AMBAZONIA’S WAR- IS BIGGER THAN YAOUNDÉ: BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE UN MUST ANSWER

And as Ambazonia approaches the 65th anniversary of the 1961 transition and the tenth anniversary of the 2017 Restoration Proclamation, one principle should be unmistakable: The future cannot be separated from the unresolved questions of the past.

By Timothy Enongene
Associate Editor-in-Chief
The Independentist News

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YAOUNDÉ – September 24, 27026 – As Ambazonia prepares to mark the 65th anniversary of October 1, 1961, and looks ahead to the tenth anniversary of the October 1, 2017 Restoration Proclamation, a fundamental question must move to the centre of the national conversation:

Are Ambazonians directing too much of their political energy at La République du Cameroun while failing to confront the international powers and institutions that presided over the arrangements from which today’s conflict emerged?

The war is being fought on Ambazonian soil, and forces of La République du Cameroun remain the immediate military actor. But the historical and legal questions reach far beyond Yaoundé. They lead directly to Britain, France and the United Nations, France, the unresolved documentary foundations of the political relationship created in 1961.

For years, much of the international community has treated the conflict primarily as an internal Cameroonian crisis or an insurgency against the government in Yaoundé. That framing, however convenient, does not fully address the historical circumstances that produced the present dispute.

British Southern Cameroons was administered by Britain under the United Nations Trusteeship system. The Republic of Cameroun emerged separately from French administration as an independent state. The future of British Southern Cameroons was therefore never simply an ordinary domestic administrative question. It formed part of an internationally supervised process of decolonisation in which Britain was the administering authority and the United Nations exercised direct institutional responsibility.

UN General Assembly Resolution 1608 (XV) addressed the future of Southern Cameroons following the 1961 plebiscite and contemplated the constitutional arrangements required for the territory to achieve independence by joining the Republic of Cameroun. That is why the documentary question surrounding October 1, 1961 cannot simply be brushed aside. Where is the constitutive instrument?

The question should not be confused with whether John Ngu Foncha and Ahmadou Ahidjo met, negotiated, exchanged proposals, signed minutes or issued communiqués. They did. Those records form part of the historical archive, and there is no reason to deny or minimise them.

The Foumban Conference was real. The negotiations were real. Constitutional proposals were real. But minutes are minutes. Communiqués are communiqués. Proposals are proposals. The deeper question is different: What was the definitive legal instrument that constituted the political union between British Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroun?

It is historically inaccurate to argue that Foncha never signed any document with Ahidjo. Signed material exists. The more important issue is what those documents legally accomplished and whether any of them constituted the final instrument by which the union itself came into force.If a Union Treaty exists, Britain, the United Nations and La République du Cameroun should be able to produce it.

If no such treaty exists, then the international community should explain how the constitutional relationship was legally constituted, what instrument brought it into effect, how that instrument was authenticated, and how the obligations arising from the UN-supervised trusteeship process were finally discharged.

The Foumban Conference should therefore not become a distraction from the larger question. Ambazonians do not need to win an argument over every conference minute or communiqué. The issue is far more consequential: What was the constitutive legal instrument of the union? If the answer is a constitution, produce the relevant constitutional instrument and examine it in full. If the answer is a treaty, produce the treaty. If the position is that no treaty was required, then Britain, the United Nations and La République du Cameroun should explain the legal basis upon which the proposed union came into existence and how the transition from trusteeship to sovereignty was completed.

Britain must explain the end of trusteeship Britain’s responsibility cannot be treated as incidental. Britain was not simply another foreign government observing events from afar. It was the administering authority for British Southern Cameroons under the international trusteeship system. That responsibility raises a straightforward set of questions: What precisely did Britain transfer? To whom? Under what legal authority? Through what instrument? And with what internationally recognised guarantees for the people and territory it had administered? Those are not rhetorical questions. They are documentary questions.

If the record conclusively answers them, that record should be produced and examined. The United Nations must open the record The United Nations cannot stand outside this inquiry either.The organisation supervised the trusteeship and decolonisation process, and Resolution 1608 (XV) remains one of the central international documents governing the 1961 transition.

If Ambazonians contend that the decolonisation process was incomplete, defective or subsequently frustrated, that argument cannot logically be confined to Yaoundé. The United Nations itself should be asked to open the documentary record and explain the legal chain: from trusteeship to the plebiscite; from the plebiscite to the proposed federation; from the proposed federation to the constitutional order that followed; and from that constitutional order to the state structure that ultimately emerged.

The issue is not merely what was politically intended. It is what was legally constituted. The land question also matters. The land question further demonstrates why the dispute cannot be understood exclusively through the lens of the present military confrontation.

The British-era legal regime governing land, including the 1927 Land and Native Rights Ordinance, forms part of the historical record of how authority over land was organised in the territory. La République du Cameroun later introduced Ordinance No. 74-1 of 1974 and a new state-centred land regime.

The significance lies not simply in the replacement of one body of law by another. The deeper issue is how legal rights, customary institutions and indigenous relationships to land were transformed as authority moved from British administration into the post-1961 Cameroonian state. That history deserves documentary and legal examination rather than being treated solely as an internal administrative matter.

And then there is France. The role of France requires particular care. Some within the Ambazonian movement increasingly argue that the conflict should be understood not merely as a confrontation with La République du Cameroun, but as part of a broader struggle against the continuation of French influence through the Cameroonian state. If that argument is to be advanced as evidence of a proxy relationship, however, it must be proved rather than merely asserted.

The case should therefore be built around documentary evidence: military agreements, security cooperation, diplomatic communications, financial arrangements, strategic agreements, political directives and other records capable of establishing the nature and extent of French involvement. The claim that Yaoundé is fighting on France’s behalf should be treated as an allegation requiring evidence and international scrutiny, not as a fact established merely through repetition. That does not make the question illegitimate. It makes the demand for evidence more important.

There is already an established basis for examining France’s historical role in Cameroon. France and Cameroon have undertaken formal historical examination of French involvement in the country, including the period surrounding decolonisation and independence.

The existence of such an inquiry demonstrates that France’s role in Cameroonian political history is not an invented subject. The question for Ambazonians is whether that examination should also encompass the consequences for the former British Southern Cameroons and the relationship that developed between France and the post-1961 Cameroonian state.

The contemporary relationship between Paris and Yaoundé also belongs in the record. President Paul Biya has publicly discussed his interactions with French President Emmanuel Macron in relation to Cameroon’s political affairs, including the Grand National Dialogue. Such exchanges do not, by themselves, establish a French command structure behind the conflict. But they do demonstrate the continuing importance of high-level France-Cameroon political relations.

Any serious inquiry into allegations of French involvement should therefore examine evidence rather than dismissing the question in advance. Internationalise the historical and legal questions This leads to the central strategic argument. The conflict should be internationalised not merely through slogans, but at the level of its historical origins, documentary record and legal foundations.

La République du Cameroun remains responsible for its own military, political and administrative conduct. Nothing about an international inquiry absolves Yaoundé of responsibility for actions carried out by its security forces or state institutions.

But if the roots of the dispute involve a British trusteeship, a UN-supervised decolonisation process, a contested constitutional settlement and decades of French-Cameroonian relations, then concentrating the entire political argument on Yaoundé alone leaves critical actors outside the frame.

Ambazonians should therefore ask Britain: What did you leave behind, and under what legal instrument? They should ask the United Nations: What exactly did you supervise, approve and certify, and where is the complete documentary chain? They should ask France: What has been your historical and contemporary role in the political, diplomatic, military and economic affairs of the Cameroonian state?

And they should ask La République du Cameroun: What is the legal instrument upon which you base your authority over the former British Southern Cameroons, and what became of the constitutional arrangements and safeguards associated with the 1961 settlement?

This does not mean that Ambazonians have no issue with Yaoundé. Quite the opposite. Yaoundé remains the immediate authority exercising military and administrative power over the territory and is therefore central to the conflict. But the political strategy should be broader than repeatedly demanding that Yaoundé acknowledge a dispute it has consistently sought to frame as an internal matter.

If Ambazonia’s case is that its present predicament emerged from an international historical process, then the international actors who administered, supervised, influenced or sustained that process must also be brought into the conversation. Evidence is stronger than accusation This is why the language of a proxy war must be used carefully. The strongest argument is not simply to proclaim that France is behind everything.

The stronger approach is to assemble the evidence and ask whether the conduct of the Cameroonian state in Ambazonia can be fully understood without examining France’s historical, political, diplomatic, military and economic relationship with Yaoundé. If the evidence demonstrates material involvement, that evidence should speak for itself. If it does not, a credible documentary inquiry should establish that too.

Either way, Ambazonia gains more from demanding evidence than from allowing the question to remain trapped in accusation and counter-accusation. The same principle applies to Britain and the United Nations. Ambazonia should not merely accuse Britain of abandoning the territory or the UN of failing in its responsibilities. It should demand the records by which those claims can be tested.

Where is the complete trusteeship record? Where is the final constitutional settlement? Where is the Union Treaty, if one exists? Where is the legal instrument that conclusively established the constitutional relationship between the two territories? What guarantees accompanied that transition? What records demonstrate how the decolonisation process was completed? These are questions that should be answered with documents, not propaganda.

Turn the anniversaries into a documentary campaign

As the 65th anniversary of October 1, 1961 approaches, Ambazonia should resist turning the occasion into merely another cycle of speeches, slogans and ceremonies. It should become the beginning of a serious international documentary campaign. The objective should be to assemble, catalogue and analyse the British archives, United Nations records, constitutional instruments, land laws, diplomatic correspondence, French records and legislation of La République du Cameroun into one coherent historical and legal dossier.

The tenth anniversary of the 2017 Restoration Proclamation should then become the next stage of that effort: not simply a commemoration of what was proclaimed in 2017, but a renewed demand that the international community examine the process that produced the unresolved dispute in the first place. The message should be simple: Ambazonia is not asking only Yaoundé to explain itself. It is asking Britain to explain the end of its trusteeship. It is asking the United Nations to explain the completion of the decolonisation process. It is asking France to explain the nature of its historical and contemporary relationship with the state exercising power over the territory. And it is asking La République du Cameroun to produce the legal and constitutional foundation upon which it claims authority over the former British Southern Cameroons.

That is a much larger diplomatic battlefield than Yaoundé. And it is a battlefield where documents matter more than slogans. If there is a Union Treaty, produce it. If there is a definitive constitutional instrument establishing the union, produce it. If Britain completed its trusteeship responsibilities in full, show the record. If the United Nations lawfully completed the decolonisation process, show the legal chain. If France’s role in the conflict extends no further than ordinary relations between states, let the documentary record demonstrate that.

But if the archives leave fundamental questions unanswered, those questions should not be dismissed simply because they are politically inconvenient. The war may be fought on Ambazonian soil, but the historical argument reaches much further. The guns may be in the territory. The questions are in the archives.

And as Ambazonia approaches the 65th anniversary of the 1961 transition and the tenth anniversary of the 2017 Restoration Proclamation, one principle should be unmistakable: The future cannot be separated from the unresolved questions of the past.

As Amazon associate this site earns from qualifying purchases

Buy Southern Cameroons 2050; why America should care. By Martin Mungwa on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Southern+Cameroon+2050+by+Martin+mungwa&i=specialty-aps&srs=121082092011&crid=165NADKY1TYO0&sprefix=southern+cameroon+2050+by+martin+mungwa%2Cspecialty-aps%2C862&linkCode=ll2&tag=njokings-20&linkId=0d475c5d9578ebd60148cdff4ea763b2&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Timothy Enongene
Associate Editor-in-Chief
The Independentist News
September 24, 2026