HOW ELITE COMPETITION AND CO-OPTATION WRECKED THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS’ QUEST FOR INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

— Lessons for the Present Generation

Fontem Neba, PhD
(Scholar, Critic & Political and Civil Rights Advocate)

Abstract
The political crisis and armed conflict in the former British Southern Cameroons cannot be understood solely through the events of 2016. Its deeper roots lie partly in the failure of political elites during the democratic opening of the 1990s to consolidate the unity of purpose demonstrated by the All Anglophone Conferences of 1993 and 1994. This essay argues that regional elite competition, political co-optation, and the proliferation of organizations such as SWELA, NOWELA, and NOCUDA weakened the collective pursuit of institutional change. Rather than building durable institutions capable of protecting the common interests of the people, influential politicians increasingly competed for access, appointments, resources, and recognition from the central government. The resulting NW–SW divide weakened collective bargaining and allowed longstanding grievances to fester.

The argument does not suggest that every regional organization was inherently illegitimate or that every individual associated with these organizations shared identical motives. Rather, it examines the political consequences of a process in which regional and personal advancement increasingly competed with the broader collective institutional project. The naming of actors is therefore intentional. It is not intended for public lynching, vendetta, or retrospective punishment, but to establish the historical record and allow future generations to examine the decisions, relationships, and political choices that shaped the course of Southern Cameroons history.

Introduction
The contemporary crisis in the former British Southern Cameroons did not emerge suddenly in 2016. Its roots extend through decades of unresolved constitutional grievances, political marginalization, institutional weakness, elite competition, and the inability of the state to establish a durable political settlement acceptable to the people of the former British territory. The events of 2016 should therefore be understood not simply as the beginning of the crisis but as the dramatic eruption of wounds that had been allowed to fester for decades.
One of the most consequential periods in this history was the political opening of the 1990s. The return of competitive politics created an opportunity for Anglophones to articulate their grievances collectively. The All Anglophone Conference in Buea in 1993, commonly referred to as AAC I, and the second conference in Bamenda in 1994, AAC II, represented an extraordinary moment of cross-regional political mobilization. AAC I brought together representatives from across the Anglophone territory to formulate a common position on constitutional reform, while AAC II sought to carry that process forward after the constitutional reform process had stalled.

North Westerners and South Westerners demonstrated that regional identity did not necessarily have to prevent collective political action. They could retain their distinct regional identities while recognizing that their shared institutional interests required a common political strategy.

The tragedy was that this unity of purpose was not consolidated into a durable institutional structure. Instead, sections of the political elite increasingly pursued regional organizations, personal political advancement, access to the central government, and competition for state resources. SWELA, NOWELA, and NOCUDA became associated with an increasingly regionalized political environment. The problem was not the mere existence of regional organizations. South Westerners and North Westerners had legitimate interests that deserved representation. The problem emerged when regional political competition began to displace the broader institutional project.

The central government also had a profound interest in preventing the emergence of a unified political movement capable of sustaining pressure for constitutional change. The mobilization and political awareness generated by AAC I and AAC II demonstrated the capacity of the population to organize across regional lines. That development could not have been comfortable for a highly centralized regime. It is therefore not surprising that CPDM stalwarts within the Southern Cameroons became important actors in the political response to this mobilization. Contemporary accounts of the period describe attempts by regime-aligned actors to distance regional constituencies from the AAC process and opposition to the consolidation of the movement.

The central argument of this essay is therefore that the institutional opportunity created by AAC I and AAC II was progressively weakened when regional competition, elite ambition, and state co-optation displaced the collective pursuit of structural political reform. What had briefly become a common Southern Cameroons political project increasingly became a competition over who could secure greater access to Yaoundé, government appointments, development resources, and political influence.

This argument does not absolve the Biya regime. The central government possessed vastly greater political power and bears primary responsibility for maintaining the centralized system, resisting meaningful constitutional reform, using co-optation as a political instrument, exploiting political divisions, and ultimately responding to renewed Anglophone grievances with repression. But political power does not remove the responsibility of those who claimed to represent the people. Political elites also possessed agency, and their choices had consequences.

The purpose of identifying individual political actors is not public lynching, vendetta, or retrospective punishment. Political history cannot be adequately understood through an anonymous reference to “the elite.” Identifiable individuals occupied positions of influence, founded or promoted organizations, accepted government appointments, interacted with the regime, and participated in political processes whose consequences affected the population. Those facts should be placed before the historical record so that future generations can examine them honestly.

The Lost Moment of Southern Cameroons Unity
The democratic opening of the early 1990s created an opportunity that had not previously existed in the same form. Competitive politics enabled Anglophone grievances to be articulated publicly, while the emergence of the Social Democratic Front created a powerful political vehicle with particularly strong support in the North West and significant support in the South West.

For many Southern Cameroonians, the political question increasingly moved beyond individual representation within the central government. The issue became the structure of the state itself and whether the historical, legal, educational, and institutional distinctiveness of the former British Southern Cameroons could be protected.

AAC I in Buea in 1993 represented perhaps the clearest expression of this collective consciousness. Its significance was not merely that delegates adopted resolutions. Its deeper significance was that North Westerners and South Westerners demonstrated that they could formulate a common political position despite their regional differences. The Buea Declaration was explicitly concerned with adopting a common Anglophone position on constitutional reform.
The conference therefore created something politically important: a common platform through which institutional grievances could be presented as collective grievances rather than as competing regional demands.

AAC II in Bamenda in 1994 sought to consolidate that achievement. The conference considered the stalled constitutional reform process and the execution of the mandate given to the Standing Committee by AAC I. It subsequently reorganized the institutional structure for pursuing the constitutional agenda.

At this point, the central challenge was no longer simply mobilizing the population. It was building an institution strong enough to maintain collective political action. Such an institution could have accommodated legitimate regional differences while preserving a common negotiating position. South Westerners could have demanded safeguards against North West domination, while North Westerners could have demanded corresponding safeguards against South West domination. The answer to regional insecurity could have been institutional design rather than political fragmentation.

Instead, the emerging unity was progressively weakened. Constitutional reform, federalism, institutional guarantees, and collective political rights were increasingly overtaken by regional competition. What had initially been a difference between two regions within a common political community increasingly became a political cleavage that could be exploited by politicians and the central government alike.

SWELA and the South West Elite
The emergence of the South West Elites Association, SWELA, must be understood within this environment. The principal South Westerners associated with fostering SWELA included David M. Iyok, Abraham T. Enaw, Chief Emmanuel Tabe Egbe, Ephraim Inoni, and Chief Fomenky. Their concerns did not arise from nowhere. Many South Western elites believed that the political ascendancy of the North West, particularly through the growing influence of the SDF, could result in South West interests being subordinated.

Regional organization was therefore understandable. The problem was not the desire of South Westerners to organize. The problem emerged when regional organization became increasingly disconnected from the wider institutional struggle. Instead of asking how South West interests could be constitutionally protected within a collective Southern Cameroonian framework, political competition increasingly centered on who could obtain greater influence within the central state.

David M. Iyok played an important role in mobilizing South West elites around the creation of SWELA. Chief Emmanuel Tabi Egbe provided an important social and institutional base for the organization’s early activities, while Abraham T. Enaw and other prominent professionals participated in the effort. Ephraim Inoni was also associated with the mobilization of the South West elite network.

The subsequent political trajectories of several actors illustrate how regional elite organizations became intertwined with the state. Peter Agbor Tabi became Minister of Higher Education in 1994 after an earlier career in academia and administration. Ephraim Inoni, who was associated with SWELA, occupied senior governmental positions, including Secretary of State for Finance, before becoming Deputy Secretary-General at the Presidency and eventually Prime Minister in 2004. John Ebong Ngolle also occupied important administrative and governmental positions. Caven Nnoko Mbele and other South West figures became part of the broader political establishment, while traditional authorities such as Samuel Endeley and Victor Mukete possessed considerable political influence.

These careers do not by themselves establish a single motive among all the actors involved. Their significance lies in demonstrating the mechanism through which the central government could incorporate influential regional elites. Political inclusion occurred at the level of individuals while the institutional grievances of the population remained unresolved. A region could therefore gain ministers, senior administrators, and access to the Presidency without gaining enforceable constitutional guarantees.

Peter Agbor Tabi’s career is particularly illustrative because his government position placed him at the intersection of regional institutional interests and central state authority. Ephraim Inoni’s trajectory is equally significant. His rise from involvement in elite mobilization to the highest levels of government demonstrated that a Southern Cameroonian politician could achieve considerable personal political advancement without the fundamental constitutional question being resolved.

The distinction is important: representation in government could produce visibility and individual influence without necessarily producing institutional empowerment for the population.

NOWELA, NOCUDA, and the North West Political Response
The North West followed a comparable trajectory and fell in the SWELA trap. NOWELA, the North West Elites Association, emerged as a regional counterpart within the broader process of elite organization. Its development reflected legitimate concerns among North West elites about political representation, regional influence, and the changing balance between the two Anglophone regions.

Again, regional organization itself was not inherently destructive. The difficulty was that regional organizations developed at a time when the collective Anglophone political project remained fragile. Rather than strengthening a common institutional structure capable of accommodating regional interests, competing organizations increasingly became instruments through which each region sought to secure its own position.

NOCUDA was equally significant in the fragmentation of the collective project. Its intervention in the period surrounding AAC I and AAC II is important because it occurred at precisely the moment when Anglophone unity was being constructed. The political intervention associated with NOCUDA sought to dissociate the North West from the Anglophone Conference and portray the conference as essentially a South West initiative. Such activity contributed to the political environment in which AAC II faced opposition.

The broader political context is important. AAC I had explicitly presented itself as a rejection of the North West/South West dichotomy and called for Anglophones to resist attempts to divide them. Beads of Memory The emergence of regional elite organizations in opposition to that collective political direction therefore had consequences beyond ordinary elite association.

Simon Achidi Achu became the most visible symbol of North West access to the central state when he became Prime Minister in 1992. His appointment was historically significant and demonstrated that an Anglophone, and specifically a North Westerner, could occupy one of the highest political offices in Cameroon. Yet the appointment also reinforced the logic of elite representation as a substitute for institutional reform.
The broader North West political network included senior officials such as Peter Abety, John Niba Ngu, Francis Nkwain, and Samuel Ngeh Tamfu, among others through whom the regime could demonstrate inclusion. Their individual political careers varied, and they should not all be treated as having identical ideological positions. Their significance lies in the wider political structure: the regime possessed a sufficiently deep pool of Anglophone elites from which it could recruit ministers, governors, diplomats, administrators, and other officials.
The result was a political system in which the President could answer a collective demand for institutional recognition by pointing to individuals appointed to important positions. The implicit message was that Anglophones were not excluded because Anglophones occupied high office.

But representation at the level of individuals was not equivalent to institutional protection for the population. A community could have ministers and still lack meaningful constitutional guarantees. It could have a Prime Minister and still have no effective mechanism for determining the distribution of political authority. It could have governors and senior administrators and still remain dependent upon presidential discretion.

The importance of this episode is not that NOCUDA alone destroyed Anglophone unity. The fragmentation was the product of a wider political process involving regional competition, regime strategy, elite ambitions, and institutional weakness. Its significance is that it demonstrated how quickly a common political project could be reframed as a regional contest.

When Peter Mafany Musonge, a South Westerner, succeeded Achidi Achu as Prime Minister in 1996, the regional balance shifted again. From a regional political perspective, this could be interpreted as a South West victory. But from the perspective of institutional change, little had fundamentally changed. The occupant of the office had changed; the constitutional structure remained.

This alternating pattern illustrated the fundamental weakness of elite politics. North Westerners could celebrate a North Westerner in the Prime Minister’s office. South Westerners could celebrate the subsequent appointment of a South Westerner. But ordinary citizens continued to depend upon presidential appointments rather than enforceable institutional guarantees. Their children could not accede to their dream positions without the intercession of these politicians turned gatekeepers. So, the common people remained marginalized, unemployed, and deprived while the politicians fed fat.

Co-optation and the Politics of Access
The Biya regime proved highly effective at managing political dissent through a combination of repression, patronage, appointments, and co-optation. Co-optation did not necessarily require every politician to become an enthusiastic supporter of the regime. It worked by creating incentives for influential individuals to participate in the existing political system and by making personal access to the Presidency more politically valuable than collective bargaining.

The system was particularly effective because it could recognize Southern Cameroonian individuals while refusing to recognize the full institutional claims of the Southern Cameroons population. A Prime Minister could be presented as evidence of national inclusion. A minister could demonstrate regional representation. A governor could demonstrate administrative participation. A senior official at the Presidency could demonstrate that Southern Cameroonians had access to the highest circles of government.

But elite representation is not the same as institutional empowerment. A community may have ministers and governors and still lack effective constitutional protection. It may have senior officials and still have no meaningful mechanism through which citizens can hold government accountable. It may have powerful politicians and still depend upon the goodwill of those politicians to obtain public services.

This distinction explains why elite competition was so damaging. Politicians increasingly competed for access to the very state whose institutional structure the population wanted changed. Once personal access became politically valuable, collective bargaining became more difficult. A unified Anglophone institution could demand structural reform. Competing elites could instead negotiate separately for appointments, development projects, influence, and recognition.

The regime consequently did not need to defeat every Southern Cameroonian political leader. It needed only to make individual political advancement sufficiently attractive to weaken collective action.

The Consequences for Ordinary People
The consequences of this political fragmentation were not merely abstract. Ordinary citizens experienced the effects through weakened institutions, unequal development, declining trust, and the absence of durable mechanisms for addressing longstanding grievances. Regional associations could mobilize scholarships, development projects, cultural programmes, and assistance to communities. These achievements should not be dismissed. The organizations could and did provide benefits to individuals.

Yet there is a fundamental distinction between benefits delivered through patronage and rights protected by institutions. A politician who obtains a road for a community through personal access may help that community, but the arrangement does not guarantee that the next community will receive similar treatment, nor that the road will be maintained after the politician leaves power.

A scholarship obtained through an elite network assists the beneficiary who receives it but can also reinforce dependence upon political access. A ministerial appointment may give a region visibility, but it does not provide constitutional protection. The common man was therefore encouraged to look toward the politician who could “take the problem to Yaoundé” rather than toward institutions through which citizens could demand that the problem be addressed as a matter of right. Such an arrangement might produce an individual road, scholarship, appointment, or government intervention, but it did not create equal opportunities for all or durable institutional guarantees.

Viewed specifically through the question of collective institutional change, the political effect of SWELA, NOWELA, and NOCUDA was therefore NEGATIVE, notwithstanding whatever developmental or representational benefits they may have provided.

The Emergence of the NW–SW Divide
The NW–SW divide did not emerge simply because North Westerners and South Westerners possessed different identities. Those differences had existed long before the 1990s without preventing collective Anglophone political mobilization.

The divide became politically consequential when regional differences were increasingly transformed into competing political constituencies. The population was gradually encouraged to view political success through a regional lens. Which region had more ministers? Which region controlled more administrative positions? Which region had greater influence in the Presidency? Which region benefited more from state resources?

These questions increasingly displaced the larger question: What institutions should protect all of us?
This was one of the most consequential effects of elite competition. AAC I and AAC II had demonstrated that the two regions could act together. Regional political competition demonstrated that they could also be separated.

The consequences continued long after the original political actors had moved into different positions or even left the stage. Distrust accumulated. Historical grievances were reinterpreted through regional narratives. Political competition acquired a social dimension, making it increasingly difficult to restore the kind of common institutional purpose that had characterized the AAC period. |

By the time teachers, lawyers, students, civil society organizations, and ordinary citizens returned to the streets in 2016, the institutional capacity that might have enabled a peaceful collective response had been greatly weakened. The grievances had not disappeared. They had accumulated beneath the surface.

The Cost of Losing the AAC Opportunity
It cannot be established with certainty that a different political course in the 1990s would have prevented the armed conflict that emerged decades later. The Biya regime possessed enormous political power and could have rejected federalism or other reforms even in the face of a united Southern Cameroons movement. Nevertheless, there are strong grounds for arguing that the political trajectory could have been different.
AAC I and AAC II generated an unusual level of political mobilization and awareness. They brought North Westerners and South Westerners together around common constitutional grievances and demonstrated that the population could act collectively across regional boundaries. This development inevitably alarmed a regime committed to preserving the centralized order. It is therefore not surprising that the ruling CPDM deployed its stalwarts from within the Southern Cameroons to weaken the unity created by the AAC, encourage regional divisions, and ultimately rewarded them with co-optation or access to power.

The political logic was straightforward: a unified movement capable of negotiating collectively posed a greater institutional challenge than competing regional elites negotiating separately with Yaoundé. As the collective movement weakened, individual political access became more valuable, while institutional guarantees remained elusive. Had AAC I and AAC II been consolidated into a transparent, representative, and accountable movement, it could have preserved collective bargaining, managed NW–SW differences, and prevented government appointments from becoming substitutes for constitutional reform.

The counterfactual argument is not that unity would have guaranteed peace. It is that its preservation could have strengthened peaceful political pressure and improved the prospects for a negotiated constitutional settlement. That was the historic opportunity lost.

The Moral and Philosophical Dimension
At its deepest level, this history concerns the moral obligations of political leadership.
Political authority is a form of stewardship. Leaders who claim to represent a people inherit its political capital, aspirations, trust, and collective struggles. That capital belongs to the people, not to individual politicians.
The central question is therefore whether political actors use collective resources to build institutions that endure beyond their tenure or convert them into personal influence, access, and temporary political advantage.
This distinction is particularly important where access to state resources depends upon personal relationships. A politician may secure a road, scholarship, appointment, or government intervention and thereby provide an immediate benefit. But such patronage does not create durable political rights. The stronger measure of leadership is what institutions remain after the politician leaves office.

The naming of political actors in this essay is therefore deliberate. It is not an invitation to public lynching, vendetta, or retrospective punishment. Political history requires identifiable actors, decisions, organizations, and relationships to be examined openly. The evidence should establish the historical record; the reader can draw his or her own conclusions.

Ultimately, the issue is one of collective responsibility and intergenerational stewardship: whether political leaders leave behind stronger institutions and greater political freedom, or weakened institutions and continued dependence on personal access.

Lessons for the present generation
The history of SWELA, NOWELA, and NOCUDA reveals a painful truth: a people may possess a powerful common aspiration and still lose it when their political elites place personal ambition, regional rivalry, self-seeking opportunism and access to power above institution-building. AAC I and AAC II demonstrated the possibility of Anglophone unity; what followed demonstrated how easily that unity could be fractured by elite competition and political co-optation. The Biya regime bears primary responsibility for preserving a centralized system, exploiting divisions, and leaving fundamental grievances unresolved. Yet political elites cannot escape responsibility for failing to protect the collective political capital entrusted to them.

The lesson for the next generation must therefore be uncompromising. Never again should political office be mistaken for political liberation, patronage for rights, or regional representation for institutional protection. No minister, prime minister, governor, or influential politician should become a substitute for institutions that belong to the people.

Regional identities must be respected, but never weaponized against a common purpose. Any future collective project must be built on transparency, accountability, equity, equality, and institutional safeguards capable of surviving individual ambitions. History has delivered its warning. The next generation must decide whether to inherit the politics of division or build institutions strong enough to transcend it. The true measure of leadership is not the power one acquires, but the institutions one leaves behind.