If Cameroon is to endure, it must return to the wisdom of Bernard Fonlon. It must recover the principles of dialogue, balance, legality, and mutual respect. It must restore democratic legitimacy to its institutions. It must confront corruption, injustice, and exclusion.
By Akere Tabeng Muna The Independentistnews contributor
Cameroon was not born as a unitary state. It emerged from a solemn and historic union between two distinct territories: British Southern Cameroons and La République du Cameroun. That union was founded on federalism, constitutional balance, and the recognition that two peoples with different legal traditions, educational systems, and political cultures had agreed to build a common future. It was never intended to be the absorption of one by the other. It was never meant to become the gradual erasure of one partner’s identity, institutions, and voice. Yet that is precisely what has happened.
The constitutional amendment now being proposed is not simply another legal reform. It is the culmination of a long process of dismantling the spirit and structure of the union. It is, in effect, the final desecration of the union as conceived by its founders and established with the support and supervision of the United Nations. It confirms, with disturbing clarity, that Cameroon has moved beyond the betrayal of federalism into a deeper crisis marked by democratic decay, institutional imbalance, and the concentration of power in the hands of one man. This warning was given long ago.
In 1964, barely three years after reunification, Dr. Bernard Fonlon wrote a secret memo to President Ahmadou Ahidjo. Fonlon was no opponent of reunification. He was one of its most thoughtful and committed defenders. He affirmed that the KNDP and the people of Southern Cameroons were firmly determined never to betray unification and remained deeply committed to the federation. But he also warned that for such a union to survive, it had to be governed according to principles inherent in its very nature. A federation between two distinct peoples could only endure through dialogue, negotiation, equality, and shared decision-making.
Without those principles, Fonlon warned, the stronger partner would inevitably dominate the weaker, reducing it to what he called “a passive onlooker.” The result, he said, could only be discontent, frustration, and instability. His warning was prophetic.
Even in 1964, Fonlon observed that the KNDP had “hardly done more than stand by and look on” since reunification. He asked whether there was a single major policy in economics, education, internal affairs, or foreign affairs that had been jointly worked out by the two parties. His answer was devastating: there was none. The Southern Cameroons partner had already begun to experience marginalization within a union that was supposed to rest on equality. What was a warning in 1964 has become a national crisis today.
The federal structure that guaranteed the identity and autonomy of the two states was abolished in 1972. In 1984, the country reverted to the name “Republic of Cameroon,” the very name borne by French Cameroon before reunification. For many Anglophones, this was not a symbolic adjustment but a political declaration that the union had been emptied of its original meaning. Since then, the institutions, legal traditions, and educational heritage of the former Southern Cameroons have been steadily eroded. The common law system has been undermined. The Anglo-Saxon educational tradition has been weakened. Anglophones have been marginalized in public life, underrepresented in key institutions, and excluded from meaningful participation in decisions affecting the future of the state.
Seventeen years ago, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights found that there was a serious problem in the management of the English‑speaking minority, offered its good offices for mediation, and gave the Government six months to comply. The Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union unanimously adopted that position. This landmark communication from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights that recognized the marginalization of Anglophone Cameroonians is Communication No. 266/2003 – Mgwanga Gunme v. Cameroon (2009). The ruling confirmed that the English-speaking population (“Southern Cameroons”) was marginalized and, in 2009, recommended the government engage in dialogue to end discriminatory practices and address constitutional issues. But Cameroon’s crisis is no longer only about the betrayal of the federal pact. It is now also about the collapse of democracy itself.
The people have progressively lost control over all institutions that should normally be filled through elections. Through repeated extensions of terms of office and the manipulation of constitutional arrangements, representative government has been hollowed out. Popular sovereignty has been reduced to a formality. Institutions that should derive their legitimacy from the ballot box have instead become instruments of executive control.
The only institutions in which elections have taken place in recent years are the Senate and local councils. Yet even these cannot be described as fully democratic in any meaningful sense, because they are elected through an electoral college whose composition itself results from a deeply truncated and distorted process. What remains is the appearance of democracy without its substance.
The proposed creation of a Vice President appointed by the President and dismissible at the President’s pleasure deepens this democratic decay. This is not a minor institutional adjustment. It is a major constitutional regression.
Under the Constitution of the Federal Republic, the office of Vice President was elective. It was not conceived merely as an administrative role, but as a constitutional mechanism designed to preserve balance between Francophones and Anglophones. President and Vice President were elected on the same ticket, giving democratic legitimacy to both offices and symbolizing the partnership at the heart of the federation. That arrangement reflected the logic of the union itself: two peoples, one state, bound together by constitutional balance and mutual recognition. All that has now been swept away.
What is proposed today is not a Vice Presidency of balance, but a subordinate office existing entirely at the discretion of the President. The President may appoint. The President may dismiss. The President may decide whether the office carries any real significance at all. Such an arrangement does not strengthen constitutional order; it weakens it. It transforms what was once a symbol of balance into an instrument of patronage and personal rule.
It is therefore no exaggeration to say that Cameroon increasingly bears the attributes of a monarchy. Power is concentrated in one office. Democratic institutions are emptied of meaning. Elections are postponed, controlled, or rendered ineffective. Constitutional offices that should serve as checks, balances, or symbols of national inclusion are reduced to presidential favors. The state no longer appears as a republic of citizens governed by law, but as a political order revolving around the will of one man.
Cameroon is now a candle burning from both sides.
On one side is systemic and rampant corruption, corroding the moral and administrative foundations of the state. Corruption has become so entrenched that it no longer appears as an exception, but as a mode of governance. Public trust has been shattered. Institutions meant to serve the common good are too often captured by private interests, patronage networks, and impunity.
On the other side is the steady erosion of democratic principles, equity, the rule of law, and justice. The constitutional order has been manipulated to entrench power rather than restrain it. The rights of citizens have been subordinated to the convenience of rulers. The principle of fairness between the constituent peoples of the union has been abandoned. The result is a state weakened both morally and politically—corrupt at its core and unjust in its structure.
This is precisely the danger Bernard Fonlon warned against. He called for permanent dialogue. He demanded that discussion, negotiation, and agreement become the rule. He insisted on institutional mechanisms that would ensure genuine participation by both partners in the union. He argued that government decisions should be taken in council, after full and frank debate, not imposed unilaterally. His appeal was not for separation, but for justice within union. It was a plea to save the federation by respecting its nature. That appeal was ignored.
Instead of dialogue, there was centralization. Instead of partnership, domination. Instead of constitutional balance, executive supremacy. Instead of democracy, managed political control. Instead of fidelity to the founding pact, there has been a long and deliberate departure from it.
The proposed constitutional amendment must therefore be seen for what it is: not merely a legal text, but the culmination of a historical process of betrayal. It desecrates the federal spirit of the union. It deepens the marginalization of the Anglophone minority. It further strips democratic legitimacy from public institutions. And it pushes Cameroon still further away from republican government toward a system of personalized and unaccountable power.
A union can survive disagreement. It can survive periods of strain. But it cannot survive the systematic destruction of its founding principles. Nor can a republic survive when elections cease to be meaningful, when constitutional offices become instruments of presidential discretion, and when justice, equity, and the rule of law are steadily hollowed out.
Fonlon invoked the biblical image of the house built on rock and the house built on sand. A house founded on rock can withstand the rain, the floods, and the winds. But a house built on sand will collapse, and great will be its fall. Cameroon today stands dangerously close to that precipice. The foundations of the union have been weakened by decades of bad faith, exclusion, and constitutional manipulation. If this latest amendment proceeds without a return to truth, justice, democracy, and genuine dialogue, it may well be remembered as the final blow to an already fractured national edifice.
The time is now—now to tell the truth that reunification has been betrayed not by those who demand justice, but by those who have steadily dismantled the principles on which it was founded. Now to affirm that the Anglophone crisis is rooted not in rebellion, but in the long denial of equality, participation, and constitutional respect. Now to insist that democracy cannot survive where elections are emptied of meaning and power is concentrated without restraint. Now to reject the transformation of a republic into a monarchy in all but name.
If Cameroon is to endure, it must return to the wisdom of Bernard Fonlon. It must recover the principles of dialogue, balance, legality, and mutual respect. It must restore democratic legitimacy to its institutions. It must confront corruption, injustice, and exclusion. Above all, it must rebuild the union on the rock of truth and constitutional fairness, not on the sand of force, denial, and presidential discretion.
Otherwise, this moment will be remembered not as reform, but as the final desecration of the union.
Akere Tabeng Muna
