The Feeble Cries of the Northwest House of Chiefs and Biya’s resounding success story of Deceit.
There has been a stream of steady complaints and cries in the wilderness from the northwest house of chiefs. The superimposition of administrative authorities in virtually all domains involving even culture and tradition has completely nullified the essence of the House of Chiefs. When Biya unmasked this juicy but fundamentally valueless bait at the Grand National Monologue, the chiefs without any deep ponderance, went on air to hail the act of deceit as the ultimate panacea to the Anglophone crisis. The House of Chiefs was one in a wallet of carefully crafted empty measures meant to assuage the simmering sea of anger and frustration that had gripped Anglophones for decades. Recently the chiefs sought to carry out a cultural festival and the Governor said No. They sought to defend what they perceived as their exclusive proprietary right to a traditional attire and the Governor said No. Now they are crying about the procedure or process of food being served not conforming with traditional practices. But they should understand that the only essence of the House of Chiefs was meant to be the satisfaction of their stomachs. They have come to realize their irrelevance in the fake concept called special status. Man does not live on bread alone. In essence, the House of Chiefs was a classic transaction of “quid pro quo”. Biya was to place food at their table and in return the chiefs were to lose all relevance or surrender whatever dignity or powers they had to the administration. You can’t eat your cake and have it back. They sang the praises and glory of the special status as the ultimate panacea. Today stark reality is staring at them. They should have been aware like many Cameroonians of Biya’s exceptional success story in the art of deceit. Each time Biya over his 43-year reign has faced popular outrage and indignation the guy comes out with a novel and attractive scheme to gain time. He throws a wallet full of juice, gains some transient truce, and then takes it all back in the succeeding years.
1) After the upheavals of the 1990s Biya pretended to cave in. He called the tripartite conference. Placed a presidential term limit, and gave some laws on liberty and freedoms. Peace returned. In 2008 he scraped the term limit and later passed the law on terrorism that eroded all the laws on liberty and freedoms. Back to square one.
2) He claimed to accept democracy but went ahead to establish the arbiters in electoral matters in his own image and aimed at rather ensuring he became a monarch. The Northwest chiefs should respect the contract they signed with Mr Biya. Food on their tables in exchange for them becoming laymen like us. Never in African history has traditional authority been sapped of its essence and relevance like the so-called House of Chiefs.
The only way for Southern Cameroons Chiefs and Southern Cameroonians as a whole to regain their dignity is to fight and free their country the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia, from colonial occupation, exploitation, and enslavement in their God-given ancestral homeland by colonial, parasite, barbaric, and genocidal la République du Cameroun.
NTAM & ELANGWE
