By NOELA EBOB BISONG
United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Tibor Nagy has out rightly stated the position of his country, the US, with regards to the quest for an independent state of former British Southern Cameroons (Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions).
The struggle for independence by Separatists in Cameroon has been ongoing for over three years, and has brought untold hardship, sorrow, pain and suffering to inhabitants of the North West and South West Regions.
In a recent outing, Tibor Nagy states that “We support a unified Cameroon because the last thing Africa needs is another minor state that will be full of poverty and suffering and needing billions of dollars of foreign assistance.”
He equally questions that “What happens if you split up part of Cameroon? What happens in parts of Nigeria? That’s not what Africa needs at all.”
However, the US diplomat goes back to what he has been echoing over the months, which according to him is the ultimate solution to kill the crisis. “But the Cameroon in government needs to get serious about a genuine peace process, genuine decentralisation, genuine power to the local level…”
Tibor Nagy it would be remembered was one many a separatists were counting on to help press their agenda for independence, as a US in favour of separation in Cameroon would count a lot. Their hope in the Diplomat started dying when in his humble opinion he told the US Congress that secession or separation is not realistic for Cameroon’s North West and South West regions. He said this while responding to Ken Buck, representative of Colorado’s 4th Congressional District in the US House of representatives, in May 2019, during an open hearing within the committee on Foreign Affairs in the US House of Representatives, to present reports on the subject: Democracy, Development and Defense: Rebalancing U.S.- Africa Policy.
When asked if the secession option could be considered as a remedy to the prolonged crisis in the two restive regions of Cameroon, Tibor Nagy emphatically explained then that “I don’t think so because I think that most Cameroonians in the South West and North West have a sense of ‘Cameroonianess’ and they can’t accept to separate in what they call Ambazonia; in my view it is not realistic”.