve the right to identify with or differ with such views the moment the views affect their beings, stations or circumstances. Therefore do we avail ourselves of the publication to raise some queries!
Section 62 of the constitution is as old as the constitutional revision of 1996. It is as old as the Sections on decentralization that have remained in near-lethal dormancy for that long. Why this sudden DRAMATIC awakening? Is all the new-found interest altruistic – not propped up by selfish and/or mercenary ulterior motives?
Again, are these persons truly proactive – proceeding from their own pure volition? To put it otherwise, are they not in the veiled employ of the government? That question is all the more pertinent in the face of the claim that the so-called SPECIAL STATUS WORK GROUP is said to have seen the light of day “After due consultations”. Consultation who with? Were the consultations as exclusive as the ill-fated Major National Dialogue? Or was the set-up akin to the notorious national crime syndicate?
Now, if a certain Eric Chinje is said to have been commissioned by the government to mediate between the said government and those that the government calls Anglophones, is it competent of that very Eric Chinje to be drawing up documents about the notorious special status in favour of one of the parties? What about the CONFLICT of interests? And speaking about conflict of interests, is it not saliently clear that the document in question, erroneously arrogantly called BLUE-PRINT, does lean conspicuously in favour of continuing government’s overbearing dominance over local governance (communal decision-making)?
Let us take just two points to illustrate our point! What is the position of the Senior Divisional Officers and divisional Officers if it came to pass that the Governors were elected? Would they operate side by side with the mayors? Would they too be on the executives at their various levels?
In the second place, the whole idea of local governance is that the communities should elect their leaders. If the Governors are elected, and the document is to the effect that someone appointed by Yaounde should be an official of the regional executive, very like the present day Government Delegates, what difference does it make between such arrangement and the elected Prime Minister in the days of West Cameroon in juxtaposition with the Federal Inspector of Administration? Are we moving forward or backwards?
We have the strong feeling that something has been kept from the public. And all such scheming, exclusion and unbridled avidity for prominence do remind us of what befell SCNC. It is now an open secret that the President of the Republic did appoint a minister to start preliminary talks with SCNC, aimed at resolving the then ‘Anglophone Problem’. But four high-ranking Anglophones dissuaded the President from the move on their claim that SCNC was a tiny group of old, disgruntled, retired civil servants at the brink of their graves. They were very categorical that, playing on time just for a while would secure the demise of SCNC…
We see today that, but for the machinations of those four ANGLOPHONE personalities aimed at protecting their selfish interest, that move by the President of the Republic could well have avoided the heavy destruction of human lives and property in Ambazonia today!
Therefore do we hold that the sprouting of numerous groups of self-ordained Anglophone sages today is simply replaying the games of old! And we are greatly helped to that conclusion by the fact that some of those very personalities of old are today ALREADY preaching/hailing the virtues of some FICTION called SPECIAL STATUS! We see some such persons funding such preaching and/or are misleading the people by proxy! We see them indeed buying over the starved paupers with crumbs from their lavished tables!
WE AREN’T FOOLS
LET NOBODY DARE
TREAT US AS SUCH
FOR HAVEN’S SAKE
Is not it most CURIOUS that, within days of some private volunteer group publishing a BLUE-PRINT on the SPECIAL STATUS, the government, by coincidence, is resuscitating DIMABOLA to preach and hail the said yet-to-be-born SPECIAL STATUS?
How does any reasonable person preach and hail the virtues of a thing before such thing comes into existence: counting the chicks before they are hatched? Who but God ALONE knows what tomorrow shall look like? But who but God ALONE would eulogize the beauty of the unknown tomorrow?
ARH BEG TO REPEAT
WE ARE NOT FOOLS!
Seriously speaking, Ambazonians have already died in their thousands! All that only as the sacrificial lamb for the resurrection of a certain Section 62 of the constitution that has been in hibernation for almost a quarter-century old!
Ambazonians have spilt tons of their precious blood for some hypothetical package in the name of SPECIAL STATUS!
THE PRICE IS IMMEASURABLE!
THE PRICE HAS BEEN TOO HEAVY!
WHICH WE CONTINUE TO PAY DAILY!
We strongly hold that the moment is more than just RIPE (propitious) for the COMPREHENSIVE and DEFINITIVE RESOLUTION of the issue by the tackling of the ROOT CAUSE!!!
NO-ONE, let alone an Ambazonian, OF WHATEVER EMINENCE, has the right to resort to wallpapering in the promotion of sordid interest: to toy with the PEOPLE’S DESTINY!
NO-ONE has the right to gloss over the reality of the situation, thereby sowing the seeds for the RECURRENCE tomorrow of today’s horrors!
NO
NO-ONE
LET US FACE REALITY AND SHAME THE DEVIL
LET US TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL
LET US PRINT OUR NAMES IN THE CLEAN SAND OF HISTORY
LET US REMEMBER WE OWE POSTERITY SELF-ABNEGATION
THE DUTY TO BUILD A SOLID FOUNDATION
AMEN