The signals are clear that this country is gliding towards a bloody civil war which takes the form of a genocide, and one in which the principal victims on whom this calamity will rest are obviously the Anglophones. It therefore becomes even more pertinent that we at The SUN Newspaper should persist in our opinion that any initiative that comes closer to a lasting solution to this problem should not be overlooked. Take for instance, the most recent and soothing among them being the Cardinal Tumi initiative.
It is obvious now that the stage at which the positions taken by both the government on the one hand, and secessionists on the other, in relation to the depth of the root of the Anglophone problem, can certainly not shed the light to guarantee a possible way forward. We have by all consideration reached the point where it no longer seems to require a frivolous display of rhetoric, nor a frantic flexing of muzzles. Between secession and keeping the country one and indivisible, the gap seems to be too wide for now, to be bridged without an escalation of the already gruesome pursuit of a solution through the barrel of the gun or even mystical powers.
To be honest to ourselves, we must admit that the history of the founding of the new Cameroon nation which emerged after unification is written on broad pages and indentified as the product of a consultative process which took the shape of a referendum or plebiscite. And in the present context we are referring to the United Nations organised plebiscite of February 11, 1961, in which the people of the former Southern Cameroons, finding themselves face to face with the opportunity to chose where to exercise their sovereignty, either by joining their brothers of the former French Cameroon or, by integration with the Federal Republic of Nigeria had to make a choice. If today the option has become unbearable in one way or the other, they deserve the right to complain, and for their complaints to listened to with a human touch. After all, we are supposed to be brothers.
History, however, reminds us that the option of staying on their own as a separate nation to exercise their sovereignty, was among three options that were initially tabled by some Southern Cameroonians, represented by the Kamerun Peoples Party, K.P.P, headed by Hon. P.M. Kale, was challenged by both the United Nations, backed by Great Britain and, finally dropped, on the flimsy excuse that, the Southern Cameroons was too small to be able to sustain itself as a nation. The other two options of reunification and integration were therefore upheld. The results of the plebiscite however turned out in favour of joining the former French Cameroons. Needless to recall that, this arrangement was founded on the basis of a federal system of government.
We, however, believe that even as the results went the way they went, the plebiscite or referendum gave the people of the former Southern Cameroons their inalienable right to self determination which they freely exercised. It is also needless to recount what transpired in the Ahidjo manipulated referendum which stripped the union of its federal structure, only for Anglophones to find themselves in a deeply concentrated centralized system, in which all powers became vested in one person, working on an undeclared policy of marginalisation and assimilation of the Anglophones.
From a careful survey of the views of Anglophones, they still cannot forgo their loss of faith in the Ahidjo organised referendum, which they strongly believe was massively rigged. Rigged in the sense that Ahidjo, instead of going back to the Anglophones who opted to join La Republique du Cameroun, he single-handedly included the majority Francophones, to vote at the referendum, who had no stakes in the arrangement, but simply to throw their weight behind the option of dismantling the federal system.
To link up with the initiative being taken by Cardinal Tumi and co., an Anglophone General Conference, as we see it, is simply to prepare the ground for an eventual inclusive dialogue. We think this gathering will not only prepare the minds of Anglophones on what they will put on the table before the dialogue forum. Certainly we do not envisage a situation in which options will be forced on either side in the form of a monologue with either the government or the Anglophones in an attempt to overshadow the views of the other.
Unfortunately, what we actually see in the ongoing melodrama is the flexing of muzzles by both the government and the secessionists and at the same time trampling under their feet the real population who know exactly what each of them wants for this country.
After all, this was the same way in which they did exercise their inalienable right to self determination in the February 11, 1961 plebiscite. What is obvious now is that both the government and the secessionists can no longer read the minds of the people on what their individual stands are in what is presently happening in the country. Which, is why we think the United Nations and Great Britain should stop shying away from their responsibility at a time like this on a problem they are very versed with. It is still fresh in our memories, what part both Britain and the United Nations played in resolving the fragile issue of the independence of the Southern Cameroons at the time. This is where we think the Anglophones should be given another chance to exercise their right to self determination once more and we are certain a referendum or plebiscite will offer this opportunity.