Most a-times it requires pure reasoning to determine who loves this country more. It is even more trying in times of a crisis such as we now have in our hands. It therefore takes wisdom to put the Tumis and the Ekemas side by side each other to get close to the reality of the present situation in which the Anglophones find themselves. We can judge them by their composures and largely by their public utterances. Cardinal Tumi and co., we at The SUN will want to believe, had been watching this country drifting toward the precipice, needless to recount the tribulations that the people of this part of the country have been going through, and for the sake of their love for the country, the four men of God decided to offer a proposal that we think was in good faith, to host what they called Anglophone General Conference in Buea, the historic capital of Cameroon to prepare the ground and the minds of Anglophones for an impending inclusive dialogue.
On the other hand, Mayor Ekema Patrick Esunge seems to have acquired some strange courage, and has put on an armour of war ready for battle, as can be deduced from his recent retaliatory outburst, in which he has sworn to prevent such a gathering from holding within his municipality. In place of patriotism, Mayor Ekema is only desperately and visibly, fanning embers of xenophobia. In the place of a possible solution to the raging crisis, Mayor Ekema chooses the language of hate as an option for a way out of the crisis.
Instead of identifying himself with the rest of Anglophones whose problem has been widely acknowledged by the world at large, even by the Head of State himself, Mayor Ekema is only resorting to insulting those who are making frantic efforts to find a lasting solution to the Anglophone crisis, while at the same time he [Ekema] is desperately struggling to incite a peace loving Bakweri people to join him put on an armour of war and go out for battle.
At the so-called Bakweri conclave which he convened, he openly lashed out at the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon who is the spiritual head of the church, describing him as a “deceitful leader in the name of Moderator, who is a pure North Westerner, who pretends to be a South Westerner” which of course is not true. Or, even if it was true, is there any provision in the constitution of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon which prohibits a North Westerner from being a Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon? This is where we strongly believe Mayor Ekema has calculatedly drawn a red line between Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions. Besides giving the false impression that the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon is not a South Westerner, the Mayor is already portraying public his xenophobic mindset.
There is a certain Ekema Patrick Esunge, whom in his first days in office as Mayor of Buea, whose focus and game plan was centered on the development of the Buea municipality. There is no doubt that we in this Newspaper took him seriously because he seemed to have started well, humble and determined. But this image of the man we knew, we can no longer recognize him even from very close range. He has become arrogant and flippant to the point where he suddenly lost respect for even those he met already well planted in the political vineyard of the Buea municipality. There is none he seems to have spared, to whom he has not shown contempt.
Our humble piece of advice is however, that even as he is looking towards higher heights, he should not forget that his constituency remains the Buea municipality and it remains obvious that some day he will descend to where he took off only to find the same people on whose toes he had stepped on. Fortunately, he has one more year to linger around. Besides, he should understand that he is running a cosmopolitan municipality comprised of people from several parts of the country, not only the Bakweris. He will certainly need them at one time or the other. He was quick to collect traditional titles from the North West at the start of his tenure but today despises North Westerners.
We cannot run away from the fact that what we are going through today as a people, who have for more than half a century identified ourselves as Anglophones, should not be the ones to tear ourselves apart for the sake of material things. So will the real Ekema Patrick Esunge stand up before the Anglophones and Cameroonians at large in the image with which we knew him a few years back? Change has indeed come to Buea!