Several persons have expressed very strong feelings that Pa Ayah ought to have said something about the offspring of the National Dialogue christened “SPECIAL STATUS”. Pa Ayah’s silence was from the need to reconcile his activities with his medical counsel. Bear with him for the belated reaction!
To Pa AYAH, the so-called SPECIAL STATUS is a RARE curiosity: something that tantalizes him. Without going into definitions, suffice it to begin by stating that SPECIAL STATUS automatically conjures up DEPENDENCY and resting upon the PROTECTION of a higher authority.
That ipso facto discards INDEPENDENCE and reliance on one’s own absolute ability to manage oneself and one’s business.
It goes without saying that SPECIAL STATUS is inappropriate, inadmissible and inapplicable in the case of the Southern Cameroons, often referred to as the Northwest and Southwest.
It could only so be if the Southern Cameroons was a dependency of the Republic of Cameroon. To put it in the form of a question: is the Southern Cameroons a colony of the Republic of Cameroun?
The answer is OBVIOUSLY in the NEGATIVE! It is common knowledge and a celebrated fact that the Southern Cameroons achieved its independence on October 1, 1961.
Even if any dependence there had ever been, (and let it be REPEATED that there had been none), such dependency was extinguished by the fact of achieving independence.
Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroun went into a de facto cohabitation as partners EQUAL IN STATUS. Neither partner is more important or less important than the other. That ABSOLUTELY rules out either partner being given attributes inconsistent with the status of EQUALITY!
Listening to and/or reading some persons, the temptation is ever present and real that many people are corrupt, ignorant or they are of average intelligence.
Experience shows that, once an utterance has been made, there often follows a continuous or continual wave of easy recitations.
Whereas one could be tolerant with CameroUnnese from their culture of corruption and subservience, it is bloodcurdling that Cameroonians should swim with the current in abject psychological enslavement.
If we take the SDF, for instance, one, at times, wonders the role of lawyers in that political party. Is it that they shirk their duty of dispensing legal counsel, or that they do descend from the lofty plane of leaning to the inferior plane of subservience and to beneficial expediency?
When in their communiqué and from the utterances of their national chairman, Mr. John Fru Ndi, the case of Quebec is cited to justify the proposed SPECIAL STATUS for Southern Cameroons, is it that they do lose sight of, or that they do not know the legal status of Quebec?
Be the situation as it may, for their information and culture, the French COLONY of Quebec was ceded, (without saying, SOLD), by France to the United Kingdom as per the Treaty of Paris after the Seven Years’ War.
It is important to note here that Quebec was a COLONY; that the ceding was evidenced by a TREATY (and it became incorporated as a part of Canada in 1867). Where in all this does the Southern Cameroons resemble Quebec?
One may be bold enough to opine that Quebec is to Canada almost asAlaska is to the United States of America.
It could be added that the reality is staring us in the face that it was high time we took some time off “Export lager beer” to cultivate and water our gardens! We would lose little.
For the good of all of us, let it be counseled here, just again, that the quest for money, position and the singing of sterile psalms to the gods in human form to the detriment of the GENERAL interest, and at the expense of human blood are inconsistent with morality and civilized manners!
SPECIAL STATUS FOR THOUSANDS OF LIVES!
SECTION 62 OF A NEW CONSTITUTION?
SILENCE IS GOLDEN, YOU KNOW!
[PICS: The SOUTHERN CAMEROONS’ PRIME MINISTERS]