CLARIFICATION: Southern Cameroons Trusteeship, Legality, and the Fiction of Union
I had a brief debate yesterday with a gentleman on Mola Isaac Njoh Endeley’s Facebook page. He claimed that the termination of the Southern Cameroons Trusteeship meant that Southern Cameroons was thereby dissolved, and that La République du Cameroun’s invasion was therefore legal, since Southern Cameroons had supposedly become part of La République. This is not merely mistaken. It is a categorical error.
The fundamental fallacy lies in confusing the end of a UN Trusteeship procedure with the lawful transfer of sovereignty. Trusteeship termination is not a magic wand that dissolves a people’s legal personality and hands their territory to a neighbour. In law, process is everything. Consent is everything. Representation is everything. And UN endorsement is everything.
The 1961 plebiscite did not create a union. It expressed a preference. A plebiscite is not a treaty. It does not merge states. It does not dissolve international status. It merely signals direction. That direction required a legally binding, UN-endorsed treaty of union. None was ever concluded.
UN General Assembly Resolution 1608 explicitly required the United Kingdom, the Government of the Southern Cameroons, and La République du Cameroun to meet and finalise the terms of union. That meeting never happened. Instead, we are told to treat the Foumban Conference–a local, improvised talk-shop with no UN mandate, no legal authority, and no ratification power– as the foundation of a sovereign state. That is not the law. That is political theatre.
Worse still, there exists no UN resolution terminating the Trusteeship of the Southern Cameroons through lawful union with Cameroon. None. What exists instead is a private exchange of letters between the British Ambassador in Yaoundé and President Ahidjo. The Southern Cameroons were not represented. They did not sign. They did not ratify. The United Nations did not endorse it. That exchange violated the 1946 Trusteeship Agreement and was ultra vires.
The conclusion is unavoidable: the Southern Cameroons never lawfully became part of La République du Cameroun. There was no treaty. There was no lawful merger. There was no UN-sanctioned act of union.
What exists instead is annexation masquerading as decolonisation. It is not a federation. It is an absorption. It is not a union. It is an occupation.
And occupation does not become lawful because it is old, violent, or loudly repeated.
To pretend otherwise is not a difference of opinion. It is an error of law
ONPASSIVE Akum George
