CMR Ambassador in US refers to Anglophones as Nigerians

Joseph B. Foe Atangana, Cameroon Ambassador in the USA, may have wittingly or unwittingly referred to Anglophone Cameroonians as Nigerians in remarks before a forum organized last week in Capitol Hill, Washington DC, by Congress woman Karen Bass.

The African Policy Forum, which NDI scribe, Christopher Fomunyoh was one of the panelists was organised in retrospect of the smooth conduct of the recent Nigerian elections and to proffer lessons other African countries can learn from the Nigerian example.

After all the panelists had given their explanations as to why the Nigerian elections went so smoothly, Omoyele Sowore, Publisher of the online news site – Sahara Reporters, quipped in a statement that Cameroon remains one of the countries in the continent with a leader who has ruled for over thirty years. Correlating it to the Nigerian experience, he asserted that the Nigerian elections went smoothly because the Nigerians masses were bent on seeing change and did everything in that regard to see that the right election results were released. He said if countries in Africa like Cameroon have to see change, Cameroonians themselves must form the catalyst of change.

When the floor was opened for remarks/questions from attendees, Joseph Atangana, the Ambassador, apparently trying to respond to comments by Sowore, was the first to climb the microphone. In defence of Cameroon, he said, Cameroon is still learning the process of democracy, asserting, however, that a lot of progress has already been made and begged that with little more time, Cameroon will attain Nigeria’s standard.

“First of all, Africa is not Europe, it’s not America.” Atangana said. “For my country,” he continued, “we are 56 years old. We’ve learned a lot.”

Speaking in broken English that sometimes made it very difficult to get the right perspective of what he meant by the things he said, as though to suggest that only countries that were colonized by the British and the French have made plausible democratic progress, Atangana went on the record and refuted vehemently that Cameroon was never colonized by the British nor the French.

“First of all, we have never been colonized by the French or the English, only by Germany. We fought for independence in 1960.” Said Atanagana. Then he went on to say that fortunately after independence from whom? the United states showed interest for Cameroon. He added that ever before Cameroon won independence in 1956, America came to Douala and opened a Consular office. In 1958 they opened one in Yaounde. They supported Cameroonians to live together.” Whatever he meant by this!

The reader will recall that by 1956, Anglophone Cameroon was still under a confederated Nigeria and so Anglophones as an integral part of Cameroon do not feature anywhere in the Ambassador’s definition of Cameroon independence in the remarks. But it got even worse from there. Hear the Ambassador;

“Cameroon has already 137 parties registered; we have 144 titles or newspapers, 48 private televisions while the gov’t is only one.” By this, the ambassador was saying, ‘so far, our one man rule has worked or is working – look at the progress, so many newspapers, radios, television stations’ etc. “We are convinced that we have to educate our people … democracy is a learning process,” he argued. “That is the reason I said we are learning and let me remind you, we were not born living in democracy experience, that’s why we are opened to learn experience from countries like America.”

The Ambassador continued “I am very sorry Journalists should know that we have 20 million population, among them, six million are foreigners, among them, 4 million Nigerians. Everybody has to know that democracy is a long process of decisions. While we are proud of what happened to Nigeria, let me say that Cameroon is not far from that —we have six million Nigerians in Cameroon controlling all the markets in Douala.” Again, whatever he meant!

It’s not very certain what message the Ambassador was really trying to pass across. But to suggest that there are “six million Nigerians in Cameroon,” visa-vis statistics, tantamount to suggesting or calling all Anglophones in the country Biafrans or Nigerians.

According to population statistics of Cameroon, the population of the country is a little above 20million. Anglophones are made to believe that of the twenty million, they – referring to the Northwest and Southwest regions, make up 22% of the 20 million. Do the Math, and you did come up with 4.4million. Going by the Ambassador, if Nigerians are 6 or 4million in Cameroon, he is actually saying all Anglophones in Cameroon are Nigerians. Remember how when the population of Cameroon was 15million, 20 years ago, Anglophones were said to be 5million? That included Nigerians – may be.

We didn’t want to misinterpret the Ambassador’s remarks and so called the Embassy in an attempt to get him make clarifications as per what he was trying to say, considering that he spoke in such broken English. A personnel who will not give us his names and preferred to be described as a Communication Centre personnel, asked that we send an email to be forwarded to the Ambassador.

When we argued that in very many occasions sending emails to them have turned out to be a dismissive approach of avoiding to address issues, the personnel promised we were going to get immediate answers once they get our email. In fact, he said he was personally going to call us back once he received the email. But that didn’t happen. We called the Embassy again three days later, the calls kept going to the answering machine.

We have included here, the original video clip of the Ambassador’s comments at the event. You will have to forward the clip to the 14th minute to get the Ambassador speaking.