The Battle for the Soul of Ambazonia
By Ntumfoyn Boh Herbert (Yindo Toh)

When King Solomon was given the opportunity to make a wish, he prayed for wisdom, not money, not riches. Wisdom. Full stop. That lesson is one Ambazonians need to learn and apply in full.

I’m saying by way of jumping in on the debate about draft money and the interest in draft money by persons far removed from wishing it well. May it comfort them to know that they are right. We cannot seek money first in the belief that all else will be added onto us.

That said, the argument that draft money could have changed Heaven and Earth and everything in between is disingenuous. The other claim that if draft money existed, LRC would not be holding unnecessary election rallies fall short on wisdom.

Draft money in the bank or at hand does not translate into buying weapons. Look to My Trip To Buea money for how to explain “easy come, easy go”. Purchasing weapons anywhere in the Diaspora from draft money won’t automatically translate into those weapons reaching the Homefront. There are gunrunning crimes to avoid and there are enough crevices in which to “hide” money between ordering weapons and reporting them seized. And, getting weapons on Ground Zero won’t automatically translate into an upper hand, militarily speaking, over the colonizer. A drop of water in the sea of LRC weapons in Ambazonia does not Lake Awing make.

That’s why Ambazonia’s wannabe kings should join King Solomon in offering a prayerful wish to be blessed with wisdom. The wisdom to do the right thing by our people because the foolishness of feasting with LRC by day is only bound to start a long night of starvation and rejection by our people. Councilors, by whose name you’d be forgiven to think they can provide counsel, should know better than to insist to feast with the colonizer now only to live in fear forever after. The evil men, and women do…

Let’s be clear about one thing. Money is evil when we let it be, and in the case of Ambazonia, there is no denying that some of the ruin we face stems from money devouring our souls. Besides the lust after power, money is the next worse twin Ambazonians have and will continue to face in this struggle. Lust for money shattered the United Platform even before the ink on which it was crafted had time to dry up. Lust for money has driven the biggest wedge between our people and their liberation movements; as well as between leaders. Money paid by Ambazonians into one movement has cemented divisions across movements that we expect to be fighting together on Ground Zero. What money has done to Ambazonia is the equivalent for LRC to choose to fund the BIR but not the Gendarmrie; to back the prison guard but not the police; to foot the bill for customs but skip providing supplies for the military.

We have also seen what lust for money extracted at gunpoint by way of hostage taking for ransom has done, turning many against a struggle they truly cherish and desire to see succeed. Instead of winning us hearts, the bulk of the money that has tainted this struggle has won us hate. It has divided the Ambazonian House among itself. Money has empowered King A of Ambazonia against King B of Ambazonia. Money has facilitated the building of fighting units that have, all too sadly, trained their weapons first on each other, than on units of the colonizers.

King Solomon knew better and prayed: “Give me wisdom, Lord!”

Ambazonian leaders are praying for dough. Enough money to dribble everyone else out of their inheritance. Enough money, won illicitly, who cares, it seems. “Lord, allow me to sell all the oil of Ambazonia all alone! May I be the only force in town. May all others crumple and fall that I may triumph!”

Those are some of the prayers that the Heavens have heard from the mouths of Ambazonian leaders. Chiefs and Fons and so-called MPs, Senators, Mayors and Councillors are praying right now that LRC will oil their pockets, as the scribes oiled the pockets of Judas Iscariot. For a few pieces of silver, they are willing to sell out this and future generations of Ambazonians to the “god of bellytics”.

Wake up everybody! If the so-called elections the colonizers are organizing; if money or weapons held the keys to the direct and most consequential outcomes of independence wars, would the all-powerful French have lost the War in Vietnam or the War in Algeria? Would America be still without clear cut victories in the two-decade wars The Boys have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Would Israel still be fighting, every year, another round of battles in what was pompously called The Seven Day War – which has now been unfolding for nearly 70 years?

The Biya regime is willing to offer cash for ballots. That is the M.O. of the regime. Bullets and weapons, bloodshed agogo, violence unrestrained and genocidal wars have never produced the horror the colonizers hope would discourage the enslaved from rising for their freedom. The use of same won’t win the war for the soul of Ambazonia. It is all that matters. Anyone else can win anything else. So long as we win the hearts of Ambazonians, victory is guaranteed. If you are like me and you’ve been keeping a count, your score board would acknowledge two facts.

The first is that Ambazonian hearts have fallen madly in love with the restoration of independence. Frequent so-called elections by the colonizer to implement the Trojan Horse project known as Special Status won’t change the ultimate outcome. An overwhelming majority of our people knows now, more than at any time over the past 160+ years of colonial domination, why it is that we rose. They know and approve why we fight and must carry on fighting. Through the grief of massacres and of the unrelenting genocidal violence, our people are defiant. “One heart, one love”, they support why we must uphold our legal dissent against the colonizers. They understand why we must remain mobilized and why we must make sure the enemy labors in vain. Take that to the bank!

Secondly, where we have a lot more work to do is to win hearts at the level of the international community. Our limited success so far is not from lack of trying. The international community is littered with hearts of stone. They pretend Genocide isn’t really happening. They want you to believe that colonial domination does not exist in Ambazonia even as they recognize it in Quebec and Scotland. We are up against the same heartless fellows who, in addition to being racists, think we should pay them for enslaving us.

We have our work cut out for us. We must try to convince the co-conspirators of France who have chosen the side of the Devil (often the same as the side of money) over the innocent people of Ambazonia. We can take comfort in the fact that evil never triumphs.

Recognition for Ambazonia will come at a moment lest expected… when God changes the hearts of stone of the Pharaohs of our world into hearts of flesh, capable of compassion and submissive to the Will of God. Ambazonians’ job in that process is to march on… “until we reach Buea… 🎵 until we reach Buea, we must never, never leave our journey half way, until we reach Buea!”

Let LRC mock you, if they must. Recognition has never come fast enough for any country. America had to wait, feeding on the crumbs from the diplomatic table of the Kingdom of Morocco, for example, as it began its long road to full recognition. It is the same route we must travel. Patiently. Tirelessly. One mile at a time. Never giving up. Never surrendering. Forward always!

By the way, the colonizer was never going to stop just because we drafted a zillion dollars. Drafting justifies the colonizer’s economy of war. It puts more money in the hands of the hawks of war in LRC and in France and at the IMF where funding non-existent COVID19 operations is the pretext for funding genocide.

Even if all the draft money is not yet in, let you not be fooled. Drafting alone, sent a loud message to the world: look, they are so determined to restore their independence, they are putting their money where their mouths are. That may not be enough to turn a heart of stone into one of flesh, but just as there is not money enough in Hell to buy God over, there is no Special Status, no election, no regional whatever and no money enough in the coffers of LRC and France and the IMF combined to buy Ambazonia over. A few hungry chiefs and Fons and so-called MPs, Mayors, Senators, Councillors and those my friends call CPDM “Woman Wrappa Dem” will worship Judas Iscariot briefly before being forced to drop the “hot change” and run for the hills or take their own lives. It is what traitors do.

When the colonizers are ramping up provocation across Ambazonia as they are doing right now, it is important to just step aside and let the colonizers, their collaborators and enablers to sow the wind… for they will harvest the storm. Give them enough rope to hang themselves and do this as deliberately as deliberate can be. The colonizers and all the co-conspirators of France worldwide should learn just one lesson when we strike anew. They need to know that we were just busy reloading; not surrendering.

If one election gimmick sufficed, Ahmadou Ahidjo would have nailed it when he instituted the one-party state. If weapons or military might won not only military but legal and diplomatic victories, Nigeria would own the Bakassi Peninsular. If Almighty Nigeria failed to force Ambazonians into becoming citizens of the “one and indivisible Naija”, forget LRC’s efforts at trying to walk where Angels have tripped and fallen.

Again, Ambazonians have no business trying to beat LRC and France militarily or in the fake elections. It may be a desire among some of us. Yet, we should remember that King Solomon had desires, too. Our most important business is to win independence. All else does not matter. Let’s remember, too, that we won’t win recognition by occupying and controlling our entire Homeland. Ask Somaliland. Somalilanders have controlled every inch of their land since 1991, yet… the world tarries to grant recognition. Ask the Palestinian people why the world tarries. Ask the Republic of Azawad which controlled territory the size of France in the northern parts of Mali, yet did not win recognition.

By the way, for those keeping the score, here is my score board. Ambazonia won this war before the very first bullet was fired. Every bullet fired after that first one, every Ambazonian killed; every home and every village torched; every Ambazonian driven into exile, internally displaced or sheltering in the forests and caves, is a heart forever won to independence. There are zillions of Ambazonians, who were born this night… zillions who are yet unborn, who are still breastfeeding today or who need to cling onto a staff in order to help them walk in old age who will fight LRC with or without weapons… They will be at it for decades, if need be, winning hearts by telling our story of love for freedom. There are zillions of Ambazonians in graves whose souls won’t accept eternal rest until they rise again and fight anew until LRC is kicked out of Ambazonia.

It is what you must do when you are dehumanized as dogs, roaches, terrorists, two cubes of sugar that should have melted in the sea of assimilation. The colonizer’s lead Commander Paul Biya bi Mvondo could not hide his open confession to Mo Ibrahim. “For 60 years, we did everything to assimilate Southern Cameroonians into the majority Francophones culture and we failed.” Bravo! Voila qui est bien dit.

Biya must have prayed for and was granted wisdom when he made this confession. The part of the wise advice from God that Biya refused to heed is to understand that beginning another round of 60 years of attempted assimilation won’t change the outcome. We have seen this film before…. in Algeria, in East Timor, in Eritrea, in South Sudan, etc.

Spoiler alert! This horror movie ends with both Colonial Cameroun and chief sponsor, France, falling on their own swords. It is their fate and their damnation. Whatever they do, they’ll never be able to stop the previously colonized people of Ambazonia from feting the dawn of a new day, the restoration of Southern Cameroons independence and celebrating the recognition of Ambazonia as Africa’s 55th sovereign country.

“Oooouf! Na long piece. Use “delete” button if you don taya for read. If you di vex, Aah dey for ma loong.”