SCNC National Chairman's New Year message

MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE OF BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS FOR THE NEW YEAR 2015, BUEA, BY NFOR NGALA NFOR, SCNC NATIONAL CHAIRMAN.

FELLOW SOUTHERN CAMEROONIANS,

MY DEAR COMPATRIOTS,

I count it an honour, to extend to you, individually and collectively, my wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year 2015. It is by God's grace and mercy that we the living are privileged to welcome and celebrate the New Year.

In sending to you my warm and fraternal greetings I challenge us all to look up and depend on God, to rededicate our lives to Him. I call on you to love one another. Let the fraternal bonds of unity, of being your brother's keeper be renewed and strengthened. I call on you to reconcile and love each other for in love and confidence we can do great things.

The year 2014 was an eventful year but all the same with its ups and down. Learning from our mistakes and failures we must in confidence and with God of justice on our side move forward in renewed spirits. As we move into the New Year, let the evil spirit of individualism, self-seeking, greed and treachery be buried. Traitors never win against their people!

To imbue the spirit of patriotism in the young let us build strong families where love, care, sacrifice, sense of belonging and hard work condition and direct our everyday life and relationships. Until you love, you cannot care.

Until you care, you cannot share and sacrifice what you value. Until we lovingly and dutifully share and sacrifice, we cannot build the sense of belonging that makes the family a reference point for the child, the mother and the father, not only to turn to, but to run to for safety, security, comfort and unity which in itself is strength and sacrifice if need be.

A people that love, care and believe in themselves are focused and lead a purposeful life. To live a purposeful life is to be an achiever. This calls for hard work, sacrifice, duty consciousness, honesty and open mindedness. To be an achiever is to work in synergy with others. This is what strengthens the bonds of unity and sense of belonging. Man is a community man. And this spirit is put in man by His Creator who from the beginning said "let us make man in our image."

To lead a purposeful life is to be an achiever. And to be an achiever is to be an agent of change. Meaningful change, change that transforms must begin from your family. Building a strong, united and progressive family where love, caring for one another and selflessness are the cords that bind, is laying the required solid foundation for a strong, united and progressive nation.

The Creator in His infinite wisdom sent you here on mission. You are neither here by your will power nor by accident. Standing on the edge of the New Year 2015, you must ask yourself, who am I? Am I an agent of change for my family? Am I an agent of change for my society and my people? Let us resolve to make 2015 a year of HOPE FOR THE NEW DAWN!

To be an agent of change you must out of absolute necessity discover who you are and where you belong. Some of us have been grouping in the dark pretending to be who we are not. Such suffer from victim-mentality making them slaves of circumstances.

Change does not come to a people by accident, people work for the change they most need. This is to enable them occupy their ordained and deserved place in history.

This requires that the people must know their history, stand in their history and in analysis compare themselves with others and see where on the ladder of human progress they stand vis-à-vis their compatriots of yesterday.

My Dear Fellow Southern Cameroonians!

The lessons of history are inescapable. Not to remain victims of our ugly past that has made Southern Cameroonians a stateless people calls for a courageous and purposeful frontal confrontation of the status quo for the change we most need.

The stark reality is that which does not call for panel beating. It calls for total rejection of the subhuman status imposed on us. To play games of seeking personal favours, of betraying your kinsmen for cheap popularity, of singing and dancing to the coloniser's music of divide and rule, of tribalism and north west - south west divide is to perpetuate our subhuman status and statelessness.

Those harping on the North West - South West dichotomy should first ask who practically created a north west and a south west? From what legal entity did he create these units and why? In whose interest did he balkanise the legal - political entity depriving it of its territorial unity and equal international personality?

The ills of our past imposed to decapitate us as a people demand positive action from a united force to shape our destiny. This calls for men and women of potent ideas, of vision and courage to join forces with the masses that are hungry and thirsty for freedom. We must not live in our past. We must live in the present and work for a better future. While we cannot change our past, we have the capacity to shape our future by correcting the current dehumanising situation in which we find ourselves. Remember, you can't win alone and you can't win by treachery!

No nation is built on individualism, self-centredness, tribalism, corruption, indiscipline, nepotism and no people can master their destiny by working to perpetuate foreign domination and alien rule. Southern Cameroonians do not suffer from dependency-complex. Even before colonial rule we had capable and dynamic rulers.

Under white colonial rule we had the likes of Fon Achirimbi, Chief Nyenti, P.M. Kale and those who declared Benevolent Neutrality in Nigerian politics and gave up their rights and privileges remain green in our minds. These are great leaders, patriots, nationalists, heroes; men of valour whose examples should inspire us rise and act resolutely to put an end to our statelessness.

Neo-apartheid under la Republique du Cameroun cannot and must not decapitate and incapacitate us into rotten maggots fit for the hawks.We are worth more! That is why the struggle for national rebirth, national restoration by seeking the political kingdom first must not only be on the rail, the New Year 2015 calls for national solidarity and intensification of the struggle. None but us are the rightful owners of this land.

For a subjugated people fighting for their rightful place in human history, what is important and relevant is not your place of birth; it is not from where you come, it is doing what is doable that matters to the cause of national emancipation and freedom. It is doing what is legitimately and legally right to disable the enemy that transforms and builds conditions for the change the people need.

For a people to occupy their rightful place in human history they must have the capacity to defend who they are and who they are not. We must not idle about while the annexationist makes the defense of TRUTH, LEGITIMACY and LEGALITY a crime in our land. Like South Africans we must confront the criminal and the crime head-on.

To end neo-apartheid rule, statelessness, foreign domination and alien rule and put Southern Cameroonians on the path of progress, our immediate task is to oust the occupier of our land and restore our government in our national capital, Buea. This will give us the international visibility, personality and status that the enemy has confiscated for more than five decades.

We are committed to recapturing the political kingdom and establishing a federal system of government, which with multiple centres of decision making will engineer broad based participatory democracy an enabling environment for equitable development to enhance human dignity and freedom. Having suffered terribly from neglect, underdevelopment and naked exploitation, development to empower the human person must be the focal point of governance under the new dawn.

In the New Southern Cameroons both the Counties and Local Governments will be effective centres of development thanks to the autonomy and financial empowerment each will constitutionally enjoy. This will create multiple centres of employment; enable different communities to build capacities of self-sustainable development and citizens to attain self-fulfillment. This is what we mean by equitable development. This will be a government at the service of the people to empower the people and not a government of exploiters, oppressors, torturers to dehumanise the people we have suffered for more than half a century.

The draconian laws, evidence of the last kicks of a dying horse, Yaoundé regime has just enacted should surprise no one and create no panic whatsoever. The white minority regimes in South Africa and Zimbabwe did things. Rather than create despondency, such anti-people measures fired greater nationalism and spirit of non-compromise in the oppressed.

The lesson for us is simple: the more we delay, the more the annexationist regime will sink its fangs and claws into our flesh and life blood and reducing us to carcasses empty our land of its natural wealth. By expediting the restoration of our statehood we assure Yaoundé that our land is so holy for terrorists to find sanctuary so those draconian laws are for the land and people who have known terrorism.

The future is great, bright and promising for each Southern Cameroonian. This should challenge and inspire us to unite and build a great nation for our children. This is our challenge, our patriotic duty which we cannot afford to delay any further.

I wish you all a Happy and prosperous New Year, good health, wisdom to realise the change we most need and God's blessings of long life to enjoy the fruits of our labour.