Short people can be productive citizens

A Bamenda-based social group called, "Association of Short People" – ASP, is threatening court action against rival group for what it has described as plagiarism.

Barrister Fru Jonathan Chi, National President of the association, who is leading the charge, told the Journal that his association was the first to be registered in the country, but recently, he said, two other rival groups have emerged in Yaoundé with the same name and he wants the name revoked.

According to Fru, his association today prides itself with well over 900 members plus a microfinance institution.

To be a registered member, he said, one must not be above 1. 60m. Unlike one of the short peoples' associations in Yaoundé where membership is limited to short or dwarf women, he said his group does not discriminate; reason why it constitutes both short men and women.

The lawyer said that several issues pushed them to form the association. "We could not understand why short people like us are not admitted in the military and why most sign boards are above two or three meters high, which poses a lot of difficulties for our kind to read."

He added that most seats and counters in bars are high to the extent that short people can hardly reach the top and those who struggle to sit on high chairs, find their legs dangling to the amusement of tall people.

In another vein, their president regret that most tall people do not take short people serious - short people are never given the chance to speak in public.

He said. "Worse still, beautiful, tall women never accept our proposals to marry them and even if some do, they do not respect our orders as husbands." The barrister lamented.

As the way forward, he said they will table memos to respective quarters to start righting the wrongs. He said although short, dwarfs are largely intelligent; alluding to Nigerian movie icons, 'Aki and Paw Paw', the former Ghanaian and Gabonese Heads of State, Nkwame Nkrumah and Omar Bongo respectively including John Ngu Foncha, former Prime Minister among others.

He opined that it was just foolhardy for short people to be denied entry into the military "because with our heights, we can easily penetrate the forest with ease than tall people and could put bombs in places and go unnoticed."

As of now, Cameroon has two Short People's associations: Association of Short People and Association of Little Height People, both in Yaounde, plus Fru‘s Bamenda-based Association of Short People which he claims was the first to be created in the country.