Response to Mr. Akere Muna’s Declaration

While the world woke up one week ago in horror and shock at the state-sponsored massacre of unarmed citizens of SC/Ambazonia, formerly known as the British Trust Territories of Southern Cameroons, Lawyer Akere Muna, has been quietly and systematically bidding his time to declare his candidacy for president in LRC. The son of S.T. Muna, the former Vice President under the late president Admado Adhijo, declares to Cameroonians he intends to build a new republic that is united and based on zero tolerance for all the ismsknown to mankind (tribalism, nepotism favoritism). Sadly, he left out sectarianism, dictatorialism, and colonialism to name just a few. This shameless opportunistic move mocks the hundreds of SC who died while peacefully exercising the very political speak Mr. Muna claims he stands for now. Really!? Where have you been all our lives!? As a son of the soil, from Momo Division in the Northwest, Mr. Muna’s career flourished in the armpit of an intolerant dictatorial abusive genocidal regime and all forms of injustices Mr. Muna now claims he aspires to bring in this new republic. He has benefited as only a very few privileged SC have in such a system never once being disquieted by it. Not once, in his stellar civil service career did he challenge the Biya regime he claims is not built on the will of the people. It is not lost that in the wake of the tragedies meted on the people of SC, Mr. Muna’s conscience is just now being picked to see the ills of the regime.

 

The readers will note that in the past few months, Mr. Muna has released carefully crafted statements, offered measured statements during interviews during which he gave to Caesar what is his and to the rest theirs. It is not lost on the masses that these public pronouncements have all been carefully choreographed leading up this moment.

 

It is telling that the gentlemen touts his experience as member of the president’s panel of the African peer review mechanism – as a “…chairperson [has] given him pointed expertise in evaluating the government, political sectors of African countries…” It is hard to resist the knee jerked question, “what in God’s good green earth were his tangible results?” How did he bring his illustrious chairperson influence to bear on Mr. Biya and his government to create a just society, one that does not pry on unarm citizens, one that does not torture, abduct, maim, and brutally kill its own citizens using gunship helicopters? Before one is pointed to another position paper or interview, one speaks of results not paper skyscrapers written as a monument to failed democracies.

 

Nowhere in this declaration does the gentleman call his constituents attention, the Francophones or Anglophones for that matter, for whom he is largely pitching his candidacy, to the fact that this united country he hopes to make great deprives its people of their fundamental rights to free expression, free and unfettered access to information online, and paramount, right to self-determination. What deafness, hubris, worse paltry speech in search for votes? The people have spoken in no uncertain terms about the fork in the crossroads they wish to take. Their collective aspirations now bore in blood by the hundreds dead, many maimed, rendered refugees, and hundred more abducted daily and holed up in dungeons in LRC. As a son of the soil, and evidenced by the lack of connection with the people, the presidency sought is for others and not for your brothers. For that, we can only wish you luck.

 

In wishing you good luck, one wonders what part of the people’s aspirations does the good lawyer failed to see or get? For him we are to somehow believe and embrace his vision and hope that this time SCs are not going to be placed on the auction block for another cadre of LRC elites to purchase lock stock and barrel. We are not to believe the connivance of our own sons willing to purchase for themselves the rights of the privileged slave for another round of a 21st century colonization. That was the old. It is a new day, a new dawn. Bait and switch tactics are for the birds.

 

The Moses of the SC people might take an Israeli journey, but as circuitous as the journey might be, the path does not run through LRC. It runs to the unshakable fundamental and foundational truths that we are a people, a nation set on apart from LRC, and that after enduring decades of systematic annexation and near total annihilation believing as our parent did that we were partners in the failed construct dubbed Cameroon, SC/Ambazonia rise to fall no more and certainly not at the hands of another SC self-serving elite capitalizing on our trials.

 

The good lawyer is advice to run his race in LRC where it’s customary for those who create problems to orchestrate the solutions using the same untried false, and failed approaches and promises to remedy them. Recal LRC’s communications Minister’s solution offered live on Equinox TV? No army has ever killed anyone! He alone has the solution to the nation’s problems—annihilation of peaceful unarm protesters he calls terrorists?

 

Indeed, if this was a pivotal moment, it would go down in history as the more callous versions for having seized upon a propitious moment only to fail miserably for effect from a potential candidate. The gentleman’s declarations lacks the right resonance that acknowledges the cries of his people then or now. The blind see—the deaf hears the panoply of genocidal dog whistlers hurling a people into extinction. Against that background, his words ring hallow for no nation can be built anew on a foundation of falsities that feeds on the blood of innocence. As he declares platitudes of a Cameroon he wishes to build on the one hand, on the other, the distinguish son of the soil calls on the youths and women wailing at his feet to join their rapists and murderers for a new country. Even the hard harden, is an apologist when the situation meets his needs!

 

Mr. Akere, the aspiration of the people is to be free, free to express themselves, free from the tyranny of a colonizer, free to determine their destinies. The system of government upon which your vision lies has no room for peoples’ aspirations; it makes room only for masters and slaves. For if it did and we believe it could, as we speak, your first and only task NOW is to assiduously work to bring those collective aspirations to fruition.
God bless n keep us all!
Dr. Osong