LRC PM Dion Ngute completes empty promise tour

LRC PM Dion Ngute completes empty promise tour

Mr Ngute continued his empty promises in the South West always seeming to invoke the incantation “The President of the Republic…” in every speech he uttered.

Experience, though, teaches that promises of LRC Prime Ministers or other politicians are rarely to be taken seriously as they are understood not to commit their government in anyway.

Additionally to this conventional wisdom, Mr Ngute’s statements to “former Amba Boys” betrayed a certain simplicity which only reinforced this urge to ignore his utterances during this jamboree in the North West and later on the South West. For instance he called on the Amba Boys to accept their “mistake” in taking up arms and seek forgiveness from Mr Biya as he visited purported former Amba Boys in Bamenda. In the South West he judged it appropriate to condescend that Mr Biya, “their father”, would forgive the Amba Boys and that dialogue would be no-holds-barred – apart from secession. As he offered these balms, “his” governments military continued to kill and burn homes in the North West and South West, with the North West governor offering compensation for burnt homes, at one point.

While his condition on secession was not surprising from a LRC prime minister, given previous experience, it is “his” territorial administration minister’s  follow-up statement that raised eye-brows. The latter declared that the dialogue would not be unconditional, but rather that the form of the state would not be under consideration.  This would tally with the theory of  a “mistake” by the Amba Boys in taking arms to fight for change – but only very tenuously.

Mr Nji’s statement reflects Mr Biya’s position even before he declared war and ordered the ongoing killings on the South West and North West villagers, and therefore, as it means no dialogue a more consistent LRC government position.

This shower of cold water for Mr Ngute is not new for LRC’s long list of Anglophone Prime Minsters who never managed, non of them, to hide their subordination to other ministers in “their” governments. The only shock this time is that even for Mr Atanga Nji, it is also the first time that one of those superior-to-the PM minsters is also an Anglophone.

The irony of Mr Ngute’s tour is that the local populace would seem to be more forth-coming in suggesting routes out of the impasse. He is, for instance, reported to have been told in an open audience that the anglophone prisoners needed to be released before any dialogue could be meaningful. The non-surprise is that his reply was that he would submit his findings to Mr Biya “for consideration”.

His report is likely to find itself in the same bin as the reports from previous tours – Musonge, Yang, Ghoghomo…

The tour was not needed for what it is going to achieve.