By Atia Tilarious Azohnwi
The Anglophone General Conference (AGC) that has suffered umpteenth postponements may soon see the light of day.
Meeting in Bamenda on Saturday, January 12, conveners of the AGC said they are going to embark on missions to the United States of America and Europe to hold talks with various stakeholders.
The United Nations had through the voice of her resident coordinator given its support for the AGC but said it needed to be all inclusive. Ms. Allegra Maria Del Pilar Baiocchi, Resident Coordinator of the United Nations system, UNDP Resident Representative, Humanitarian Coordinator in Cameroon said:
“The UN, along with most of the international community, has asked for dialogue, it has encouraged dialogue. If this is an initiative that will start dialogue and initiate dialogue, then yes, we are going to support it.
“But to work, it needs to have the support of all the parties. If it is done in isolation, if it doesn’t have the encouragement either of the government or secessionists, then it will not go very far. But as I said before, the voices of Cameroonians need to start being heard more.
“Beyond the politics, I think we need to hear the people talking. I refer to the initiative of the women because I think we need to hear the voices of the people saying we’ve had enough and we want solutions.
“It shouldn’t only be the UN saying it or the ambassadors. We need confidence building measures. We need the population to trust the administration and be able to go back. I think we need peace. By peace, eventually we would want to see the demilitarisation.
“With peace, we should be seeing less military on the ground. We should be seeing life going back to normal. When we met with the minister of defence, we actually asked about working on the confidence the population should have in those regions.
“They should be comfortable going back to their villages and they should be comfortable with relating to the authorities. So, I think the government has the responsibility to rebuild that relationship.”
The Conference Organizing Committee, COC, of the Anglophone General Conference at the end of Saturday’s meeting paid a courtesy call on the National Chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF) to get his position on the imminent conference.
Discussions at the Bamenda meeting were overseen by the Emeritus Archbishop of the Douala Archdiocese, Christian Cardinal Tumi.