By Nicholas Ogbe keme*
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| Lawyer Nicholas Ogbe |
The problem with our
country is not about the people, it’s about the policy makers and managers –a
small cabal that does not want to repent or even resign after desperate but
abortive attempts to divert attention from the lawyers and teachers’ actions
which now have received significant national, regional and international
sympathies. We have to insist on the
plain point that, the agitations of the Common Law Lawyers and Anglo-Saxon teachers
are against institutional plunder of their educational and legal systems by the
francophone led central government.
Their move is unprecedented; an ideal for which we are prepared to
achieve at whatever costs.
Therefore, there is no need to resort to
midnight political camouflage as if the issues at stake have any political
underpinnings. Assuming (but without
conceding) that the ceremonial march past by the ruling Cameroon Peoples
Democratic Movement, CPDM, in Buea and Bamenda was successful, that alone could not have reduced
the cogent issues raised by common law lawyers and Anglo-Saxon teachers
from institutional to political. Of course, a man is a political animal but
this assertion has its own limitations. Because where politics ends that is where
institutions begin. Also, while politicians come and go daily, institutions
stay daily, always and forever.
Everyone that seems to
forget that a teacher imparts knowledge should also forget the day he was born.
Similarly, anybody who is ignorant of the fact the lawyer perfects knowledge
acquired from the teacher should as well never remember his name. For, the relationship between lawyers and teachers is equivalent to
that of Jesus and God, none will consciously contradict the other. All they have is knowledge, wisdom,
understanding, creativity, ingenuity and courage - not false courage, but real courage
and they are determined to see the end of this legitimate struggle which an
unrepentant political cabal is desperately seeking to thwart because of its
selfish aim of “ruining institutions, ruling
in perpetuity.”
Perhaps, I should belabour this point for the sake of public
education that the 1996 Constitution of Cameroon did not and never conceive either
(impliedly or expressly) a certain concept of a ‘linguistic Anglophone’ as so
erroneously propounded by the Ministers of Justice and Higher Education. There
is an impressive and remarkable distinction between privileges and rights,
obligations and duties, conditions, among others. Thus, no matter the intensity
or degree of harmonisation, what is given to an Anglophone as of right of birth,
traced to the incidence of history and culture of the former West Cameroon cannot
so be vested on a Francophone and vice versa .
The preambular provisions of the 1996 Constitution states in its opening
paragraph thus:
“We, the people of Cameron, proud
of our linguistic and cultural diversity, an enriching feature of our national
identity, but profoundly aware of the imperative need to further consolidate
our unity, solemnly declare that we constitute one and the same Nation, bound
by the same destiny, and assert our firm, determination to build the
Cameroonian Fatherland on the basis of the ideals of fraternity, justice and
progress……..” (Italics mine).
From the foregoing, it
is therefore laughable to suggest that acquisition of English orientation or academic
certificate of whatever depth or magnitude can create or give birth to an Anglophone.
It is the right of everyone, including non nationals to privilege the very
sound Anglo-Saxon system of education and to an extent, vice versa. But that
alone does not make him/her an Anglophone automatically - an ‘Anglophone’ is not an originating product of education. Rather, an Anglophone
has existed before the enactment of this constitution supra, he had an
enriching feature of identification duly recognised by nation states prior to
the drafting of this constitution, a functional government devoid of corruption,
linguistic, cultural and a geography, and so on, as a former British Southern
Cameroons, then West Cameroon and today, Anglophone Cameroon notably Southwest and
Northwes Regions which colonial heritage, the descendants of today are
determined to protect.
And just as the children of Israel never lost their
identities in spite of the many years spent in Egypt in bondage, their
counterparts here of the English speaking Cameroon-Anglophone did not also lose
theirs, despite the political exodus or the Great Treks from 1961 - till date and, no one, including the biblical Goliath
or political gladiators of our time can harass them to abandon. Never, never in
the history of this struggle. Because their peculiar characters, nature,
system, custom and culture as well as identity which they brought into the
union have statutorily been preserved by the Constitution in its Article
1(2)(3) of the 1996 Constitution.
Article 1(3) of the constitution on its part
states:
“The official languages
of the Republic of Cameroon shall be English and French, both languages having
the same status. The state shall guarantee the promotion of bilingualism
throughout the country. It shall endeavour to protect and promote national
languages.”
The logical argument that the 1996 Constitution preserved not
only the language but also the people of the former West Cameroon if advanced
from a well elaborated interpretation of the Constitution, should lead to the
following irreputable presumptions;
1. That in keeping with the literally
canon of interpretation, the draftsmen of the Constitution by inserting the
word ‘English’ first before ‘French’ intended that through its derivative principles
of states policies, English language should
inspire, dictate the pace, content and form of government policies. If it were
not so, the reverse should have been the case;
2. That by imploring the golden rule of
interpretation, it is contended that by the very esteemed and passionate use of
the two words ‘English’ and ‘French’ on a balance with a conjunction ‘and’
separating the two words as seen in Article 1(3) of the Constitution, the
draftsmen of the Constitution have settled any crafty idea of minority or
majority ideology within the union, with a clear hope of ensuring that each of
the subsystems conducts its government business in a manner consistent with its
language as a constitutional guarantee of the protection of its peoples within
the unitary system of government;
That by adopting the mischief rule of
interpretation, the preference of the word English language even before that of
its French counterpart in the provisor of Article 1(3) of the 1996 Constitution
above, the Cameroonian legislature had
intended that ‘English’ as one of the official languages and its people be
treated as endangered species and in turn be accorded maximum State cover and
protection as a political majority for the
purpose of government business or administration so as to dispel apparent fears
of assimilation, domination and occupation. That is why the draftsmen proceeded
from the alphabetical order of inserting English first before French as the
lingua franca in Cameroon. Jesse
Louis Jackson once said “in politics, an organised minority is a political
majority”. Any contrary interpretation may serve just for academic or political
ends which can’t rewrite the Constitution.
It is against this backdrop that every right thinking
Cameroonian, irrespective of your background, should always consider the actions
of Laurent Esso and Fame Ndongo, designed to annihilate or scrap the English
subsystem of education and common law justice system as provocative,
oppressive, unpatriotic, tyrannical and treasonable because they have no constitutional
backings, except that they are meant to brutally eliminate the Anglophone soul
from the map, of course their own way of silencing ‘les enemies dans la maison’
as it was the case in 2005 where the then Governor of Southwest Province, Eyaya
Zanga Louis, referred to Akwaya people as’ les biafrains’ when they stormed his
office in a peaceful protest against the
fraudulent diversion of the telecom centre meant to Akwaya to Nyasoso led by their MP,
Hon. Justice Ayah Paul Abine. That is the
Cameroon as viewed by the leaders across the Mungo where they have always implored
debasing names with impunity against the Anglophones in order to have their
way. It will make no sense should any Anglophone expect them to accept that
there is an Anglophone Problem, judging from the above analysis.
That notwithstanding, what must be must be, nothing can stop
it. We consider the government’s lukewarm and snail pace approach to sanction
the Ministers of Justice and Higher Education as a calculated provocation and
confirmation of the annexation plots. Because in a true democracy, equities
must be equal at all times and the people’s will should prevail against
individual’s as a deterrent measure. As stated above, there is no minority in equality. If it were so, the Constitution would
have spelled that position out clearly to avoid confusion.
What the Constitution has not previewed, no decree of the President
or arête of a minister or ordinance of governor, divisional officer can
successfully force down the throats of Anglophones if objected to as
brilliantly done by the Common law Lawyers and Anglo-Saxon Teachers today. Finally,
in a democracy, when a leadership loses the support of the followers as it is
in the instant case, the most noble and dignified thing to do is for these two
ministers to resign and save both their pride and generation from shame. Similarly,
profound investigations be conducted to sanction those involved in the gruesome
murder of innocent and unarmed civilians, torture of gentlemen of the law as
well as the torture, rape of creative and resilient students of UB who were
barely exercising their legitimate right
of a peaceful protest against the unconstitutional actions, embezzlement and
corruption of a political cabal that has plundered this country into the worst
form of misrule and maladministration, with the erroneous belief that the
brutal use of force or the ‘trigger’ by
the peoples security can bully dissenting views out of the path of truth and quest
for institutional remedies into the issues on ground - The Anglophone Problem.
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NB:*Nicholas Ogbe Keme is an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Courts of Cameroon and Nigeria,Litigation Officer,Shalom Legal Consultants,Buea-Cameroon.He is also a PhD candidate,University of Buea.
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