The Ambazonia Governing Council has released a blueprint of how the structure of the restored country will look like should Southern Cameroons restored its independence from La Republique. Many onlookers have been bothering to have an idea on how the new country will look like. BaretaNews met with the Governing Council and attempt to provide some specfics. We would begin with the introduction introducing the idea of the structure of the country called Ambazonia.

By structure we mean whether Ambazonia will be a unitary state, a federation, or what. We abhor unitarism in which we have suffered so much in La Republique du Cameroun. Driven by our inclinations for freedom, happiness of the heart, and the teachings of nature, our country must be highly federalist, giving only a small role to the central government. We trust in the powers of the human being to take care of himself and his own interest, and know from experience that no one else ever takes care of anyone’s interest as themselves. Therefore, our state is a state that shall promote people and groups to take care of their own life and affairs.

Unitary States are the descendants of monarchies and feudalism. They are designed for control, subordination and rule of the human being, not for his liberation and empowerment. Our idea of a State is that it should provide only a framework within which individuals and groups can fulfil themselves in harmony. This framework is essentially protection, law and order and coordination of our autonomous units; we should never lose sight of this. Unitary states are often built on a few towns which become breeding grounds for crime, population crowding, dirt, pollution, the dehumanisation of the human being, needless complexities and confusion. We want to avoid all this by spreading our people throughout our God-given territory rather than promote crowding into small spaces called towns where the human being always comes out worse off, as a human being, than he came in.

Also, the more we allow things to become complicated, the more power and resources the central government will need to deal with these complexities. Yet, our minds as Africans are not yet used to complexities, nor do we as human beings need or love complexities. So it is in our interest to design a system which enables each council to deal effectively with everything around it, so that the work of the central government will remain minimal.

Consequently, our country should be broken down into highly autonomous councils. This autonomy should continue at the council level down to the village. The number of councils may be from 10 up. What is vital is to distribute resources in such a way as to enable each council great financial autonomy in dealing with its area of jurisdiction. We shall encourage our councils and people to abandon the odd idea of looking up to the State and central government as a second god. We want each council to act as if all things depended on its own initiative; it must not wait for the central government. In our African tribes, no one looked up to any State to do everything for him; that was far healthier than these so-called modern States where everyone is looking up to the State, which unfortunately can never fulfill the expectations.

Another issue we want to discourage is the desire for control from the central government. The primitive fear that the country will fall apart if the central government is not very strong always arises from the subconscious knowledge that the people are tied together just by force. This is the complete opposite of our vision.

We want to give liberty, protection and reason for our people to strive with all their might to belong rather than to break away. The dogma of indivisibility should not enter our constitution. We cannot and should not try to impose a sense of belonging on anyone. It can be nurtured, but not imposed; it must be born from their own experience of the benefits the bigger group gives them, and thus on their inner feelings and convictions.

In part two of this movement, BaretaNews shall bring specifics regarding education, law, justice, parliament etc.

Stay tuned.

God is still saying something.