By Sah Terence Animbom
The English-speaking man of Cameroon, especially one from the North West region has always purported himself as a man ardent to the respect of human dignity, property, sacred places and beings which has actually earned for him admiration and the appellation of a true gentleman from the entire country.
The coming of the Anglophone crisis that has so far rocked this region of the country simultaneously with its akin region of the South West for over two years now, degenerating into what has been described by civil society organizations and international NGOs as a civil war has brought into survival the strangest acts of ferocity.
While the world was celebrating world AIDS day on December 1, 2018, some men who as at press time could not be independently inveterate as Amba Boys made their way to the paramount and sacred Nso palace to kidnap him. Atrociously, His royal majesty Fon Sehm Mbinglo II of Nso, one of the only four paramount Fondoms in the region was kidnapped by these yet to be ascertained gunmen.
Custodians of the Nso cultures and traditions like the shufais, the men of the Mfu houses, the Takembeng women and even Nwerong the most sacred society of the Nso land have all condemned in very strong terms the kidnap of their Fon.
They hold it presents their institutions as beggarly and shows a total disrespect for the existence of cultural discipline. They say on no account is their Fon supposed to be treated with such disrespect and call the act, from whoever perpetrated it, a ferocious taboo and an unforgivable atrocity.
“The people of the grass field have a lot of respect for their Fons and when you talk of the Fon of Nso who is not an ordinary Fon being kidnapped, I doubt if that could have come from Nso children, in fact I doubt in all firmness the involvement of any grass field child on the kidnap of the Fon of Nso. If truly any grass field child is involved in this, then this is the very apex of atrocious deeds from these children and I bet you their end will be very disgraceful”, a cultural custodian of Nso told The SUN Newspaper on basis of anonymity.
The Nso people have put all resources in place to see that their Fon is released. Some social media reports claim the Fon was kidnapped due to the recent death of some three virgins in Nso, a story The SUN is totally unsure of, while another social media claim says he was kidnapped by Amba boys after they failed to cause him to perform fortification rituals on them.
We learnt that the Fon was freed Sunday afternoon following pressure from within Nso and the diaspora.
Another atrocious act in the North West within the week was the setting ablaze for the second time a portion of makeshift shops at the Bamenda Food Market at about 2:00am on Thursday November 27th 2018. Waking by the scene of the incident and watching unfortunate traders lament their heavy losses counting from millions upwards. It was observed that these innocent and unfortunate traders who said they have been respecting the dreaded “contri Sundays” to the best of their abilities, had been left at a stormy point of the desert with no little protection at all.
Though the fire fighting brigade was there to salvage the situation, it was helpless for the shops had been severely consumed. Most painful is the fact that these shops are getting burnt by whoever or whatever just before the peak time of business in the country. It is worth mentioning that this fire incident erupted just about two weeks after some 14 shops were ruthlessly consumed by fire around the same Food Market vicinity.