Letter From Home To Mr. President Abroad,

On The Looming Socio-professional, Cultural & Political Wildfire

Mr. President, I wish you to be in good frame of mind, wherever and whenever this letter meets you.

Overlook any mistake you may find in the mail because I had to write and send it to be typed and sent to you from the Francophone part of our country since there is no internet in Anglophone Cameroon since January 17 – getting to four months now.

In fact, Mr. President, the people have been asking where you have been since your meeting with the President of Italy and with the Pope. Many news organs have been asking: “Ouest passé Monsieur Le Président?”

As your Ministers and Cabinet members cannot provide the answer, or are afraid to, I felt I should write to you and get what to tell the people, since I hold no position or post that I am afraid you might drop me from.

Your apologists claim that the people around you do not tell you the truth. Why? Because, if they tell you the truth, it might be so bitter for you that your bile would cause you to throw them out of positions you appointed them to, mostly based on the lies they told you.

Because, if one asked your Director of Cabinet, he would say the same blablabla! If one asks your Minister of Special Missions – it would bethe sametattle. If one asks the Secretary General, he would tell, yet, the same blab. Not to talk of asking any of the Ministers who only come close to you only during the traditional New Year handshakes.

Again, Mr. President, if all those around you are not telling you the truth, let those of us on the field tell you the realities. Remember those CPDM Youths in Kumba, who echoed to you, the other day, what the rest of the people want to tell you; that you should listen to them – the people – and not to the so called elite. Candidly, they mean that your appointees are mostly your friends, they are not chosen by the people, so, they cannot suddenly become the people’s representatives. Hence if you want to know what is on the collective mind of the people, listen directly to them. You can listen to the voice of the people through this medium.

Truly, Mr. President: What would you expect, say, the member of your Government whose talkativeness he uses to sing for his supper, to tell you?

How do you expect the New Bell graduate and moral vacuity to tell you the truth, when he has been striving on con means and ways? 

Actually, Mr. President, the house is on fire. Besides the burning Anglophone Revanchism, the situation in the country is simply magmatic and might erupt to proportions similar to the 2008 nationwide conflagration.

Just yesterday, workers of the Douala City Council were on strike. They besieged the City Hall grounding activities of the most lucrative city council in the country whose remittance to the State coffers doubles even that of the second highest, in terms of State revenue which your Government direly needs now.

Contract teachers have been seething with anger for having been promised integration, but for more than 10 years, nothing has happened.

Ire is simmering within the Medical corps and other health personnel over unbefitting working conditions.

Former workers of the urban transport company, SOTUC, that your Government liquidated some 22 years ago, are still crying over their unpaid emoluments.

Presently (and this is confidential information for you only), the West Region is spoiling for a strike akin to on-going action by Anglophone Cameroon.  You must realise, Mr. President, that the West Region (mostly Bamilikes) own more than 70 percent of the Cameroonian economy. The financial institutions which are the engine of the economy are owned by them, hence they are most affected or victimised when any harsh economic policy is taken by yourGovernment. The shutdown of the internet in the Northwest and Southwest Regions has dealt a toll on their businesses.

Well, I have space just to name these few. Know that hundreds of professional, social, cultural, political and other groups are agitating and the outburst would be earth-shattering.

Mr. President, solve the Anglophone problem so that we can face the other ones. A problem solved is all the problems less by one.

I know, after your visit ended in Italy and the Vatican, you must have returned to your teachers at the Elysée, as their best pupil, for advice. We know their position on certain issues and we know the French companies in Cameroon they use to ram down their position and protect their interest, in exchange for your interest.

Will you please, Mr President, tell them that; since they are your best example, you want your country to run like theirs? Though they might not call it by itname, France is run on a federal system – highly decentralised.

What was the need to abolish the unitary system only to turn around and start fabricating some clumsy and impracticable things like “unitary decentralised” system.Let me borrow the example of Canada with the same French-speaking and English-speaking configuration (the only difference being that the English-speaking people are the majority in Canada). They are operating smoothly on the federal system.

Yet another example, the United States of America, and to better illustrate this permit me to use a nitty-gritty case like homosexuality. For instance, while the other States of America were adopting gay laws, the State of Indiana was bitterly opposed to it. Marriage certificates in Indiana provide spaces for the male and the female of the couple. Take a scenario where two men are getting married and, while the one writes his name on the space provided for male, the other writes his name on the space provided for female. That is felony already!

Hence the best form under which two or more states with cultural, legal and social diversities can operate is a federal system.Mr. President, there are constitutional provisions through which you can ask the people what they want. I rest my case!

Alocutus:I ask of you to tamper your authority and anger with mercy on me for using words bearing on the form of State which you abhor, as you fear it may dilute the powers you wield being the State and the State being you. Forgive me for telling you the truth, all the truth and nothing but the truth.

I Hope We Are Together!