Ambazonians and the international community know only too well the lengths to which La République du Cameroun will go to avoid the genuine and inevitable solution of the Ambazonian Liberation Struggle. As they contend with “other fish” just now, another supposed Ambazonian saviour conference is in the offing, once again in Canada! The new acronym is PRAP, which might be a witty rhyme with what it represents, on closer inspection! Luckily the Consultative Commission has rejected it as “not meeting the minimum standards”.

Throughout the “crisis”, i.e. the current phase from 2016 onwards, La République du Cameroun has realised how untenable their position actually is.

Despite HCB29/92, La République du Cameroun got away with “ignoring” the grievances and counting on the international community’s inertia to continue to “forcefully and illegally occupy” Ambazonia. It could be argued that they did not take the ruling seriously, mistaking the said inertia for support of their position. They failed to note that the international community sticks to “reality” until there is a compelling reason to switch. The reality that La République du Cameroun was entrenched in Ambazonia did not mean that the entrenchment is legal. On the contrary, it was the case that “fingers remained crossed” so that the crisis would remain legal rather than violent. Unfortunately, La République du Cameroun did not figure this out until they had unleashed the violence that would start the international community’s switch. In around 2017, slowly realising the actual importance of HCB28/92, La République du Cameroun found herself in a bind regarding her legal borders as attached to her name. For background the African charter defines borders as those acquired at independence. As such, LRC’s borders were acquired in 1960 a year before the “reunification” with Ambazonia (then British Southern Cameroons). “Reunification” was an important word as its used would justify aspects of LRC’s behaviour after the “joining”.  La République du Cameroun assumed they were getting territory back but the practicalities and expectations of international law were that it was a union of two equal-status states based on mutually exclusive consent. That is, any constitutional changes would have to have been agreed separately by both states before they could proceed. The Federal Republic should not have been altered without the separate approvals of both states. Still the reality was that La République du Cameroun was entrenched so  they “got away with it” – until 1984 when they continued the “consolidation” too far and were challenged by Gorji Dinka, who won in the HCB 28/92 ruling. Even then, La République du Cameroun still continued to get away with it because the “protest” did not have enough mass and, hence, “the reality” was that La République du Cameroun could dictate.

In 2016 when assimilation was choking, La République du Cameroun miscalculated. The “wrong teachers lawyers” could simply have been withdrawn with minimal impedance to the assimilation but impatience got the better. OK, the phenomenon of “social media” also enabled the propagation of the information about grievances, but a slow down with some semblance of acceptance of the validity of the protests would have maintained some of the “reality”, giving La République du Cameroun “time”. La République du Cameroun tried to row back on the wrong aspects, for instance toying with the idea of undoing the name change. For a time, the name “United Republic of Cameroon” re-emerged, as anyone booking flights may have found, before fading away again, probably as La République realised that La République had not legal standing to include Ambazonia in any name changes, having effectively seceded in 1984.

 La République du Cameroun has been playing for time in a simpler but also less effective way. They hope that the momentum of the Ambazonian Liberation Struggle would subside and they would co-opt enough “elites” to return to “tolerable reality”.  While waiting, they engaged in some distractions which would, they hoped, fracture the Ambazonian Liberation Movement and aid that subsidence of momentum.  They find peripheral figures from the movement or from the “elites” and engage international partners to basically flatter them,  hoping that they will be pacified by the mere stroke of being engaged. In the two previous episodes, it appears the international partners may not have been in the know about La République du Cameroun’s intentions and aims. GAC clearly were acting in good faith believing La République du Cameroun was in earnest, until the unceremonious undiplomatic “communiques”.

La République du Cameroun has now refined their method, somehow and are now repeating the scheme in “Canada, The Sequel”. New “elites” presented and the international “partner” on the end of the dangle is the Vatican, this time, as a remote future fig-leaf.  They will just have far less “important/impressive” international “coordinators” and even La République du Cameroun is more remote. The “elites” actually straight-facedly argue that Ambazonia should create peace plan – not too controversial for La République du Cameroun – and submit it [to La République du Cameroun], who will, hopefully, accept it as a basis for negotiations. They argue that omitting “independence” from the plan would help make it less unpalatable for La République du Cameroun. They also “assure” that “devolution” [how is that different from Special status, or outside La République du Cameroun control] would be a palatable word! Playing for time at its best!

First, they [La République du Cameroun] encouraged Switzerland to host the “Swiss Process” then chickened out at the last minute. “Chicken-out” is wrong, considering the aim was never to negotiate.

Enter “Canadian Facilitation Process” and a host of meetings. GAC published what they assumed was an agreed route out of the “Process”. La République du Cameroun publicly disavowed Canada.

So what did La République du Cameroun want? To play for time. They did not even play along with the flaw in the GAC’s published proposal whereby the “crisis” would have been treated as an internal problem – which could be solved through internal reforms, such as the joke “special status” dangle. Many Ambazonians made it clear they did not accept that implicit assumption and were relieved to be vindicated when La République du Cameroun took the matches to their diplomatic bridges!

Jean de Dieu Mommo, the “opposition” minister at Cameroun’s ministry of justice published a ludicrous “analysis” to say that Mr Biya was a “clever Leader” for dribbling the international community to avoid sanctions. He said nothing of the embarrassment La République du Cameroun had accrued for the international community, notably Canada in that debacle.

This month, October 2024, La République du Cameroun has deployed proxies again in a sequel to Canada!

This time they are dangling the prospect of a “meeting in the Vatican” where a “peace plan” would be discussed. Only, with straight faces, the puppets, some of whom are from the college of bishops of La République du Cameroun and peripheral figures who were once in the Ambazonian Liberation Struggle in various capacities, are contorting to describe the sequel as an opportunity for “devolution”.

Without having embarked on a trip to Damascus, they seem to have come across the “burning bush” somehow! So ignoring previous failures in  La République du Cameroun schemes, the gullible or disingenuous are hoping to sell the lesser idea to a people who have endured many more atrocities. Their clever method is  that Ambazonians should meet on their own and draw up a supplicants’ list of “requests” to submit to La République du Cameroun, who may “grant” a “negotiation”. The “puppets” warn that La République du Cameroun may “reject negotiation” if Ambazonians mention independence! So PRAP is busy crafting semantics to sign up for devolution, in whose name we don’t know! We know much less how they hope to implement their schemes. They recommend avoiding mention of “Independence” for fear that “The President” may reject the “Peace Plan”. La République has summoned and jailed anyone mentioning the word “federation” and now a group claiming to be “Ambazonians” have determined that “devolution” is the keyword likely to be acceptable … to the people they hope to negotiate with!

Actually we do know what is going on and it is the same as was going on from the Swiss Process through the Canadian Facilitation. JDDM did not know but was nearly right, La République du Cameroun had no intention to negotiate then, nor do they now. What they desperately want is to play for time and hope that the Liberation Struggle subsides. The likes of ICO are in this for their “consultancy fees” and can genuinely claim neutrality as they have no preference how the Liberation Struggle concludes.

The “Ambazonia-leaning puppets” want “peace” which La République du Cameroun calls “normalcy”. The bishops want to tend to their gullible flock, collecting offerings and consoling and promising a better life in the next life for the meek. They don’t  mind La République du Cameroun killing a few school children in Ambazonia. They are willing to demand that we must turn the other cheek and beg La République du Cameroun for devolution, careful not to use the word independence! Their accomplices such as DC don’t know what they want, unless the burning bush is on the way to Yaoundé!

The Legal and Moral Position

Having endured these years of atrocities, no Ambazonian will follow any carpet-bagger asking them to water down their aspirations to create a begging list to submit to La République du Cameroun! Yes they actually state that the “plan would be submitted to La République du Cameroun govt!”  It is not a moral position and will die a natural death under it own illogic, amorality and callousness.

La République du Cameroun being called La République du Cameroun means it has separate borders, set at their independence in 1960, to Ambazonia, whose borders were reset when La République du Cameroun revived in 1984,  and cannot grant any requests to Ambazonia! By sending those “requests” Ambazonian would be reversing their own strong position to that of a supplicant. This border protocol is in the African Charter.

La République du Cameroun also lost a case in HCB 28/92, establishing that they are illegal forceful occupiers of Ambazonia. They have nothing to grant to Ambazonia and no Ambazonian is going to submit a peace plan to them. We can discuss the route to peace as part of our formal separation process when La République du Cameroun is bound to cease the illegal forceful occupation.

Ambazonians should concentrate on consolidating their citizenship by running their own institutions no matter how small the process starts. Community schools need to be encouraged to implant the and nurture the dignity of having control separately from La République.  Ambazonian Independentists need to stick this this and communicate it clearly to International Partners as the people wish in their external self-determination.

Though Canada 2, and PRAP, will not succeed, further time-wasting schemes need to cease and that will happen when Ambazonia makes it clear – for instance through the resolutions of the Consultative Commission.

The proponents of PRAP, if they are in earnest, must be sincere and transparent. For their own sakes, they must consider the positions of all the parties they wish to “bring together” to solve the “crisis”. It is a non-starter to usurp the position of representative of one side and then, worse still to attempt to put words in their mouths, so contrary to their grievances for the purpose of draw up a plan, to which the other side has made no commitment. Even if they had, how could PRAP maintain a “neutral” position while deliberately attempting to “bargain away” Ambazonia’s position ahead of any negotiations?

Ambazonia News can only conclude that this is another in the playing-for-time schemes engineered from the opposite camp.