The Prerequisites of Union: Why You Can’t Build a United Africa on the Ruins of the Southern Cameroons

Pan-Africanism was born as a doctrine of liberation from colonial domination. In 2026, it is being repurposed as a tool of internal annexation. The “unity” promoted by the Biya regime over the former British southern Cameroons—and enabled by the African Union’s silence—is not a union of consent but a union of conquest.

By Timothy Enongene Guest Editor-in-Chief The Independentistnews

BUEA January 23, 2026 – The halls of power in Addis Ababa echo with the lofty language of Agenda 2063—a vision of a prosperous, integrated, and peaceful Africa. Yet as the sun sets over the smoldering villages of the Southern Cameroons, a darker truth intrudes: the blueprint for a “United Africa” is being written in the blood of those it claims to protect. No durable continental union can be built on ruins, and no “One Africa” can be forged while Ambazonian lives are being crushed beneath the weight of a forced political marriage.

The Moral Bankruptcy of Forced Integration

Pan-Africanism was born as a doctrine of liberation from colonial domination. In 2026, it is being repurposed as a tool of internal annexation. The “unity” promoted by the Biya regime over the fomer British Southern Cameroons—and enabled by the African Union’s silence—is not a union of consent but a union of conquest.

A legitimate African union must be a voluntary association of free peoples, not a collection of captured populations held together by the sanctity of colonial borders. When the AU elevates the territorial integrity of the Republic of Cameroon above the documented mass atrocities against Ambazonians, it commits a form of moral suicide. You cannot preach the silencing of guns across Africa while shielding a regime that turns those guns on its own people.

The Ruins of the Southern Cameroons

The ruins are not metaphorical. Since 2017, and through the massacres of early 2026 in places such as Gidado, the Southern Cameroons has been systematically dismantled. Villages have been burned, hospitals converted into military posts, and schools reduced to empty shells.

How can a continental union thrive when one of its most dynamic and educated regions is being deliberately de-developed? To build a United Africa on the wreckage of the Southern Cameroons is to build on quicksand. The resulting instability—mass displacement, economic collapse, and generational trauma—does not remain within Cameroon’s borders. It spills into Nigeria, destabilizes the Gulf of Guinea, and sends a clear message to marginalized peoples everywhere: the “Union” offers no protection.

Sovereignty as the Ultimate Prerequisite

No union can be healthy if its members do not own themselves. In any genuine Pan-African project, a state must bring the freely expressed will of its people to the table. Today, the “Voice of Cameroon” in Addis Ababa is the voice of power, not of the people under that power’s boots.

For Ambazonians, sovereignty is not a rejection of Africa; it is the price of admission. We must first exist as Ambazonians before we can participate as Africans. Only a sovereign Ambazonia can contribute its common-law tradition, its strategic resources, and its democratic aspirations to the continent. An occupied Ambazonia can offer only a warning of what Africa becomes when injustice is institutionalized.

Rebuilding the Foundation

In 2026, the African Union faces a choice: protect the ruins or protect the people. To save the dream of African unity, it must confront the nightmare unfolding in the Southern Cameroons.

True unity cannot be manufactured through erasure or repression. It requires the courage to correct the injustices of 1961 and to accept that a free Buea is essential to a stable Addis Ababa. Africa will not be built on the graves of silenced peoples. It will be built on justice, self-determination, and the right of every African child to wake up in a land that truly belongs to them.

Timothy Enongene Guest Editor-in-Chief The Independentistnews

Timothy Enongene is a legal theorist and political commentator specializing in the Southern Cameroons conflict and the evolution of Pan-Africanism, and is Guest Editor-in-Chief at The Independentistnews