Journalists join chiefs, lawyers to fight Anglophone marginalisation

Members of the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA) Cameroon Branch, resolved, during a meeting on December 5, 2015, to support the fight against Anglophone marginalisation in Cameroon.

The CJA-Cameroon members join the bandwagon of lawyers, teachers, traditional rulers of Anglophone extraction, among others, that are fighting for the rights of people who hail from the erstwhile British Southern Cameroons territory.

The rights include their cultural, legal and educational systems which are being assimilated or emasculated by their Francophone counterparts or people of former French Cameroon.

“Nfon Mukete should not be talking alone about the marginalisation of Anglophones in Cameroon,” Mwalimu George Ngwane of AfricaPhonie stated.

The President of CJA, Chief Paul Nkemayang, who had convened the meeting, responded that it was very OK for CJA and journalists in Cameroon to take up the advocacy role, especially when it concerns issues that touch on the rights of the citizens which the Government needs to look into.

“We would not be strangers if we take certain lines of action,” Chief Nkemayang said.

The journalists’ resolve is coming at the time when the six-month ultimatum lawyers sent to President Biya to redress the Anglophone problem following the All Anglophone Lawyers Conference in Bamenda on May 9, 2015, has elapsed.

Members of the association had come together to set a roadmap with a series of activities they intend to carry on from 2016 and which they hold, will reinvigorate the association and make it more meaningful to its members, Cameroon and the rest of the Commonwealth.

Playing a more advocacy role was one of the main tasks that the members decided that the association must carry on in 2016.

After thanking members for the support he has had since the creation of CJA Cameroon on October 29, 2011, Nkemayang reviewed what the association has achieved for the past four years. He announced that there will be elections early next year, disclosing that CJA Cameroon has been invited to take part in the 2016 CJA World Conference billed for April in London.

In order to prepare and ensure that CJA Cameroon makes a bold presence during the World Conference, Nkemayang said the association has decided to carry on certain projects that will enable it to raise funds.

He said CJA will be publishing a news magazine between January and February, 2016. He said Charly Ndi Chia, who is a member of the National Communication Council, has been entrusted with the task of coordinating the magazine project.

Nkemayang stated that other activities of CJA for 2016 shall involve the organising of press launches, educative and training workshops and seminars.

The CJA members congratulated Peter Essoka on his appointment as the new President of the National Communication Council, NCC.

While they pledged their total readiness to give him the support he will need in his onerous task of ensuring a sane and more dignifying media in Cameroon, they also expressed the wish that he will use his position to cause the Government to provide a more enabling terrain for the functioning of the private media in Cameroon.

The association also hailed one of their Executive Members, CRTV’s John Mbah Akuro, who is currently in the US to receive an international media award on December 8 from the International Centre for Journalists.

Members observed that for journalists of the Commonwealth in Cameroon to succeed in the advocacy role, or work for a common cause, they must strive towards a unity of purpose and not work in disperse ranks.