– Bar Council President tells SW lawyers
By Elah Geoffrey Mbongale and Talla Agha Christopher
The president of the Cameroon Bar Council, Barrister Ngie Kamga in a meeting with South West lawyers on Saturday, March 18, 2017 at the Parliamentarian Hotel in Buea, urged them to call off their strike so that their colleague, Fako Lawyers’ Association president, Barrister Agbor Nkongho Felix can regain his freedom.
Barrister Jackson Ngnei Kamga was in Buea to try to persuade the lawyers to call off their strike which started since October 11, 2016. He regretted that the stalemate in the Lawyers’ strike has pushed both sides to the extreme.
“As soon as Lawyers put on their wigs and regain the courts, government, from all indication will have no other option than to release Barrister Agbor Balla”, The Bar Council president told the adamant lawyers who pressed him for more assurances.
The lawyers insisted that only after Barrister Agbor Balla is released that they could consider calling off the strike. They also called for amnesty for Barrister Agbor Balla and other colleagues that were in negotiations with the government prior to their arrest for dialogue to continue.
The South West lawyers told the Bar Council president that it will take a unanimous decision from North West and South West lawyers for the strike to be called off and so suggested to the Batonnier to select a commission of 20 lawyers from both regions to decide on how and when to end the strike.
In the light of the above, the Bar Council president left the Buea meeting empty handed but will be embarking on another trip to the North West region to meet with lawyers and try to persuade them to call off the strike.
It should be recalled that Barrister Agbor Nkongho Felix Balla, FAKLA President and President of the outlawed Cameroon All Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, CAACSC , was arrested last January 18, 2017 alongside the Secretary General of CAACSC, Dr. Fontem Neba and whisked to Yaounde where they have been detained since.
The lawyers of the Common Law extraction have for over six months now paralysed court activities in the North West and South West regions after they embarked on a strike action to decry and denounce what they termed the Francophonisation of their Common Law system. Their strike action was later followed by that of Anglophone teachers who also decried a similar fate. The strikes have now degenerated to what has now been termed “the Anglophone crisis.”