TFT Magazine | Cameroon News | Southern Cameroon News

Opinion

By Dr. Williamson Viban
Culled from SCNC Members’ Forum**

If up to today no one knows that the purpose of Cameroun Republic with it neocolonialist cohorts being in the Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) is to buy time to get oil and that when the oil wells will dry out they will ask us to take out empty country and leave, then that person hasn’t got a head.

There is not shortage of ports in the Southern Cameroons. The following coastal settlements are potential locations for deep sea ports that can take the largest ocean liners: Starting from the east of our littoral, you have Missellele; Tiko that had flourished from the days of the Germans (1884-1915) and when we were under the British (1915-1954); Bimbia, Man of War; Victoria whose name had been prostituted by the occupying Cameroun dictatorial regime to Limbe, (Limbe being a name of a brook given according the French tradition of assimilation) .

The others are Bota, Ngeme, Mojugange, Batoke, Bakingili, Mogange, Njonje, Isobi, Bugundi, Betika, and Bamusso. So you see, we have been blessed with so many locations facing the ocean and are not inhibited by sand as the alien’s coastline. Even the creek extending to Ejundu-Titi, Archibon along the Akpa-Yafe river and right to Ngumu can be built to handle ships. The potential is enormous and many countries envy us. A counntry like Great Britain has 52 deep sea ports. Are they many? No!!! Gabon that has not got a population as high as ours, 7 million strong, has four deep sea ports. Yet we have nothing because our fathers allowed some aliens with bad intentions to come into our country in 1961 and it was a grievous mistake.

Envy and Fear

I am even forgetting the great River Port of Mamfe. Barges plied the Cross River up to Mamfe via Nigeria in the rainy season. An agreement was signed in the colonial days between British Nigeria and the Southern Cameroons to allow the Southern Cameroons water crafts to use the Cross River on conditions that they did not stop on the way from the Old Calabar, the Gulf of Guinea, to remove or take in goods or passengers else they were subjected to pay custom duties. That was a great arrangement that we see among decent countries traversed by the Danube river in Europe. The Mamfe River Port is not being used as Cameroun Republic is ever nervous that Southern Cameroons will benefit economically from such regional arrangement with Nigeria thus will become independent from them. Why do they keep on fearing Nigeria too when they share a common border that is there for infinity? Who have proved themselves to be bad guys? Who came to Bakassi to start a fight with Nigeria? Cameroun Republic. Is this how Africans help to develop themselves? Is this the legacy they will leave to their children?

You will see that in the hey days of Nigeria oil boom (late 1970s and early 1980s) there was plenty of construction projects and the then Government of the day was ready to assist in the building of the Victoria sea port and tar the Victoria-Mamfe- Ekok road but Ahidjo’s regime could not fathom this. The plan was for Nigeria to import its building materials, particularly cement and use the Victoria-Kumba- Mamfe-Ekok highway. To the occupying government of Cameroun Republic, that would have meant a partial liberation of the Southern Cameroons from its dependency on Cameroun Republic. That was turned down. Dismissing that proposition, they remained with the ever silting river port of Douala where one needed and still do need to pay an arm a leg to get simple personal effects out. It is probably the most corrupt seaport on earth and it is a shame.

We do not want this to divert our attention from the main cause, revival of the independence of The Southern Cameroons. Also, the fear of the occupying government of Yaoundé was that jobs would be created for Southern Cameroonians and they would not be coming to the filthy cities of Yaoundé and Douala where their assimilation would be sped up. As such the Nigerian plans were dismissed at their buds. I wonder what they send delegates to sit and talk at African Union meetings when they cannot build a single road to crisscross the sick continent.

Kribi, Oui; Victoria, Never

Why do we go far? The shortest route for the laying of oil pipes from Chad to the Atlantic was via Victoria. Take a map of that your neighboring state Cameroon Republic and place a ruler from the town of Bongor in Chad to Victoria in The Southern Cameroons. Note the distance. Take another measurement from Bongor to Kribi following the pipe line and you will see that it is way longer than the former. Why then did the Yaounde regime not take the shortest route for the pipe line through Victoria as recommended by the engineers? To the occupying regime that would have been another way to create jobs for the anglos (their abusive term of addressing Southern Cameroonians variously known as Ambazonians) . The head of state of Cameroon Republic who ever fakes his sickness as his way of sounding his popularity when travelling abroad and wants to leave a legacy for his people like Mobutu Sese Seko of the past Zaire that left intenecine wars pointed to Kribi.

Now you know why Kribi was chosen and not the shortest route via Victoria. There are questions that a sympathetic and sensible spatial planner would ask. Why is oil being refined at Victoria and stored in a depot at Bafoussam? Why not at Mamfe if it is absolutely necessary that it had to be stored kilometers away from the refineries? It is another way to enrich themselves and impoverished Southern Cameroonians. If not, what are their rationales? They do not answer such questions. To start with, they are not democratic and it is a police state.

“Enemies in the House”

What has Cameroun Republic ever done for its new “colony,” the Southern Cameroons? The Kumba-Mamfe- Bamenda road was the one that linked the southern forested zone to the grassfields. Today, the road is virtually impassable and Southern Cameroonians are deliberately forced to use Mungo-Bafoussam- Bamenda road where they are constantly harassed each blessed day by uncouth highway men in uniforms as they consider Southern Cameroonians “enemies in the house.” I am quoting their words. Why are we enemies when we are not standing on their territory? They are our enemies for they forcibly stand on ours. They have never got it that the Southern Cameroons is a separate country that willy-nilly had to be independent.

The leading powers of the world can opt to be silent that it is not their concern. They are citizens of the world as Southern Cameroonians. If not, what is the role of the United Nations Organization? What is the role of the EU and NATO? What is that high-sounding emponym ECOWAS? It puzzles me that there are even some stooges ([Southern Cameroonian] citizens who sell out their country to the enemies) who still want to have the sympathy of la Republiqué du Cameroun to use the Southern Cameroons oil money to build their ports for them. They are bought to sit in their Yaounde parliament to fool the world that they cooperate with citizens of Southern Cameroons. Do they? Some youths buy it and that is where we have to concentrate on their distorted education on the history of the Southern Cameroons. We once had the Queen of England as our Head of State and not General Charles de Gaulle. Did they ever sing “God save our Gracious Queen”?

What is wrong with the Southern Cameroons building her ports? Is it not high time that Southern Cameroons citizens walk out of that French parliament at Yaounde? They did from Lagos and eventually Enugu in a bigger country than Cameroun Republic of today in 1954. How long does it take a people to know that they are serious? Why do they think that the Buea Parliament that once knew true democracy than that of the occupying forces cannot serve Southern Cameroonians to their liking?

*Title is that of TFT Magazine.
**Content from original piece has been sectionalized under editorial sub-headings by TFT Magazine

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