THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS SAGA -[ “A STORM IN A TEA CUP ?”]
Late on Thursday night Dec. 21, 2017 I was
alerted by telephone that the Secretary-General of the British
Commonwealth of Nations, the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC, was in Yaounde
for consultations with President Paul Biya of La Republique du Cameroun
on the deteriorating situation in Southern Cameroons that has resulted
in the massacre of unarmed Southern Cameroonian citizens by lethally
armed troops on official orders of the Cameroun Govt. The information
stated further that Secretary Scotland had agreed with President Biya to
pay a day’s visit on Friday 22nd December 2017 to Buea in Southern
Cameroons and would grant audience to traditional rulers at the
Municipal premises, and to other personalities at the Buea Mountain
Hotel as from 2.15pm. I therefore organized myself to arrive at the
Mountain Hotel by 2.0pm.
When I was driving past the Consulate-General
of the Federal Republique of Nigeria, my car was stopped by a menacing
contingent of the Police Force who prevented me from proceeding further
without tendering to them a formal invitation that I was to be received
by Secretary Scotland. They all knew who I was, so I thought this was a
deliberate attempt to prevent me from talking to Secretary Scotland. I
then abandoned my car to them, and decided to walk to the Mountain Hotel
where I went through all the security checks and then asked to be taken
to Secretary Scotland’s protocol officer to register my presence. He
then escorted me to wait in the office of the Hotel’s director and said I
should wait there until Secretary Scotland was ready to receive me.
I became uneasy when I was not called for
several hours and went out to enquire as to what was happening. I was
then asked to wait in the Hotel’s board room, only for another protocol
officer to visit and inform me past 5.0pm that Secretary Scotland had
already left for Yaounde and that I could also go home.
What follows is a an outline of the
presentation I was to make orally to Secretary Scotland. My views on the
subject matter are already well-known and that is why I was prevented
by trickery from meeting the Rt Hon. Patricia Scotland.
STORM IN A TEA CUP
Over the past 12 months, or so, serious
political differences have arisen between the former UN trust
territories of French Cameroun that France granted “independence” on 1st
January 1960 by the baptismal name of La Republique du Cameroun, with
the former UN trust territory of British Southern Cameroons which the UN
General Assembly fixed its date of Independence to be 1st Oct. 1961.
After the second World War, the victors
assembled in the city of San Francisco in the United States of America
and, in order to save mankind from the scourge of a 3rd War, the
previous war having ended only after the destruction of some 20 million
human lives worldwide, and the use of the atomic bomb over Japan, it was
felt that the world should be guided by the Rule of Law and Order to
prevent a repeat of similar events which triggered the 2nd world war,
and to control worldwide the use of atomic or similar military weaponry.
This is what prompted the Drafting and
Signing of a Constitution for the World, known as the CHARTER OF THE
UNITED NATIONS, managed by six operating Organs which are:
(a) The Security Council, (the equivalence of a Board of Directors of any corporation)
(b) The General Assembly (the equivalence of the supreme shareholders meeting in
any corporation)
(c) The Secretariat, (headed by a Secretary-General as Chief Executive Officer)
(d) The International Court of Justice (to settle disputes between member states of
the UN)
(e) UNESCO, and
(f) The Trusteeship Council (to enter into Agreements on behalf of the UN with
sovereign Member states to foster Non-independent UN territories to
independence)
As the 2nd WW was triggered principally by
the expansionist ambitions of Herr Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany who took
delight in annexing smaller and weaker states, the UN Charter provided
for this contingency in its Charter, Art. 102, which states thus:
“Art 102(1) Every treaty and every
international agreement entered into by any Member of the United Nations
after the present Charter comes into force shall, as soon as possible,
be registered with the [UN] Secretariat and published by it.
(2) No party to any such treaty or
international agreement which has not been registered in accordance with
provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article may invoke that treaty or
agreement before any organ of the United Nations.”
On 14 December, 1960 the UN General Assembly,
as the supreme operating Organ of the UN, passed the landmark Res.
1514(xv), granting Unconditional Independence to all trust and colonial
territories.
At the material time Southern Cameroons was a
UN trust territory and thus became a qualified candidate for
Unconditional Independence.
The Resolution. provided expressly in para 5
that “immediate steps shall be taken in trust and non-self governing
territories, to transfer powers to the peoples of those territories.”
Therefore, for a colonial or trust territory
to graduate to or attain independence from its trusteeship or colonial
status, the Trustee or Colonial Authority had to transfer power over the
territory from itself to the emerging independent territory.
The dispute between the two Cameroon parties
has arisen because UN General Assembly Res. 1608(xv) of 21st April 1961,
fixing the date of 1st October 1961 as the date the British trust
mandate over Southern Cameroons was to end, was never complied with, as
there is no record of the transfer of power from Britain, as UN Trustee
over Southern Cameroons to the indigenous Govt of Southern Cameroons,
pursuant to the governing UN General Assembly Res. 1514(xv) s.5
mentioned above. It follows, therefore, that the People of Southern
Cameroons did not graduate to independence from Trustee Britain, and
therefore remain technically British protected persons until granted
independence, so as to be in a position to negotiate a Union Treaty with
La Republique du Cameroun to create a Federation of TWO states, EQUAL
in status, as declared by the President of La Republique du Cameroun as
to what he envisaged would be the terms of the proposed Union (see Exh.
10 at p. 29 of the attached 32-page Petition of the People of S.
Cameroons to the UN General Assembly which was reported not received at
the UN Secretariat although sent by DHL courier service from Cameroon).
You should please advise HM the Queen, Head
of the British Commonwealth, that in the absence of Britain not being in
possession of an Instrument transferring power over the UN trust
territory of Southern Cameroons, that country did not attain
independence and technically remains a British protectorate. The remedy
is the cure prescribed in Art. 102(1) which requires the Union Treaty to
be registered at the UN Secretariat “as soon as possible.” If this has
not been done before now, HM Government should proceed to respect UN
General Assembly Res. 1608(xv) which she voted for with an overwhelming
majority of 65 other nations of the world, in an attempt to regularize
the union. In the light of practical experience gained over the past
half-century, it is my considered view that this may no longer be
feasible, and in the interest of peace and security, the parties should
be encouraged to go their separate ways.
Humbly submitted
Mola NJOH LITUMBE
Snr Citizen, Politician & Opinion Leader
Chairman of a Legalized Political Party
Holder of Southern Cameroons Corner Stone Award
by Southern Cameroonians USA
Washington DC, September 2nd, 2017.
EXHIBIT 10 P29.
ASSURANCES GIVEN BY REPLUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN’S
PRESIDENT AHMADOU AHIDJO, AFFIRMING THAT LA REPLUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN
WILL NOT CONTEMPLATE ANNEXING SOUTHERN CAMEROONS.
In 1959, some perceptive minds in the
Trusteeship Council expressed concerns that after attaining independence
in 1 January 1960, Republique du Cameroun could try to annex the
Southern Cameroons. The Premier of French Cameroun, Mr. Ahidjo, denied
any such intension or the possibility of any such action on the part of
independent Republique du Cameroun.
At the 849th meeting of the Fourth Committee
of the UN, Mr. Ahidjo took the floor and gave the UN the solemn
assurance that Republique du Cameroun is not annexationist. He declared:
“We are not annexationist….. If our brothers
of the British zone wish to unite with independent Cameroun, we are
ready to discuss the matter with them, but we will do so on a footing of
equality.”
In June 1960, he told the “Agence Presse Cameroun
“I have said and repeated, in the name of the
Government [of Republique du Cameroun], that we do not have any
annexationist design.”
In July the same year he again reassured the international community through the same press:
“For us, there can be no question of
annexation of the Southern Cameroons. We have envisaged a flexible form
of union, a federal form.”
(Above 3 paragraphs culled from Merits stage in Communication 266/2003 before the ACHPR Banju)
Attention is drawn to Art. 47(1) of the
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon (Law No. 24/61
unilaterally enacted by La Republique du Cameroun on 1st September,
1961).
“Revision
Art. 47(1) Any proposal for the revision of
the present Constitution which impairs the unity and integrity of the
Federation shall be inadmissible”.
As pointed out elsewhere, Law No. 24/61
merely changed the name of La Republique du Cameroun to La Republique
Federal du Cameroun as no Federation was in fact created. By a clever
but fraudulent maneuver, this clause was inserted to lure Southern
Cameroonians into believing that a Federation had been permanently
created and that the federal status was unchangeable. Future events were
to show that La Republique du Cameroun was acting in extreme bad faith.
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