Wanted: SCNC Chairman – By Asong Ndifor

The Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, remains the preponderant opposition group that gives the Yaounde regime goose pimples after the SDF joined the dinner table. There is a vacancy at the helm of the non-violence group that is governed by the “force of argument not the argument of force.”

Five “Southern Cameroonians,” as I know they would prefer to be called, are said to be scrambling to lead the SCNC following the call to glory of Chief Ayamba. They are Nfor Ngalla Nfor, a former vice to Chief Ayamba destituted because of his brazen ambition to overthrow his leader; Thomas Nwancham, Peter Forchu Chesam, Bissong Arrey, current administrative secretary and scandalously a certain son of Chief Ayamba called Agbor Ayamba who should be told the chair is not hereditary.

As one who attended AAC I in Buea, AACII in Bamenda, two conferences that transformed into SCNC and as professional observer who interviewed their leaders like Barrister Ekontang Elad, Prince Ndoki Mukete, Prof. Carlson Anyangwe, Ambassador Henry Fossung et al, I can vouch to have an intimate knowledge of the lobby, its activities, members and selfish opportunists.

The leadership of the SCNC as I know it is not for motor park comedians and adventurers craving for cheap publicity. The leadership is a mystery only for the initiated who believe Anglophones are marginalized and cheated to the core through the abrogation of the controversial Foumban union.

It has an invisible leadership and any personality, not person, aspiring to the physical realm to lead the SCNC must fit into Nelson Mandela’s description of a leader who should be a “shepherd” that “stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind.”

Who of the pretenders fits into that depiction so graphically illustrated by Mandela who needs no introduction? Only Arrey who organised the Kumba conference that elected Justice Ayah Paul has shown selfless interest to see the SCNC have a physical leadership, so has Nwancham. The others have been making a mockery of themselves by claiming to be the leader. They never will tell you who elected them and where.

Their self-proclaimed leadership fits into the regime’s strategy: “The SCNC is in factions and we do not know who to dialogue with” as recommended by African Commission on Peoples and Human Rights. Some of the SCNC members, the cardinal of traitors to the course even joined the regime in a foiled attempt to dismiss the petition at the African Commission, but the SCNC is not a “secessionist” gang of “frustrated people” which is why against all odds, its case was not thrown out as the regime and its four agents in the SCNC had wished.

The SCNC represents the interest of Anglophones, “a people” different from a clan, or region. With “the force of argument” and the spirit of the law, it maintains that Anglophones are on the sideline of national development and some are even incarcerated unjustly, like in the case of Oben Maxwell, for reading a book! The SCNC wants justice, equity and fair play in a territory which before becoming La République du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons was originally Kamerun.

The SCNC is an enigma in its existence. Even most top Anglophone personalities of the regime who condemn it by the day swear by it in the covert of darkness. It urgently needs a credible leader with a “public face” but before then adventures should not give the impression that it is a lobby any charlatan can fumble with.

POSTSCRIPT: “”The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” Ronald Reagan.