Without Christ, Christmas is empty.
Without compassion, Ambazonia becomes unrecognisable. And without a moral compass, even the most legitimate struggle risks losing not only its direction, but its reason for being.
By Colbert Gwain | The Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)
Christmas is meant to be a moment of reflection—of humility, compassion, and shared humanity. Yet, in many places today, it has become crowded with noise and performance, leaving its deeper meaning obscured. Something precious is celebrated, but quietly misplaced.
A story from Muteff village, near Abuh in Fundong LGA of Boyo County in the Savannah Region, captures this loss with painful clarity. A woman, long burdened by the stigma of childlessness, finally conceived and gave birth to a baby girl. The joy was communal and sincere. For her family, it marked the end of years of quiet shame and whispered cruelty.
Celebration followed—food, dancing, laughter, and excitement. But in the swell of emotion, the focus drifted. People danced with such abandon that at one point the crowd stumbled and nearly crushed the newborn they had come to celebrate. By evening, many had gone home without ever seeing the child. Some did not even know whether the baby was a boy or a girl.
The incident was not malicious. It was human. But it was also revealing.
It mirrors what has happened to Christmas itself: a celebration held in honour of Christ that often proceeds without Him. The name remains; the substance fades. The ritual survives; the meaning slips away.
Christmas, at its core, is not about abundance or spectacle. It is about love made visible—through humility, restraint, sacrifice, and reverence for life. When those qualities disappear, Christmas becomes hollow, no matter how brightly it is celebrated.
A similar loss has unfolded within Cameroon’s conflict, where the struggle associated with Ambazonia has, over time, drifted away from its original moral centre.
Ambazonian identity was never only about language or administrative history. It carried an ethical inheritance—dialogue over force, community over fear, persuasion over coercion, and respect for life rooted in faith, education, and communal responsibility. These values gave the early movement its legitimacy and moral authority.
The struggle began with that spirit. Teachers and lawyers protested peacefully, asking for justice, fairness, and dialogue. Their actions were restrained, principled, and grounded in moral appeal. At that moment, the cause had a clear conscience.
Over time, however, that conscience has been strained—and in some places, lost.
Today, the struggle increasingly proceeds without Ambazonia, just as Christmas often proceeds without Christ. In the name of liberation, actions are taken that directly contradict the values once invoked. The facts are difficult but unavoidable: the systematic kidnapping, extortion, and terrorising of Ambazonian civilians cannot, under any credible standard, be described as legitimate self-defense. Self-defense exists to protect civilians, not to exploit them. It does not abduct teachers, ransom parents, shut schools at gunpoint, or impose obedience through fear. Yet civilians—Ambazonian civilians—have endured exactly these abuses. Markets, churches, schools, and villages have become places of anxiety rather than safety.
To be absolutely clear: this distinction is not an attack on Ambazonia’s right to self-defense, nor is it a denunciation of a legitimate Ambazonian State Army acting to defend its people; it is a firm rejection of criminal conduct that falsely cloaks itself in the language of resistance while violating the very population any genuine self-defense force exists to protect.
State forces have committed grave abuses. That truth must be stated clearly and without hesitation. But acknowledging state violence does not erase the moral responsibility of others. Harm inflicted from within wounds differently—and often more deeply.
Compounding this tragedy is the uncomfortable reality that some members of the clergy—who should be the moral conscience of society—have openly or tacitly supported atrocities committed by the oppressor’s militia. By blessing violence, justifying repression, or remaining silent in the face of mass suffering, they have abandoned the Gospel they profess. When spiritual authority is used to sanitise brutality, faith itself is weaponised, and victims are left doubly betrayed—by the state and by the sanctuary.
This indictment does not apply to all clergy. Many pastors, priests, and lay workers have stood courageously with victims, spoken truth at great personal risk, and offered refuge, comfort, and moral clarity. Their witness only sharpens the contrast—and makes the failure of others more devastating.
A movement born to defend a people has, in some instances, turned against the very communities it claims to represent. Fear has displaced trust. Force has replaced legitimacy. This is not resistance in its true sense; it is a sign of moral fracture.
To name this fracture is not betrayal. It is responsibility.
Criticism of these failures does not deny the justice of the original grievances. It affirms them by insisting that dignity cannot be reclaimed through cruelty, and that a just cause cannot survive by consuming its own people.
Here, the parallel with Christmas returns with force. When Christ is removed, Christmas becomes tradition without truth. In the same way, when compassion, restraint, and reverence for life are stripped from Ambazonia, what remains is struggle without soul.
Violence may draw attention.
But it cannot confer legitimacy.
Christmas offers a lesson that this conflict urgently needs: renewal begins with self-examination. Christ’s message is not soft; it is demanding. It calls for repentance, courage, and the difficult choice to remain human even under injustice.
If Ambazonia is to endure—not just as a slogan or a memory, but as a living moral identity—it must recover what has been lost.
Without Christ, Christmas is empty.
Without compassion, Ambazonia becomes unrecognisable. And without a moral compass, even the most legitimate struggle risks losing not only its direction, but its reason for being.
Colbert Gwain | The Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)
Leave feedback about this