By WIFAH J. NDE and WAMBO EMMANUEL
Denizens in Bamenda were quick to describe the PM Yang led appeasement trip to the Northwest region which spanned Sunday October 15 to Sunday 22 as a meaningless trip when The SUN sampled their views.
They saw it as servants acting on the dictates of their master and ‘chopping’ taxpayers’ money in the name of peace mission or dialogue.
The National Chairman of the Social Democratic Front, SDF was not indifferent on this. The SUN caught up with him at his Ntarikon residence and he purged out his mind “….before I went to the farm, I was told that the Prime Minister, PM was to visit the Northwest. I asked myself as I asked one of two persons, what did the PM bring? Because he was here to talk to the teachers, the lawyers, came back to call on parents to send children to school and so after all the talking, arrests and killings what did he bring….?”
“When I came back and they didn’t tell me anything the PM brought, so I said it was one of those ministerial trips that people go out on mission allowances to tell people that they were out to work”.
Another SDF militant, Teche Nyamusa simply says “it is show of bad faith and white-collar robbery by the Biya regime”.
As the PM and his closed aides criss-crossed the region with clearly spelt agenda from Yaounde responses from the field meetings held behind closed doors were nonetheless varied.
In Mezam where the PM received Trade Union leaders, Church leaders and Traditional rulers, reports that filtered from the corridors of their discussions indicate that while the trade unionists made demands for repair of roads in the region, completely satisfy the demands of teachers and lawyers, the religious leaders on their part submitted a drafted proposal on the way out of the Anglophone palaver to the PM as traditional rulers went dumb so as not to compromise their envelopes from the PM.
An anonymous source told us that he was shocked and ashamed of the hypocrisy that reigns amongst the Fons when the PM asked at whose palace were strange flags hoisted on October 1 and nobody owned up. Our source further told us that they were all listening sculptures and affirmed to every message the PM passed on from high quarters.
To every Division, Subdivision and Villages the PM and his collaborators whom political animators in the Northwest describe as Yaoundé CPDM elite visited, the message was unbroken. It was a message of peace from the Head of State denouncing secession, preaching the demise of federation, with reflection on setbacks of 1961-1972 form of government which was federation such as slow growth rates and complicated administrative structures.
To them the best form of government is decentralization adopted in 1996 with implementation which began in 2013 and still in process. They equally argued that the 1996 constitution is most advanced political reform that has ever happened to Cameroon. Stating that, the form of government in the one and indivisible Cameroon is non-negotiable.
In Mbengwi, headquarters of Momo Division, the no nonsense people of Momo through their Fons, political and church leaders did not hesitate to vent their anger challenged the PM to go back and tell president Biya to address the people of Northwest and Southwest. They bluntly told him to his face that they are fed up transmitting messages through him, with doubts if the Head of State receives the right information or not.
A delegation that visited the Nso palace was abandoned by Fon Sehm Mbinglo II who told the delegation that he was hoping to see the people who were arrested to dialogue with and not a Yaoundé composed delegation. He therefore, told them to return and free all Anglophone detainees before calling for any dialogue.
As much as the PM and his surrogates passed on their message of peace from the ambit of the Head of State to the Northwest people exhausting an alleged FCFA 200milions within the weeklong trip, the take home message was clear.
That the people of Northwest want all Anglophone detainees freed, amnesty granted to those who have fled the country, President Biya should meet and address the people of Northwest and Southwest and call for an all inclusive dialogue not exempting those in the Diaspora calling for secession.
An inside source of the PM’s trip hinted The SUN that the exercise is considered dialogue already. Our source revealed that after this mission which media reports refer to as dialogue, reforms shall begin and that no other dialogue on the Anglophone problem should be expected.
The SUN was hinted that the first action as the head of state returns from his UNGA mission, he shall reshuffle the government, shall during the November session of parliament propose a constitutional amendment and later adopt another connotation for a new form of government void of federation and secession as solutions to the Anglophone problem.