Brocken Promises

Dear lovely people,

Richard Paul Evans in Promise Me states “Broken vows are like broken mirrors. They leave those who held to them bleeding and staring at fractured images of themselves.”

From 1961 to 1972, the Federal Republic of Cameroon existed under a sane moral contract, that of equality and each party kind of telling the other ‘I won’t hurt you.’ Now just like Eva Schuette says, “When I say 'I won't hurt you', it's a promise, which can and will be kept but it does not come from me without a breakdown of what it means. It does not mean we will never disagree, nor does it mean that you will always like everything which I say or do. It does not mean that you will never hurt yourself by behaving in a way which is damaging to a relationship or by behaving in a way which would ultimately result in my withdrawal from your life. What it does mean is that I can promise all that I expect in terms of loyalty, honor and respect. It means I am faithful. It also means that I will not intentionally or carelessly behave in a way which causes upset or doubt. It means, at the lowest level, 'You will break these terms before I do.' Communication is essential. Trust is paramount. Be completely honest and don't make promises that you can't keep, that's all.”

Power hungry, sickening demagogues might refute it be one thing is clear, The Anglophone Problem is Real, very Important and Urgent because it touches the very foundations of Cameroon’s unity. Here are the facts about the origin of this bone breaking problem. French Cameroon became independent on 1st January 1960 and Nigeria to which Southern and Northern Cameroon were attached also gained independence from Britain on 1st October 1960. On 11 February 1961 the UN conducted a plebiscite in Northern and Southern Cameroon to determine whether the southern Cameroonians wanted to be independent by joining the Federal Republic of Nigeria or the Republic of Cameroon. The seeds of the Anglophone problem were sown when the results of the plebiscite which should have been counted as one for the whole British territory, were split and counted separately between North and South Cameroon. The north voted to join Nigeria and the South voted to join the Republic of Cameroon.

In July 1961 the famous, Foumban Constitutional Conference met in Foumban to draw up a Constitution for the Federal Republic of Cameroon. It was agreed that reunification would be based on federalism that the State of Cameroon would promote and strengthen the bi-cultural identity of Cameroon without the French or English culture absorbing the other, and that Southern Cameroon would retain all its organs and institutions.

These terms were then incorporated into the 1961 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon with a proviso in Article 47 making it impossible to unilaterally amend certain Articles of the Constitution without the risk of breaking up the Union. On the 1st of October 1961 the Federal Republic of Cameroon was born. It consisted of two Equal States – the State of East Cameroon (formerly French Cameroon) and the state of West Cameroon (formerly British Southern Cameroon)

From 1961 to 1972 when the Federal Republic of Cameroon existed, the seeds of the Anglophone Problem remained in gestation only to germinate when it was completely forgotten that it was Anglophones who voted to join the Union, and to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, it was not the Francophones who voted, so the referendum to abolish the Federation should have only been voted by the Anglophones, but the Francophones with their majority in the Union “voted” and dissolved the Federation, the basis of Unification.

In so doing the Ahidjo government unconstitutionally and in breach of the Foumban Accord, abolished the Federal Government and introduced the present repulsive Unitary Government. This created a new problem, a Constitutional problem that came to be called the Anglophone Problem.

The Anglophone problem thus, started with the abolition of the Federation, a calculated strategy to break all the promises and vows previously enshrined in the constitution of the federal republic.