Ayah Paul Abine, one of the finest Cameroon Anglophone judge keeps lamenting against Common law Lawyers. In another Facebook post he wrote:

“…In 2008, Ayah Paul Abine took strong exception to a constitutional amendment as a matter of principle. No one lawyer in Cameroun lent Ayah support, even remotely. At about the same time, by contrast, it was the march by lawyers that put an end to the attempt by the contemporary president in Senegal to procure his son to succeed him. A similar march is Mali resulted in a military take-over a day following the march. As in Cameroun private interest ever prevails over the general interest, Anglophone lawyers only woke up from slumber when Mr. President moved to appoint notaries public in Cameroon. Connivance by lawyers at Mr. President’s toying with the highest law of the land the constitution is had by now emboldened him to treat the law as a discretion.

When Mr. President tabled a Bill in parliament that was clearly unconstitutional, aiming to remove ayah from parliament for his having resigned from the President’s ruling CPDM party, few were lawyers that showed any concern: that was considered Ayah’s cup of tea – not a matter of general import! And several are other examples where in other countries lawyers that are irreplaceable in the learned profession would have led the fight against contempt of the law. Yet several are the instances where our lawyers lazed away in legal slumber.

Ayah, who is ever looking ahead and raising alarm, recently published how Ahmadou Ahidjo decreed that, for a provision to be adopted during the harmonization of the criminal procedure code, there must be double majorities: majority among the Francophone members of the commission and likewise the Anglophone members. This gave the Anglophone minority members the power of veto. The criminal procedure code in force today is predominantly Common Law inspired. Ayah then proceeded to caution that, in the absence of such veto in the present endeavor to harmonize civil law, the Francophone majority are simply dictating the tone; and that the end result is going to be the adoption of the French civil law in a raw form…

As usual, the caution attracted some eight “likes” or so: after all, the Anglophones “don’t read”, to quote Sanky Maimo! Even the few who read are slow to grasp the import. Or they dismiss it just because they have failed to grasp the point from their low level of English, or they lack the initiative or the courage to take a stance… One would have thought that the English taught us that a stitch in time saves nine! And is not it better to avoid (prevent) that having to deal with the fait accompli?
Na dasso crying in the wilderness, anyhow!…” Ayah concluded

BaretaNews is sincerely worried. At this present time, the fight the common lawyers are putting goes above any individual, it goes above any sin committed in the past by an individual or group of persons. It is about the collective survival of our judicial system whether it benefits the lawyers or not. It is about our identity as a people. The question that we should be asking should be the way forward. The past has happened and the lawyers are in their numbers to see things done. We must only dwell in the past as a pointer to support the future not to abandon the future. It is good that the lawyers are now awake if at all they were sleeping in the past. Should we abandon them because they reportedly failed in the past? BaretaNews is of the opinion that we should join the lawyers in this venture to map something better for the future of Southern Cameroons (West Cameroon, Anglophone Cameroon, Ambazonia). There is always the first time to do things and in this light, BaretaNews calls on the Lord Justice to stop the lamenting and throw his unflinching support behind the lawyers

God is still saying something.