By Colbert Gwain @The Colbert Factor
In the 1960s, an unlettered man named Bobe Fuchi Clement, nicknamed “I Think,” lived in Muteff village, Fundong Municipality, Cameroon’s North-West Province. His defining characteristic was never accepting anything hook, line, and sinker without profound reflection.
I recall returning to the village one holiday and hearing from a cousin that Bobe Fuchi Clement had challenged a man at the famous Waterside Bar, beside Mainland Abuh market square, who boasted about climbing the Kom traditional ladder (itang iyuo). Bobe Clement Fuchi emphasized that the real path to success lay in education, not traditional entitlements like fowls and goats.
Indeed, he prioritized investing in his children’s education and encouraged others to do the same. Unfortunately, few community members heeded his advice, viewing him as irresponsible for not pursuing traditional entitlements. Despite his warnings about neglecting education, the villagers largely disregarded his counsel.
Similar to Robert Kiyosaki’s insights in “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” Bobe Clement Fuchi understood the difference between assets (education) and liabilities (traditional entitlements).
By investing in education, he built an asset portfolio for his children, while others invested in liabilities. When he passed away a few years ago, his children, who had secured top positions in society thanks to their education, gathered to pay homage. It was then that the villagers’ eyes were opened, and they regretted not recognizing Bobe Fuchi Clement’s wisdom earlier.
Before Bobe Fuchi’s time, in the 16th century, Nostradamus, a French apothecary and seer, became famous for his prophecies and writings, particularly his book “Les Propheties” (The Prophecies).
Nostradamus, whose real name was Michel de Nostredame, is widely believed to have possessed prophetic insight, as some interpret his writings to predict events like the French Revolution and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America, amongst others.
Unlike Nostradamus, who focused on foretelling, Kristian Ngah Christian, the publisher, and editor of Cameroon’s prominent daily newspaper, The Guardian Post, operates in the realm of forth-telling, which involves speaking truth to power.
Twelve years ago, he predicted the escalation of tensions in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions into full-blown conflict and courageously brought this to President Paul Biya’s attention, including proposals on how to nip it in the bud, through an open letter that was unfortunately largely ignored.
Kristian Ngah’s famous open letter to President Biya addressed “angloxploitation,” a term coined by Colbert Gwain in 2024 to describe the systemic marginalization and exploitation of Anglophones in Cameroon.
The letter vividly portrayed the historical grievances of Anglophones, including marginalization in appointments, infrastructure development, education, and the legal system, as well as the suppression of dissent.
Ngah boldly proposed the reintroduction of federalism, as existed before 1972, as a solution to avert conflict. Given the letter’s strong language and nuanced arguments, summarizing it would be inadequate – reading the entire letter is essential.
Twelve years later, the letter remains remarkably relevant. Take a read.
*Open letter to President Biya on Anglophone marginalization*
By Ngah Kristian christian
Your Excellency, if your Anglophone apologists have never had the courage to tell you the truth, get it from us that the feeling among the Anglophone component is largely that they have been robbed of their fair share of national cake.
Many have been questioning whether it is not yet time to establish a balance sheet of Cameroon’s unitary state; in all spheres, 43 years after.
Political pundits hold, and rightly so, that 43 years in a marriage is enough time to redefine the terms of the union and to work out a fair system of resource allocation and equality.
Even though the union between West and East Cameroon was fuelled by true nationalism, Anglophones are now left with the feelings of repentance, regret and irredentism.
Mr. President, whether wrongly or rightly, many Anglophone pressure groups believe that since 1972 that the unitary state was instituted, Anglophones have been abused and marginalised, their cultural identity erased and their regions underdeveloped. They argue that Anglophones have continued to feel hemmed in with absolutely no prospect for a better future.
Your Excellency, Anglophones, including even those who loiter around you for undue favours, have the feeling that in the current set-up, they have no future. They hold the unshaken view that what is supposed to belong to Anglophones as right is given to them as favour.
This is perhaps why Your Excellency, some of your Francophone brothers believe, and strongly so, that Anglophones or “Les Anglos” as they are fondly called, are fit to play only second fiddle in public life.
Your Excellency, at The Guardian Post, we are of the opinion that if your political advisers truly cherish Cameroon’s much-trumpeted peace and national unity, they would have already told you that the fact that Francophone power has read helplessness into Anglophones’ patience could prove fatal for our dear country whose unity is being threatened by the marginalisation of the Anglophone component in the realm of appointments.
Your Excellency, to better keep you abreast of the marginalisation and injustices done to Anglophones in Cameroon, we carried out an investigation, which, from statistics gathered, show that apart from the gubernatorial portfolio and Rectors where a modicum of balance is attained, all the other areas of public life show Anglophones either playing second fiddle to Francophones or getting less than their fair share of the national cake. We have opted to break down these findings into several sections for Your Excellency’s better understanding and appreciation.
*Appointments into positions of responsibility*
Your Excellency, no matter the intention for the abolition of the position of vice president that was occupied by an Anglophone, analysts of English expression believe that the subsequent transfer of the second political position to the president of the Senate (now headed by a Francophone), the third political position (National Assembly president), handed to a Francophone while Anglophones have only a distant fourth position in the succession arrangements, are all meant to stop an Anglophone from ever taking over power in Cameroon.
Your Excellency, North West Fons might never have had the courage to tell you that the reason in 1983 they honoured you with the title of Fon of Fons when you visited Bamenda was to cajole you to always think of the two Anglophone regions when sharing the national cake.
They are not only saying so but are often heard grumbling that they gave you cold water when you made your first-ever visit to Bamenda, but in return, you are paying them back with blistering hot water. Here, they are referring to the marginalisation of Anglophones when it comes to appointments into juicy positions and the underdevelopment of the two Anglophone regions.
Mr. President, it has emerged from our findings that of the over 130 state corporations in Cameroon, 15 Anglophones or so are General Managers! Apart from CDC, CSPH and recently Chantier Naval, no Anglophone heads any state corporation of substance.
They are placed at the helm of dud corporations like MIPROMARLO, ANTIC and the National Institute of Public Management. Of the over 100 board chairmen of state corporations who you have appointed, less than 15 are Anglophones.
Your Excellency, we are tempted to believe that the reason Anglophones think they have no future in this country is because since independence, none of them has ever occupied the strategic ministries of defense, finance, national education, MINAT/D and or serve as police or gendarmerie boss.
Your Excellency, there has been only one Anglophone minister of state since independence! No Anglophone has been appointed Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, which is generally considered the most important position after the President of the Republic.
Mr. President, looking at various facets of national life, the stark evidence of Anglophone marginalisation stands out like a candle in the dark.
Take the example of the current cabinet that is made up of 65 members.
In this cabinet, there are only seven Anglophones; with most of them holding junior or inferior positions.
Of the 38 full ministers, only two are Anglophones, Ngole Ngwese (Minister of Forestry and Wildlife) and Ama Tutu Muna (Minister of Culture). Of the seven ministers of state in the current government, none is Anglophone. Of the 38 secretaries of state, only two are Anglophones.
In the ministry, the most important person with rank of Director is the Director of General Administration, generally known by its French abbreviation DAG.
There is only one Anglophone DAG in 40 ministries. Again, there are only five Anglophone secretaries general in 38 ministries.
In the administration, Anglophones are almost completely absent. There are only six Anglophone SDOs out of 58. An attempt to undertake a head count of the number of Anglophones who are DOs in Cameroon met with tons of tears flowing down our cheeks because they could only be counted with the fingers of the hand. This is in spite of the fact that Cameroon counts up to 360 DOs.
Your Excellency, the military is another black area for Anglophones. French is the de facto official language in the military. The police force witnesses a similar level of Anglophone marginalisation. Anglophones have been conditioned not to dream of heading the national security and defense ministries.
Your Excellency, are you aware that in the police training college in Mutengene, more than 90 percent of the students are Francophones; even though the school is found on Anglophone soil? How can this not be so, when just recently, the Delegate General for National Security organised the police recruitment exam with questions translated into approximated English language!
In one of the modules dubbed: “Civic Examination,” all the questions were translated verbatim from French into English. As such, all the questions were not only wrongly-constructed but meant the direct opposite of the French version.
Despite the fact that Cameroon is a bilingual country, none of the announcements or decrees for the recruitment of 4,700 police officers into the police corps was published in English.
The over 100 press releases announcing the number of places, documents required, the dates of the examination for various specialties and units of the police force were all in French.
When this happened, Anglophone teachers and pressure groups cried foul and called for the cancellation of the exams, but the Delegate General for National Security maintained a stony and provocative silence.
Your Excellency, as we write this letter to you, the unanimous feeling among Anglophones is that Anglophone candidates who sat the police recruitment exams were programmed to fail.
Your Excellency, from our findings, we came out, yet, with the startling statistics that the presidency is almost exclusively Francophone territory. Anglophone officials there are not only few but have been programmed to play only second fiddle.
Mr. President, are you aware that of the more than 36 heads of diplomatic missions, only six are Anglophones?
In the most important English-speaking countries like South Africa and the United States, there is no Anglophone heading the diplomatic mission.
Anglophones, despite the sweeping victories of the ruling party in the municipal, parliamentary and senatorial elections in the South West and the dramatic surge of the CPDM in the North West, continue to be marginalised by the ruling party leadership.
Despite the fact that the ruling party was put to birth in the Anglophone town of Bamenda, no Anglophone, for the over 30-year existence of the CPDM, has ever been Secretary General of the party or even “elected” to the second fiddle position of Assistant Secretary General.
Mr. President, isn’t that a strong indication that the ruling party of which you are its national president is suspicious of Anglophones or to put it bluntly in the words of the late Yaounde Government Delegate, Emah Basile, “enemies in the house”?
Your Excellency, according to our findings, in the National Oil Refining Company, known by its French acronym, SONARA, more than 90 percent of senior staff and the overwhelming majority of junior staff are Francophones. Although SONARA is on Anglophone soil, the official language there is French. Since its inception in 1979, no Anglophone has occupied the position of General Manager or even Deputy General Manager.
Mr. President, if Anglophones working with the state-run broadcaster, CRTV, have not written to your high office to complain about the injustices being done against them, then it is because we believe, they fear further victimisation.
As we write this letter to you, tons of evidence are there to prove that Anglophones working with the CRTV; be they at the central services or regional levels are treated as second class citizens.
Mr. President, we have every reason to believe that in your heart of hearts, the General Manager and deputy of CRTV are Francophone and Anglophone respectively.
Your Excellency, even though the deputy General Manager of CRTV is English- speaking, he is not an Anglophone by birth. He comes from Bangoua in the Nde Division in the West Region.
This means that he is comfortably sitting on the throne which rightly belongs to Anglophones. We know for sure, Your Excellency, that you did not create the position of CRTV deputy General Manager for another Francophone.
Mr. President, the domination of Francophones at CRTV is appalling. Out of the ten chiefs of stations and four heads of FM stations, only three are Anglophones. At the central service, there is only one Anglophone director out of more than ten directors. If an Anglophone is Director, the General Manager will rely more on the deputy who is a Francophone.
Your Excellency, are you aware that so many Francophone CRTV staff who would have long gone on retirement are being recycled under the pretext that they served you and your regime so loyally and so cannot just be allowed to go on retirement like that? On the contrary, their Anglophone colleagues are virtually chased away as soon as their last day of retirement approaches. The interpretation here is that Anglophones in CRTV have not been serving you and your regime loyally.
At the Bank of Central African States, the central bank of countries in CEMAC, there is no single senior Anglophone official. That is probably the reason there is no single word in English in all denominations of CFA notes.
Your Excellency, the legal tender of Cameroon has no word in one of the two official languages of the country! The fact that there is no word in English on the CFA note is another pointer to the direct and indirect methods of eliminating symbols of biculturalism and unification. If you doubt us Your Excellency, ask to be shown a CFA bank note for any residue of bilingualism.
Your Excellency, the Douala Stock Exchange has no Anglophone on its board even though there are many qualified Anglophone economists.
The national football team is also a no-go area for Anglophones. Ever since you took over power in 1982, the tradition has always been that not more than two Anglophones are called up to play in the national football team, especially whenever there is a prestigious tournament.
Your Excellency, no Anglophone has ever been president of Cameroon’s football governing body, FECAFOOT, since independence.
The only surviving Anglophone economic giant, the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, that was vibrant in 1993 when the first All Anglophone Conference, AAC I, held has been split into bits and pieces and are being gradually sold out to cold-blooded capitalists.
Mr. President, there was no Anglophone on the committee for privatisation that handled the sale of CDC tea estates.
*Poor or no infrastructure*
Your Excellency, we know your representatives at the Subdivisional, divisional and regional levels in the two Anglophone regions of the North West and South West have been hiding it from you that road infrastructure in Anglophone Cameroon is in terrible mess.
There is no good road that links the two Anglophone regions. To travel from one Anglophone region to the other, the Anglophone must pass through Francophone Cameroon. In some places, Anglophones have to pass through Nigeria to get to their part of the country.
Your Excellency, the tarring of the Ring Road in the North West, which you announced in 1983 that you would personally supervise its construction and preside over its inauguration, is far from nearing completion.
To make matters worse, portions of the road which were poorly constructed have become a nightmare for users. The number of lives lost on that road is counted in their hundreds.
A few years ago, government announced that it had lobbied and obtained funds that would conveniently tar the road from Bafoussam to Bamenda. But as soon as the road was tarred right after Mbouda in the West Region and with expectations that the construction would continue right up to Bamenda in the North West Region as was initially budgeted, news came that the funds allocated for the project had been “exhausted!”
Your Excellency, we need not remind you that these are some of the instances that make Anglophones believe that they are discriminated against and treated as second class citizens in a country they call theirs.
Your Excellency, another instance which makes Anglophones believe there is a deliberate attempt to keep their regions underdeveloped is the Limbe natural deep seaport, which has an opening to the Atlantic Ocean. It has been neglected in favour of the Douala river port, which requires dredging every year and yet heavy vessels can’t anchor in it.
Anglophone pressure groups are of the opinion, Your Excellency, that this was deliberately done to stifle development in Limbe, in the Anglophone part of the country as Limbe would have become the economic capital of Cameroon. Anglophones believe Chad had originally wanted the pipeline terminal to be in Limbe but your Francophone aides and tribesmen insisted that Kribi; in your South region of origin, should host it.
Mr. President, you should not only be getting it from us at The Guardian Post that the airports at Nsimalen, Douala, Bertoua, Garoua, Maroua and Bafoussam are all in Francophone Cameroon. All the airports in Anglophone Cameroon have been shut down.
Similarly, all hydro-electricity generation plants are in Francophone Cameroon. The Yoke power generating plant that used to operate in former Southern Cameroons and later West Cameroon has since been shut down in what Anglophone pressure groups say is part of the Francophone conspiracy to slow down development in Anglophone Cameroon.
Deliberate attempt to strangle English sub-system of education
Cameroon’s education sector is theoretically divided by decree into two sub-systems; one English and the other French.
But Your Excellency, all the three ministries in charge of basic, secondary and higher education are headed by Francophones.
The Anglophone educational system has been attacked on several occasions; notably during the attempt to reform the GCE. It took stiff resistance from parents who braved cannon and tear gas to save the English sub-system of education. The bilingual school structure is a juxtaposition of the two school systems.
Your Excellency, we guess you might not be aware that tension is already mounting; especially within the camp of Anglophone university lecturers, following a recent move by your Minister of Higher Education to “harmonise” the university syllabus in the country. If the harmonisation programme goes as planned, some departments of the English sub-system of education will be annihilated.
First, there will be the scraping of Common Law from the curriculum of academic programmes in the nation’s universities while Political Science, Economics and Management will be submerged in Francophone curriculum.
Already, the attempt to harmonise the educational system in the country has been categorised as a diabolic intention to kill the Anglo-Saxon system of education and the Anglophone culture in Cameroon.
Your Excellency, if the country’s secret services are doing their work well, they should have already briefed the authorities in Yaounde about the reaction of the Buea university lecturers; who, meeting recently under the auspices of their local chapter of the Union of Teachers of Higher Education in Cameroon, SYNES, have come out with an intriguing list of resolutions in which they have warned government of the impending danger if the proposed harmonisation of academic programmes in universities is implemented.
Your Excellency, the decree you signed in the 90s creating the University of Buea specifies that it was created in the Anglo-Saxon tradition and therefore, does not have the same complexion as other state universities which would be more readily disposed to harmonisation. This means that academic programmes and management at this institution would be tailored more towards the tradition obtained in most English-speaking countries.
Your Excellency, we need not remind your very high office that the Common Law is unique to Anglophone Cameroon. It is the foundation of legal practice in English-speaking countries, while Civil Law is culturally Francophone. Why therefore would the Ministry of Higher Education envisage a Cameroon with Anglophones but without Common Law?
Your Excellency, we urge you to immediately call Minister Jacques Fame Ndongo to order before he embarks on his vast mission to delete everything in the legal system that identifies Anglophones in Cameroon as an existing cultural group.
In most of the universities and professional schools in Francophone Cameroon, few subjects are taught in English. Over 90% of the subjects are taught in French, in an alien system of academic terrorism characterised by intimidation and malpractice.
Anglophone students are constantly taunted by their Francophone classmates and lecturers alike. In some higher institutions of learning in Francophone Cameroon, lecturers who have a phobia for English language occasionally hand out zeroes to all Anglophone students for writing exams in English!
While nobody cares if Anglophones are admitted into the elite professional schools, compulsory quotas of Francophones were once forced into the faculty of medicine in the University of Buea through the barrel of the gun.
A Vice-Chancellor was sacked for failing to admit Francophone students into the Anglo-Saxon university, while the faculty of medicine in next door Douala can forget to admit Anglophones and get away with it.
Curiously, Mr. President, Francophone hordes are now invading Anglophone secondary schools, eroding behavioural and academic standards, while the local communities which built some of the schools can no longer obtain admission for their own children!
School funding is slanted while amenities are selectively balanced. While Commonwealth scholarships are given to everybody with the complicity of boot-licking Anglophone civil servants, few, if any Anglophones get the La Francophonie sponsorship.
The story is more pathetic with a once thriving technical education sector for Anglophones. It was run down over the years and denied proper teacher training facilities and funding. Whole generations were badly taught by French speakers and the failure rate in technical exams reached alarming proportions. Little has been done to alleviate the plight of Anglophones; in spite of the reluctant opening of what would doubtlessly be another Francophone-dominated Higher Technical Teacher Training College in Kumba.
*Arrest of SCNC activists: Not solution to Anglophone problem.*
Your Excellency, we have had occasions at The Guardian Post to advise that the frequent arrest of militants of the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, cannot in any way represent the solution to the Anglophone problem in Cameroon.
On the eve of every major national event, some security operatives take delight in pouncing on SCNC activists; even without any iota of evidence to justify an offence.
Traditionally, security forces clamp down on SCNC adherents on the heels of celebrations marking May 20. SCNC has over the years insisted that it is October 1 which is their National Day and not May 20. There have also been countless cases where SCNC officials are arrested and detained at the pleasure of overzealous officials.
The irony of the numerous arrests is that after a few nights in the police or gendarme cells, the detainees are often released without charge. Their freedom is predicated on the irrefutable fact that a case against them will not find any grounds of guilt.
What many of the militants often do is to issue harmless press statements alleging the arrival of the proverbial wolf. It makes security officials panicky and the wolf never comes.
Their most serious action was when some of them seized CRTV Buea in 1999 and proclaimed “the restoration of Southern Cameroons independence”. The ring leaders, with Justice Ebong at the forefront, were arrested, taken to Yaounde and detained for almost four years. They were left off the hook with no charge.
There have also been sporadic cases in which some zealots of the group hoisted SCNC flags on palm trees and some government buildings by night and fled by the day. All have amounted to an expression of non-violent civil disobedience.
At The Guardian Post, we admit a few of their actions like hoisting flags and taking a radio station hostage are provocative to warrant arrest.
But we vehemently are in opposition to cases where a person is pulled out of a church house and taken for detention like was a recent case in Kumbo, Bui Division. Should SCNC officials, many of who are just paper tigers and seeking cheap publicity, be arrested at every beck and call when they are in a group of less than ten people at a private home?
Although the SCNC is often described as a “secessionist group”, its objective is far from that.They are guided in their actions by non-violence as illustrated by their mission statement: ‘”Force of the argument and not the argument of force”.
They argue, and with incontrovertible evidence, that it is the Yaounde regime that has reneged on the reunification accord which is also under scrutiny. By 1961 when Anglophones joined La Republique du Cameroun, it was already an independent country.
Not until after the Foumban conference that both countries reunited.
By returning to its 1960 name, the SCNC posits that the Yaounde regime broke the reunification union and are holding them hostage.
That argument was taken to the African Commission during which the government recognised the legitimacy of the group by sponsoring four of its members on a total of five occasions to The Gambia and Senegal.
If the SCNC was an illegal organisation, would the government have spent the tax payers’ money to fly some of its members abroad? If the Yaounde authorities can dine and wine with SCNC officials like they did during the case at the African Commission, why then are security operatives itchy to arrest its supporters even for committing no offence?
Your Excellency, we say “for committing no offence”, because after the numerous arrests and detentions, they are hardly taken to court. Isn’t it because the men in ‘khaki’ know that they would have no evidence to support the detentions that they often free the “suspects” without charge?
What turns the bile of decency is that the practice dents the image of our dear country and blots our human rights record. It violates the universal rights of citizens to undertake peaceful demonstrations to redress their problems.
Mr. President, kindly take it from us that arresting and incarcerating SCNC officials and activists will not help to give your regime a smiling face in front of the international community in a world that has been made a global village with the ease of communication facilities.
The solution, we strongly hold, Your Excellency, is to address the Anglophone problem, which is principally that of gross marginalisation in all facets of human and infrastructural development.
Constant arrests are just intended to cow the protesters and there would be no end in sight, once the regime in Yaounde cannot provide a solution to the Anglophone problem.
*Bleak future for Anglophone media*
Your Excellency, it is true the private media in Cameroon has problems, but the Anglophone media has a peculiar problem.
This is not only explained by the fact that there are few Anglophones in positions of responsibility who can give advertising jobs to English-speaking media organs or sponsor them.
The honest truth, Your Excellency, is that Francophones in juicy positions take delight in giving advertising jobs; even when they are written in English language, to French newspapers. English media organs are viewed by Francophone authorities as spies or ‘opposants’.
That explains why, Your Excellency, when in 2011 you gave over half a billion to your Director of Cabinet to share to private media organs in Cameroon, he virtually went down on knees begging some managers of French media organs to take their share of the money but did not see reason a single English language media organ in Cameroon should benefit from your gesture.
The way forward:
Your Excellency, the secret service deployed to Bamenda to monitor the deliberations and outcome of the All Anglophone Lawyers’ Conference should have already told Yaounde that it has been all accolades for the Common Law lawyers who forwarded to you a six-month ultimatum to revert to the federal form of government.
It was abolished some 43 years ago by the then Head of State, the late Ahmadou Ahidjo, under the pretext that it was expensive.
Mr. President, as experience has shown, a federal form of government offers a pragmatic, result-oriented administration for a country like Cameroon with diverse specificities.
Neigbouring Nigeria practices a federal system, so do other developed countries like the United States, Canada, Britain, and Belgium, which have three official languages, just to mention a few.
A recent vox pop conducted by The Guardian Post was vastly indicative that the majority of those polled favour a return to federalism. Your apologists will argue that “decentralisation”, which is being advertised as “transferring resources and competences” to councils, is a form of federalism.
But Mr. President, where is the regional houses prescribed in the constitution, even though Yaounde jumped the gun and created the Senate first? Governors are still being appointed. So, to brandish decentralisation as a federation would be nothing short of an attempt to blindfold the governed.
That, however, is not what Anglophone moderates, differentiating them from those of the SCNC, are hankering for.
Decentralisation, as is being done in Cameroon, is miles away from a federation which is seen as a panacea for the marginalisation of the two English-speaking regions.
Your Excellency, at The Guardian Post, we accept that a federated state will promote balanced development, equitable distribution of resources and cordial competition, which should foster the all-round development of the nation.
That is why we urge Anglophones; be they lawyers, traditional rulers, students, politicians, civil society actors or trade unionists to specify the type of federalism they want. With the Foumban federalism arrangement, Anglophones had their own parliament and a House of Chiefs.
Francophones had their assembly while there was the Federal House. Even then, it was a loose federalism, especially as Yaounde had the knife and the yam to dictate whatever allocation it deemed appropriate to each of the regional houses.
If such federalism is instituted, Anglophones would still be marginalised. After all, have we not heard how the Scots in Britain are in a federation yet still complaining that England is cheating them?
Your Excellency, we can copy the example from next door Nigeria, which has some of the desirable aspects of federalism. Its national resources are shared to the states taking into consideration the sources of revenue, population and land mass.
We make bold to say that if such a policy had existed in a federated Cameroon, there is no way Ndian Division, to take as an example, from where petrol is drilled, would have been without one stretch of tarred road or fuel filling station.
It would not have also been possible in a federated state for a region like the South, where the President comes from; with a population about the size of Bamenda city, to have eleven parliamentarians while the entire Mezam Division has only three parliamentarians.
One of the reasons for which power mongers are often frightened when federalism is mentioned is the phobia to cede power and become weaker. But that, Your Excellency, isn’t true. The federal government is often richer and more powerful than the states combined.
Like in the case of Belgium, which embraced federalism in 1993, the federal government retains such important powers as: foreign affairs, defense, justice, finance, social security, internal affairs and some important parts of public health.
The advantage of such federalism is that each state with its elected governors, a regional parliament and budget voted by a federal national assembly, will be better-placed to prioritise its development needs.
That, Mr. President, will prevent the current cacophony, wastage and callous duplication of projects where civil servants sit in Yaounde and allocate development projects not because of need, but for the dubious influence of bigwigs who come from such areas.
That explains why those who frequently crisscross the country for one reason or the other will observe that health centres are built and abandoned in bushes.
There are too many schools in some areas while other communities are in dire need of classrooms.
Teachers clustered in classrooms in city schools while there are numerous schools in rural areas without enough teachers.
Roads are constructed to some localities with scanty populations just because a high-ranking personality of the regime comes from there, while other more populated areas with economic potentials are not considered.
Kristian Ngah Christian
Publisher/Editor
The Guardian Post
