Commenting on failure that is made to look like success-The protracted case of The Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia)

Articles have been written on the in interminable problems of The Southern Cameroons - Ambazonia-Nation State that since October 1, 1961 has been governed by Cameroon Republic. The attachment written by Mr. Moy M. Eyong on the recent Banjul verdict concerning strive by this State to reinstate its long lost political independence is a revelation that needs to be read not only once but twice by all peace loving persons wherever they happen to be.


Often times people cite a section from the Holy Bible to defend their actions and they are wrong. You learned readers, can cite cases in history of the world where many have claimed that they were just and acting in the name of God and they turned out to be very wrong. Then you got to know that the Holy Bible is like a long rope with a beginning and an end. If you only touch the center or the head of the rope, you cannot go claiming that you have touched the entire length of the rope. If it concerns the Holy Bible, you have got to read it word for word and syllabus by syllabus if you are to be in terms with what its authors wrote.


Reciting or enlarging a portion of the Bible a million times does not make you understand the words of God. In the same vein, if the interpretation of this writer, Eyong is correct then the whole world has got a case in hand to settle and as a matter of urgency.

Viban Viban Ngo, PhD.



How Did Biya Manage to Make a Devastating Defeat in Banjul Look Like a Stunning Success


By Moy Manyi Eyong


For two weeks I have watched in total amazement how the Cameroon regime succeeded to use a single paragraph from the 42 page verdict of the African Commission on Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) on the case between Cameroon and SCNC&SCAPO to temporarily shut the SCNC&SCAPO up.
I am sure in the future, this will be a great case study in the use of political psychology as a tactical weapon.In the 42-page verdict the Commission got Cameroon to accept a guilty verdict for committing some of the most outrageous crimes of the 21st century--using torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and treatment. The Commission found it offensive that the Cameroon regime attempted to justify these crimes on the grounds of fighting alleged terrorism.
It seemed a grave mistake in more ways than one for the Cameroon government to call attention to a document any concerned citizen could read online and see how the Commission hammered her; until the SCNC & SCAPO actually bought Cameroon's interpretation of the verdict (after having made the earlier mistake of not publishing that verdict themselves sooner). And when the African Development Bank announced their grant approval for Cameroon (reported by reuters in this October 5 article) a few days after the start of Cameroon's media blitz following their publishing of the one paragraph from the ACHPR verdict, it became clear that something calculated was going on.

To understand what was going on, one needs to look a bit further: Cameroon happens to be one of those countries that heavily relies on foreign aid to make up its budget almost every year. For years French politicians who benefit from all kinds of no bid contracts from Cameroon and from access to timber, bauxite and oil at bellow market prices, have used the French state to make sure Cameroon meets its budget requirements.
The French mainly lobby the IMF, World Bank, European banks and the African Development bank--of course--to give loans and grants to Cameroon. There is also the constant granting of loans to Cameroon from the French Treasury. On the eve of elections in France, these French neo-colonial cheats steal from the French Treasury to pay for their elections through a revolving door scheme in which money is loaned to former French colonies, and the puppets heading these countries return a big percentage of the money to the politicians who run these schemes. Everyone benefits: the African dictator gets a percentage of the money; the French politicians gets the bigger portion to pay for elections. The French taxpayers lose money; and it is billed as a debt to the African state.
Over the years whistle blowers and strict Judges like Eva Jolly have gone after some of the politicians with much success. Judge Eva Jolly arrested Loïc Le Floch-Prigent, former chair of the French government owned oil conglomerate Elf for heading Elf's schemes that defrauded French, Congolese, Cameroonian and Gabonese taxpayers amongst others. After several days in jail and seeing that all those who worked with him had abandoned him, Mr. Le Floch-Prigent decided to expose the scheme in the hope of reducing his sentence. In a written statement to Judge Eva Jolly, Mr. Loïc Le Floch-Prigent among other things revealed that "Paul Biya took over power with the help of Elf to hold-in Anglophone Cameroon." So in the last years pro-African advocacy groups like Survie and the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (CCFD) have made things more and more difficult. Survie was involved in the case that got a French judge to start corruption investigations against Omar Bongo of Gabon, Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. In May, 2009, thanks to a report by the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (CCFD) on Biya's questionable investments in France, another Judge started an investigation into Biya's investments. Then there was the August 2009 Scandal in which the President of Cameroon (a country which just earned a debt cancellation for being one of the poorest countries in the world) spent 100 million Euro for a one month presidential holiday (far more than Bush, Obama and Sakorzy taken together). Then there is also the BEAC scandal involving the Cameroon government.
Against that backdrop, the Cameroon regime was negotiating for loans from African Development Bank, and it took the ultimate risk by publishing the Banjul verdict.

Here is the scenario that probably frightened French advisers of the regime into gambling as they did with with the verdict: SCNC & SCAPO publishes the decision of the Commission with an analysis like the one here. The public learns from the full publication and analysis that the regime will be slow to send troops to crackdown on the people (given the many guilty verdicts from Banjul), and there will be an explosion of protests--in Southern Cameroons for their rights, for the compensations asked for by the courts, and of course more defiance to the forces that have so far kept a lid on the public anger.
The regime is trapped.
If it responds with brute force, it is sure to not get a single coin from international donors; it cannot pay its police, gendarmes or army--it can be sure to have a rebellion on its hands from that end. If it doesn't use violence to stop the protests, it could be overrun; not only by the emboldened Southern Cameroonians but by its own Cameroonians who will seize the opportunity to settle their own scores with the regime.

The cornered regime took a desperate chance; they cut a few lines out of the recommendation section of the 42-page ACHPR report and hit the SCNC&SCAPO with it in the form of a media blitz in hope of demoralising them. It worked! Many in the ranks of the SCNC, SCAPO and other groups bought the regime's interpretation of the ruling--that somehow all the devastating decisions of the Commission are less important than the "none committing" recommendation of the Commission.
SCAPO & SCNC folded their tails and sat on them. Some of them even started talking about negotiating. Or forming political parties. They did not even notice that the regime's interpretation of negotiation falls on the "grande-debate large-debate" line (a text book application of the psychology concept in game theory known as "tit for two tats"). It is not about coming to sit on a table to discuss anything. Negotiations in the regime's playbook means that SCAPO & SCNC should register like the SDF, UNDF etc, and the regime can then rub their nose into the same feces they have been rubbing the noses of other parties.

You probably noticed that the African Development Bank approved a grant for Cameroon at about the same time as Cameroon's media blitz. See this reuters October 5 article. You can be sure that that African Development Bank grant will provide cover for the French to convince the IMF and World bank that giving more money to Cameroon will not win them the wrath of transparency advocacy groups; as they can always say they took their lead from the African Development Bank.
I can only imagine the smile on the face of the 27 year old political consultant from Paris who hatched the tactic used above. He surely had been flown in from Paris by the French embassy to help diffuse what had been a potentially explosive situation for them. The evening after the African development bank grant, our young consultant must have toasted champagne with the brain dead bunch at Etoudi as he relished in his achievement.
You see, for him it is a game; he has just proved to himself, to his superiors and perhaps to his political psychology mentor at Yale or Harvard that he can get into the heads of some 18 million Africans and tell them what not to do. He snatches his little backpack out of the closet in his Hilton hotel room and throws it on his bed to start packing his belongings for the trip home. On his reading desk lies a new copy of D.W. North's psychology book on Decision Theory.