Why has the King’s key to Ni John so jolted Victoria to victimize the King? Ok, King Manga Williams has made it up with the local chiefs and the key controversy between the SDF Chieftain and the Paramount Chief-designate of Limbe could be unprecedented.
On the day the SDF Chairman was “humiliated”, according to some news reports, by the Limbe administration who rudely turned him away on his way to SONARA where he went to see for himself after the fire disaster, he was comforted and uplifted by the Paramount chief-designate of the city who presented him with a key to the kingdom (chiefdom) of Limbe at his Jengele riverside palace at Bonjo. Without necessarily establishing a link between the SONARA humiliation and the key; without implying that John Manga William meant to console Fru Ndi, it is obvious that the key brought some solace to Ni John.
Symbolic keys to cities or Honorary Citizenship are often loaded with symbolism (the least perhaps being the esteem in which the awarder holds the receiver), though they hardly achieve much more than that symbolism. Occasions for privileges supposedly enjoyed by recipients are hardly noticeable. Symbolic keys often appear in public no more than once – the day of the award – and they never get to open any physical doors, anyway. Fru Ndi will never open a door kept locked by the Paramount Chief or Government Delegate or any of the district Mayors of the city of Limbe. It will not open the bedroom of Johnny Manga (that is how I know him as a neighbour in Clerks Quarters, Victoria in my nursery school and early primary school years in the 1970s, and as my school prefect during my junior years in GHS Limbe in the mid-1980s). It will open neither the safe nor the locker of strategic documents of the City Council and the district councils, nor the locks of ballot boxes whenever elections are held again in Limbe under the auspices of whosoever.
But if it were only such a negligible gesture, why has it so rattled the municipal and traditional authorities of Limbe? The municipal authorities are protesting that award of symbolic keys is their exclusive preserve and the chiefs are vexed that a yet-to-be-coronated Paramount Chief-elect should swing into such public and symbolic action, “naked” or without his full attributes and regalia.
Perhaps the Limbe chiefs are right. King Williams might have brought this upon himself. He might have been too much in a hurry to exercise his long-awaited royal powers and be of service to his long “orphaned” people. But his impatience must be understood. Except you expect him to have the legendary patience of Prince Charles of England who at over 70 is still waiting to be king because his 93-year-old mother is still on her feet, you may be asking for too much from the Limbe king who, in his 50s, waited over 13 years since the death of his uncle King Ferguson Bila Manga Williams to be designated king and has been waiting over a year for the Government installation ceremony.
This controversy brings to the fore the debate over what between traditional coronation and civil or Government installation truly confers requisite powers on a traditional ruler. Does the delay of the Government ceremony (also just ceremonial) curtail the aura and relevance of a traditional ruler to his people? And why must King Manga Williams wait so long for the Government to come by? Impatient to serve his people, the Limbe King has lately swung into action with humanitarian support for IDPs and other destitute. It is curious that those rebuking him today for stepping out “naked” did not speak up then.
The Limbe key controversy may also have political undertones. Johnny Manga has been a Limbe CPDM official and chieftain at different levels and categories and tried unsuccessfully to be mayor. Take it that for aspiring so long to be mayor and never or not yet getting there, he might be subconsciously thinking and acting half Lord Mayor and half Royal Majesty. While there may not be much precedence of traditional authorities awarding symbolic keys, that does not necessarily make it a violation of any practice. After all, the key to the Kingdom of Limbe is not necessarily the same as the key to the city of Limbe. And, come on! You can’t deny a man both the trophy and the consolation prize. This goes less for Fru Ndi than for the King. If Johnny Manga could not award a symbolic key as mayor, here he is enjoying the pleasure of doing so as Paramount ruler. And, he did not steal that key from the councils, did he?
The key controversy may also have ethnic, if not xenophobic, undertones, though it appears to be a laudable statement by the Limbe king about “living together”. The unsaid thing in this palaver may not be over what the King did, but who he did it to. Had he awarded that key to a CPDM man or someone from elsewhere, there might have been less rancour. Justification for this reasoning may be grounded in the old question: why is the hospitality only coming from some, not from the others? Why isn’t it always reciprocated?
But what if King Manga Williams reasons like King George VI of England who, in some story about how he valued politeness as a virtue, was once “rebuked” for expressing courtesies towards commoners, and he retorted by asking why he should allow commoners (or in this case, less civil, less hospitable people) to be more polite and humble than him.
But also understand the Limbe King’s action through his family’s political history. Though Johnny Manga has been a CPDM stalwart, his grandfather, the late King Manga Williams, was a member of the KNDP party and his late father Prince Jesco Manga Williams was a die-hard SDF member. There were often stories of strained relations between father and son over political convictions. Both KNDP and SDF were viewed as predominantly “Bamenda” based parties and Fru Ndi is a Bamenda man. When Akere Muna came calling to campaign in Limbe during the presidential election last year, he too called at King Manga Williams’ palace and was well received. Johnny Manga ought to be saluted for being a true epitome of what a traditional ruler ought to be – everyone’s “patriarch”.
SONARA: Unpatriotic loyalists
The SONARA Commission of Inquiry is reportedly exposing the unpatriotic acts of some Biya loyalists who purport to love the president but hate the country and would kill it.
Some curious leaks from the commission’s early findings are that the strategic giant company’s insurance policy had expired at the time of the fire disaster and that implies the company may not be compensated for the damages. Other reported desperate maneouvres by those in charge to induce certain institutions to play their dirty games to backdate documents to provide SONARA insurance cover, only show a tip of the iceberg of the level of fraud and malpractice by officials appointed there by the Government and those pulling the strings or protecting them from higher places.
It also emerged that the electricity fault that possibly caused the SONARA disaster could be linked to frequent ENEO power cuts and power fluctuations that day. Were that too true, people supposed to be insiders and experts are “revealing” that SONARA installations would have been saved the trouble were they not too dependent on ENEO’s unreliable power supply. They say that SONARA was so overly dependent on ENEO because none of SONARA’s three standby generators has been in working order since 2015.
If that turned out to be true, someone in charge would be forced on the hot seat to explain why a huge factory like SONARA would be left to run without backup or alternative source of power supply and what became of budgetary allocations and how (technically) such oversight could elude the usual factory shutdowns or “arrets” that often gulp colossal sums in billions?
Three generators and none working since 2015! And there have been managers at SONARA! And people at the helm there are regime barons and have been signing motions of support and leading CPDM delegations and getting promoted. People who hate a country, destroy it or let it die but profess love for its leader. We shall see!
Ind. Lions: Hen that lays the golden egg…
They are blackmailing the Indomitable Lions to go and play for “empty pocket” for love of country, while they (regime barons) are sucking the country dry through graft and go unpunished because they are loyal* to the president. They want the players to be like the hen that lays the golden egg but eats insects and warms and dirt.
True the players must be patriotic but those who manage football ought to understand that if the salaries and other bonuses of players appear fabulous and truly leave others, including their managers and political administrators and the rest of us jealous, it must be understood that denying them their full benefits is curtailing their “social insurance” for the longer remainder of their lives.
The lifespan of a footballer’s career is short. Most of them retire in their late 20s or at most in their 30s. Those who play into their 40s like Roger Milla are exceptions. Twenties and 30s are the age when others are entering the prime of their own corporate careers. Should the players miss out in collecting the possible maximum of their dues and go on retirement poor, they may be paupers for life while their managers and political administrators continue earning salaries and maneouvring with state and other resources into old age; some all their lives.
It is wicked to expect too much patriotism from the players. It was shameful to learn that some of their dues from their 2017 AFCON cup win were not paid on the pretext that it was their compulsory contribution to Cameroon’s AFCON 2019 preparation that never was. And tell me: how much could the players’ millions have done to build AFCON stadiums, roads, hotels, hospitals, etc costing billions when we know of the billions unaccounted for and no one has been hanged for them? You guess like I do that someone just used “open-eye” to seize the boys’ money and challenge them to be patriotic. This country!
* Patriotism is love of country; devotion to the welfare of one’s compatriots; the passion which inspires one to serve one’s country. If you are faithful and devoted to someone, you’re loyal not patriotic
Hong-Kong like West Cameroon
It is curious how the world recognizes former British Dependent Territory of Hong-Kong’s difference from China but not that of former British Southern Cameroon (Ambazonia) from Cameroon. In contradiction of the argument that everyone on both sides of the River Mungo is Cameroonian or that certain ethnic groups are same people simply broken apart by the Mungo and should not feel different along colonial-imposed lines (English and French), here we have Hong-Kong, fully ethnic Chinese, only different than the rest of China because of their “Anglo-saxon” values of democracy, freedoms, market economy and the “free world” is fully in support of their divide line and their martyred striving to protect their acquired values! Yes, it is about the values. Values are the new tribe. Everywhere around the world, peoples have bonded around the values they uphold.
Reading the Hong-Kong story sounds like reading EML Endeley’s warning to British Southern Cameroonians ahead of the 1961 plebiscite that mixing acquired values would be disastrous. Endeley was a “Sawa man” with Sawa cousins across the Mungo. He was proudly “Sawa” but he knew that nations are not born of ethnicity; they are based on values and belief systems.
Any effort towards nation-building should be guided by the resolve to embrace good values or failing which, better allow those who uphold them to practice them apart in their protected space like Hong Kong. Else, blame not those who opt out; blame those who push them out by trying to embrace them too close in order to suffocate them.