NW lawyers threaten to create own Bar

Common law lawyers of the North West region are threatening fire and brimstone over a decision of the region’s legal department to serve them uniquely in French.

The decision of the Bamenda Appeal Court made about a month ago, obliges the lawyers to make their submissions in French language despite the fact that the region is exclusively an English speaking jurisdiction.

In a sharp expression of their discontent over the decision, the North West lawyers are threatening to create a Common Law Bar Council, independent of the Cameroon Bar.

They say their inspiration is drawn from countries like the US where there exist several bar associations.

The aggrieved lawyers converged at Ntamulung Presbyterian Church on Monday, March 9, in their numbers and drafted a resolution on the burning issue.

They expressed fears that any attempt to succumb to the decision to make submissions in French would be tantamount to genocide of the Common Law in Cameroon.

The lawyers also questioned the decision by government to appoint only Francophones at the Legal Department of the Appeal Court, describing it as a surreptitious move to completely kill the Anglophone judicial system.

Some of the lawyers said that, the regime is not only out to kill the Common Law practice, but stressed equally that the regime is also systematically killing the Anglo-Saxon educational Sub-System in the country.

The president of North West Lawyers’ Association, NOWELA, Fon Robert Nsoh, told reporters at a press briefing he granted shortly after the meeting, that North West lawyers have unanimously resolved to paralyse the courts if they must make submissions in the French language.

The representative of the Cameroon Bar president in the North West region, Barrister Kemende Henry, noted that he is an advocate of the North West region and consequently what concerns North West lawyers also concerns him.

He promised to table the problem at the Bar in a meeting which he said has been convened for Saturday, March 14. “I want to emphasize that North West lawyers constitute part of the Bar Council and so if part of the body has a problem, we must all device solutions to it.”

Kemende said North West lawyers have finally resolved that they will no longer receive or make any submissions in French. “It’s high time a language code be determined when it has to be used, either French or English given that Cameroon is a bilingual country,” he noted.

Kemende called on the hierarchy of the North West judiciary to learn a lesson from CRTV where news is read both in French and English because of the bilingual nature of the country.

He observed that all the lawyers took permission from the court to hold the meeting because the problem they are facing at the moment is very serious and can destroy Cameroon’s peace and unity.