The final truth is inescapable: We were attached. We were never integrated. We were never equal. And a people who do not belong retain the full right to be free.
By Ali Dan Ismael
Editor-in-Chief, The Independentistnews
From the outset, let us dispense with the central falsehood: This constitutional masquerade has nothing to do with Ambazonia. It is not rooted in our history. It does not reflect our identity. It does not carry our consent. What is being presented to the world as constitutional order is, in reality, a political construct imposed upon a people who were never lawfully integrated into it.
The amended constitution of Cameroon attempts to project a settled reality—that the people of Southern Cameroons are full and unquestionable citizens of that state. But this claim collapses under the weight of history and law.
The truth is stark: We have been attached to that system, but we have never truly belonged within it. This is not a union. It is control dressed in constitutional language.
In 1961, Southern Cameroons was placed into an arrangement that lacked a binding legal foundation. There was no treaty of union between equal parties, no ratified agreement establishing a shared sovereignty—only a political process that gradually hardened into domination. What should have been a lawful transition became an unresolved anomaly, and that anomaly has since been buried beneath decades of administrative consolidation.
Today, constitutional amendments are deployed as instruments of concealment. They do not resolve the original defect; they obscure it. The argument advanced is deceptively simple: birth within the territory confers citizenship, and citizenship confirms belonging.
But this reasoning is fundamentally flawed. Citizenship cannot legitimize a sovereignty that was never lawfully established. Citizenship, in its true sense, is not a mere administrative label. It is a legal relationship grounded in equality, protection, and mutual recognition between a people and a state. Where these elements are absent, citizenship becomes a fiction—an imposed identity rather than a freely constituted bond.
And what do we observe in practice? A people reduced to the designation of “Anglophone,” stripped of their historical identity.
Institutions systematically dismantled or subordinated. A territory subjected to militarization.
Voices persistently suppressed. This is not citizenship. It is management. It is the governance of a people without their full political recognition—a condition that exposes the emptiness of the constitutional claim.
Proof in Practice:
Enumeration Without Recognition If citizenship were genuine, it would manifest in protection, dignity, and equality. Instead, what we witness is something far more revealing.
Consider the case of Eséka.
Reports and testimonies have pointed to the targeted headcount and identification of Ambazonians by administrative and security structures, not for inclusion, but for surveillance and control. Individuals identified as originating from Southern Cameroons are catalogued, monitored, and in some cases, labelled as “terrorists” by the very state that claims them as citizens.
This contradiction is decisive. A state does not criminalize its own population as a category while simultaneously claiming to have integrated them as equal citizens. Such practices expose a deeper reality: Citizenship is asserted in law Suspicion is imposed in practice Identity is weaponized for control This is not national belonging. This is administrative targeting.
The Collapse of the Birthright Argument
The invocation of birthright citizenship as justification only deepens the contradiction. The assertion that birth within Southern Cameroons confers Cameroonian citizenship presupposes a lawful sovereignty over that territory. Yet this is precisely the point in contention.
If the foundation of authority is defective, then the citizenship derived from it is equally defective. Birth establishes presence. It does not establish consent. It does not confer legitimacy upon an unresolved political arrangement.
Even under the principles of the United Nations: The right to self-determination cannot be extinguished by the domestic constitution of another state. No amendment—no matter how frequently enacted—can correct an original legal flaw. Constitutional repetition does not transform illegality into legitimacy. It merely institutionalizes it.
A Strategy of Absorption
What we are witnessing is not constitutional evolution, but a deliberate strategy, to Redefine a people. Absorb a territory. Normalize inequality.
Then demand acceptance as though it were legitimacy. But the illusion is failing.
The people of Southern Cameroons are not a minority seeking accommodation. They are a people with a distinct historical and legal identity. They are not a region within a settled state; they are a nation whose status was never lawfully resolved.
Conclusion: The Right That Remains
Once these facts are acknowledged, the conclusion becomes unavoidable: If there was no lawful union, If there is no equal citizenship, If identity continues to be suppressed, Then the claim of sovereignty is fundamentally defective—and the right to disengage remains intact. This is not rebellion. It is restoration. It is the reassertion of a political identity that was never legally extinguished, only administratively obscured.
Let there be no confusion.
This is not a linguistic grievance. It is not a matter of policy reform. It is a question of authority: Who has the right to define who we are? That authority does not reside in Yaoundé. It resides with the people themselves.
And until that principle is recognized, no constitution—amended or otherwise—will command legitimacy where it has failed to establish consent. The final truth is inescapable: We were attached. We were never integrated. We were never equal. And a people who do not belong retain the full right to be free.
Ali Dan Ismael
Editor-in-Chief, The Independentistnews
