We must be our own redeemers

Nfor N. Nfor, SCNC leader first wrote this piece in April, 2014. It was addressed to Anglophone lawyers after they staged a protest against an intrusion into the Southern Cameroons legal system by the Biya’s regime. It’s still as timely as written then. Read on.

It has come to our knowledge that the colonial regime of la Republique du Cameroun, as it is in the nature of every imperial power, is about to scrap our legal heritage, the Common Law system, and in its place impose the Napoleonic Code. Furthermore, we have learnt that some of you went to Yaounde to protest this planned act.

Though not armed with details of your plan and those of the colonial occupier of our land, we salute your courage and determination to use all legitimate means to defend what you cherish and believe in. We equally applaud your inherent rights to protect and preserve your heritage in order to bequeath a befitting and proud legacy to our descendants.

However, it distinctly occurs to us that this is a sacred moment for us all collectively to review our colonial state of existence. As lawyers, you fully well understand the implications of condoning a trespass, refusing to challenge the trespass and then challenging individual actions that occur within the trespass you have condoned.

Some of our people, whether willingly or unwillingly, have refused to see that the colonial regime has a carefully planned and laid down agenda for the total annihilation of the British Southern Cameroons.

The Napoleonic Code is simply one among many laws and schemes that have already been passed and implemented with our silence or that are yet to be passed or executed in spite of our gesticulations.

Their own experts, though belatedly, have come to affirm with us and said it loud and clear that there is no legal bond between their country, la Republique du Cameroun, and our country, the British Southern Cameroons.

Yet, out of vain fear, we British Southern Cameroonians are unable to assert our inherent and unquestionable right over our own country, to our own system, our own posterity, our own resources and our own way of life.

Why must we be contented with a subservient position and seek to defend privileges and favours from the coloniser? The permanent solution does not lie in panel beating our battered image to any acceptable form.

It lies in de-annexation and establishment of effective control and exercise of sovereign powers and defense of inherent rights in our own country. That is when we will be respected as free men and women.

The SCNC believes that in defense of group interests – journalists, teachers, lawyers, students, artists, okada riders, among others – is simply playing into the coloniser’s policy and game of divide and rule. The more we form such groups without a common agenda, vision, the more we facilitate the coloniser’s diabolic game plan of selectivity and dealing with our narrow agendas.

Individually we are weak, very weak and inconsequential and in small groups we are vulnerable. The mistakes of yesterday must be avoided and now is the time.

To solve the problem of the Common Law and Lawyers, the teachers or the so-called Anglophone sub-sector of Education, the students’ crying for equal opportunities, retired civil servants who can’t get their pension as obtained in the good days of British Southern Cameroons, among others, is to unite and adopt a holistic approach to the problem, namely, the Restoration of the statehood of British Southern Cameroons with its government in Buea.

We must stop looking up to Yaounde for a solution to a problem it deliberately created to make us perpetually subservient for its grandeur and prestige. The root cause of our problem, namely, the British Southern Cameroons Distinct Identity Question, is the illegal occupation and colonisation of our Fatherland, British Southern Cameroons by la Republique du Cameroun.

To become masters of our own destiny, we must as a people in solidarity victoriously, as did Namibians, Eritreans, challenge the annexation, colonial occupation and imposition of foreign domination and alien rule in our homeland.

Through this patriotic act, we shall recover what is ours, make the laws on our own land and restore our core values and our own way of life!

The SCNC would be very glad to sit down with all Common Law Lawyers and all other interest groups to give a holistic approach to the challenging task of the moment and review our colonial state of existence and see how we can act as one and redeem our legitimate and legal status within the comity of free people and free nations.

While lauding the efforts initiated by different interest groups, as a people in bondage, each group must be focused on the larger picture and ultimate goal and we must work in synergy. By this and this alone shall we have a proud and rich legacy to bequeath to our descendants!

May God endow you with the wisdom we most need.