By DOH JAMES SONKEY
Hon Paul Nji Tumasang, Member of the National Assembly from the leading opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF party has strongly disassociated himself from positions taken by the Eldest Member of the National Assembly in his opening speech for the March 2019 Ordinary Session of Parliament.
In a press release issued last March 20, 2019, the MP of the Mezam South Constituency, Santa in the North West region decried that “apart from limiting the atrocities carried out on Southern Cameroonians who now constitute the peoples of the North West and South West regions to the burning of the Kumba District Hospital in the ongoing Anglophone crisis, the Eldest Member of the National Assembly even refused to ask the question whether the arsonists were government soldiers or the “restorationist” fighters, a question whose answer can only come from an independent investigation.”
The SDF MP blamed Hon Enow Tajong for concentrating only on the Kumba sad event and deliberately deciding to forget other atrocities committed by both belligerents in the two regions such as “thousands of civilians estimated at 10 000 dead and the hundreds of soldiers killed, a generation of Southern Cameroonians with a significantly reduced male population between the ages of 13 and 35 years because they have been victims of targeted killings by the national security forces, sorry state of hospitals in NW and SW because Doctors and Nurses are fleeing for their lives, women dying in the process of giving birth in the bushes under inhuman conditions.”
He further lamengted that “schools and universities shut down and the future of our children jeopardized, total insecurity arising from the actions of both the ‘restorationist’ fighters and national security forces with insdicriminate shootings, burning, lootings, rapes and kidnapping for ransom as the order of the day, the mayhem caused by activities of the fifth column infiltrators, criminal gangs and scammers passing for ‘restoration’ fighters.’’
Hon Paul Nji Tumasang equally castigated the Eldest Member for failing to draw sufficient attention to the urgency for humanitarian intervention to stop the bloodbath and reinstate minimum conditions for human existence and the rule of law.
Concluding that ‘‘the Eldest Member failed in his responsibilities,’’ the SDF MP while ‘‘drawing the attention of the national and international community to the grave genocide now taking place in the NW and SW regions,’’ called on ‘‘the belligerent parties to proceed with immediate ceasefire and unconditional inclusive dialogue in order to bring back sanity to the country by resolving the root causes of the war in progress’’ and urged ‘‘the international community to facilitate this process.’’