University Don decolonises Cameroon’s legal jurisprudence

For several years now, legal textbooks used in various courts in Cameroon, specifically by Lawyers of the Anglophone Common Law extraction, are either written by British or Nigerian authors.

As such, Cameroon legal practitioners depend entirely on these text books and foreign examples to drive home their points in the course of defending their clients in courts.

This worrying phenomenon of the absence of Cameroon’s legal literature in the global market of ideas is what university don cum Barrister at Law, Professor Michael Yanou, said motivated him into writing and publishing the book; Criminal Law and Procedure in Cameroon.

“My greatest motivation in coming out with this book is to ensure that our legal literature is decolonised. I have observed that most of the text books used in our courts are either written by British or Nigerians.

This is not a good commentary on our country. So, I am committed to ensuring that instead of talking of Aguda, Wadialo, we should be talking about our own Cameroonian authors. I am involved in what I term the indigenisation of knowledge in the domain of law,” Prof Yanou stated.

Barrister Yanou was speaking at the Amphitheatre 250 of the University of Buea recently, during the launching of his new book.

He was, however, upbeat that, from his experience as a Lawyer and as a university Professor, the topics treated in the book will go a long way in improving legal practice in Cameroon.

Reviewing the book, Justice Leslie Forbang Fomine, said the promulgation of law No 2005 of July 27 on the Criminal Procedure Code, CPC, which went operational in 2007, marked a milestone in Cameroon’s judiciary landscape. But the novelty of this law, which revolutionised criminal practice in Cameroon, Justice Forbang went on, led to significant challenges for both magistrates and legal practitioners in the country.

The challenges that accompanied the enactment of CPC, Justice Forbang observed, became more telling, as the Code attempted to harmonise the hitherto dichotomised practice between the English Common Law and the French Civil Law. Thus, effectively applying the Code across the divide became problematic.

“But Prof Yanou’s book, which we all have gathered here today to launch, fulfills the objective of effectively implementing the CPC across the divide,” Justice Forbang asserted.

Forbang added that the 17-chapters book does not only capture the dynamics of criminal practice and some specific offences in the context of the current CPC dispensation, but its principal strength lies in the fact that it is exclusively based on Cameroonian jurisprudence, expounded by the Asuagbors, Njies, Mbengs, Fonkwes, Fonjocks, Bekongs, Menyolis and Chis, among others, and not the Oputas as has often been the case.

Besides tersely reviewing the notion of crime in the book, the author equally handles civil issues and matters patterning to environmental crime, which Forbang said are not normally found in typical criminal books.

Chairing the book launch, Justice Martin Mbeng, commended the efforts of Professor Yanou in improving the legal corps in Cameroon through his publications. According to him, Yanou’s publications are contributing Cameroon’s legal quota in the global market of ideas.

Justice Mbeng, nonetheless, emphasised the need for specialisation in the training of lawyers in the various universities.

“It is time for the various universities to start training specialised Lawyers and not general practitioners,” Justice Mbeng Advised.

The Head of Law Department in the University of Buea, Professor Johnny Fonyam, thanked Barrister Yanou for his constant contribution to knowledge and for molding young Cameroonians in the field of law. He told Justice Mbeng that the university may start training specialised lawyers if the Department can be upgraded into a Law School.

“But at the moment, every student is a general practitioner,” Prof Fonyam said.