THE FEAR OF INTELLECTUALS AS THE UNDOING OF THE SOUTHERN CAMEROON’S STATEHOOD.
The present-day hatred for teachers and lawyers by the ambaboys did not start today. The fear or hatred of intellectuals has been one of the reasons for the delay in the actualisation of the Southern Cameroons’ sovereign political state. There have always been illiterates or
semi-literate or outright dull individuals in the Southern Cameroons who were celebrated for humiliating intellectuals. Foncha’s fundamental option for unification with La Republique was not based only on facts of colonial history, but was cemented by his phobia of Endeley’s doctorate. Even within his KNDP rank, Foncha had a fear of the police scientist called Abendong. Only declassified history will tell the truth behind the death of Abendong in the car of the Premier of Southern Cameroons. What was a minister doing alone in a premier’s car in East Cameroon before being shot to death. Foncha and others had a fear of the Doctorate of Fonlon, which sent the latter in his humility into a vow of silence at Foumban. An ardent Fonlonist in the person of Professor L.Elango says that “Bernard Fonlon, at a certain time, was even blackballed by the KNDP. Not because there was anything revolutionary about him. If anything, Fonlon was a very conservative man in his political views and by temperament because he was a priest by training. And at one point, because of the kind of advice he was trying to give, to move our people to a more progressive way of looking at things, they minuted his file. I think it was Foncha who minuted his file, ‘A dangerous element to be closely watched'( CFR.L.Elango, in an interview with Kange Williams Wasaloko in Summit Magazine, December edition,2013,29,). So if a semi-literate grade 2 teacher fears or hates a doctor of Linguistics and philosophy like Fonlo,n you can understand why the ambaboys think it is right to kill a teacher or a lawyer or a priest. I can say without fear of contradiction that other factors notwithstanding, the hatred and fear of the intellectual had been the original sin of the Southern Cameroonian Nationalists. When you go into negotiations as delicate and complicated as the Constitutional Talks, as that of Foumban, you are expected to put forward your diplomatic and intellectual card so as to push the arrogance of ignorance to the frontiers. Instead, at Foumba, as it is still being done today, the scholar, the sage, the visionary is mocked as being too naive for the rawness of real politicking. When all the Southern Cameroons intelligentsia or the academicians have been silenced by exile or death, the La Republique du Cameroun will call for a genuine dialogue, and the then ageing amba generals will tell teachers to go to hell with their book while they negotiate in the UN with their gun. The Pity of it is that the youth no longer read if at all, they had been reading. Let them drop Facebook ( for some time, because I am writing on Facebook), and face their books. LET ME USE THIS SPACE TO RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING BOOKS FOR SOUTHERN CAMEROONIAN YOUTHS TO READ
.1.What God has put Asunder by Victor Epie Ngome2.Across the Mongolo by John Nkemasong3.The Task for Today, By Bernard Fonlon, and 4.As I See It by Fonlon 5.The Prison Graduate by Boh Herbert,6.The Past Tense of Shit by Godfrey Tangwa. These are just a few of the books that will wake you up from slumber to catch the train of Southern Cameroon Nationalism En marche from the doldrums of ignorance and hate of intellectuals in politics
THE FEAR OF INTELLECTUALS AS THE UNDOING OF THE SOUTHERN CAMEROON’S STATEHOOD.
