I have just seen a flier being widely circulated online captioned “Ambazonia National Lockdown” to run from 02/09/24 to 02/10/24. According to the flier, the objective of the lockdown is, inter alia, to send a strong message to the “United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) …. not to turn a blind eye on the genocide being committed in Ambazonia”. The promoters of the “lockdown” have further added that it is also intended to ensure that there is no school resumption in “Ambazonia”.
There is a lot to unpack here. Let me first start with the allegation of “genocide”.
The Ambazonia separatists regularly make the claim that the Cameroon government is committing genocide against the people of its Anglophone regions, namely the North-West and the South-West Regions (the same regions that the separatists refer to as Ambazonia). But the facts prove quite the contrary.
Consider the following:
According to UNCHR, as at 2023, there were some 84,000 Cameroon refugees in Nigeria, who fled the armed conflict in Anglophone Cameroon. Human Rights Watch reported in 2023 that the armed conflict in Anglophone Cameroon has displaced some 600,000 people. If we go by these figures from generally reputable international organizations, we surmise that an overwhelming majority of Anglophone Cameroonians fleeing the conflict in their region (516,000 or 86%) are actually relocating to the francophone regions (or to La Republique, as the Ambazonians prefer to call it). During previous lockdowns, we saw thousands of Anglophone Cameroonians paying triple the bus fare, to flee their region to the relatively safer francophone regions. A bus trip from Bamenda to Yaoundé or Douala takes on average 8 hrs. From Bamenda Hospital Roundabout to the Cameroon-Nigeria border town of Ekok takes about 2 hrs. Yet, in the days ahead, as the lockdown looms, thousands of Anglophones will be paying triple the bus fare to take the 8-hour trip to Douala or Yaoundé, instead of taking the 2-hour trip to the border to cross to Nigeria and become refugees.
How then can you speak of “genocide” when the very people you claim are being exterminated by the government, are prepared to make tremendous personal sacrifices and take risks to travel to the Francophone regions and willingly place themselves under the protection of the same government you want the world to believe is trying to exterminate them? And I also do know for fact that a vast majority of Anglophones IDPs in the Francophone regions, were running away from the atrocities and daily hardships imposed on them by their supposed “liberators” – the so-called Amba Boys. Under such circumstances the “genocide argument” does not hold any relevance when confronted with the facts. It is tenuous and unsubstantiated at best, outlandish and laughable at worse. The international community knows better, and cannot be duped.
Further consider the following:
The school boycott and the imposition of a lockdown to undermine the resumption of schools for the 24/25 school year in the Anglophone Regions, is another strategy (if it can be called one) that the Ambazonians have persistently gotten wrong.
Anyone with even the most elementary notion of world affairs should know, almost by intuition, that the education of children (especially in the context of armed conflict) is a very sensitive issue in international politics. Real freedom fighters like Sam Nujoma, John Garang, Samora Machel etc understood it. That is why during their respective struggles, they went to great lengths to guarantee the continued education of children. John Garang for one, formed strategic partnerships with countries like Norway, relevant UN agencies and INGOs, to create and operate schools for South Sudanese children in refugee camps.
During the 2020 negotiations between the US and the Taliban for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the Americans demanded guarantees from the Taliban that they (the Taliban) will allow Afghan girls to continue schooling as had been the practice during the US occupation. The Taliban yielded. Today, if you ask any US politician what the US achieved after its 2-trillion-dollar-two-decade-long, occupation of Afghanistan, they unabashedly say, the right to education of the Afghan girl-child! If even the Taliban can understand the intricacies of the children’s right to education in international politics, why is it so difficult for the Ambazonians to get it?
So, let me say this as clearly as I can: NO SELF-RESPECTING INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION OR CIVILISED NATION SHALL EVER DEAL WITH OR RECOGNIZE A GROUP THAT USES THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN AS WEAPON TO ACHIEVE A POLITICAL GOAL. You cannot be asking the international community to uphold your political rights as guaranteed under international law, while you are yourself actively violating with near impunity, a fundamental principle of the same international law: the child’s right to education. Imposing a lockdown to draw world attention to a non-existent genocide but which will serve to undermine the resumption of schools in the NW/SW regions will not, and cannot, attract attention from the UN General Assembly. In fact, it will have the direct opposite effect: it will attract nothing but indignation and contempt of, and further alienation from, the international community.
I’ll like to end by addressing this recurrent but fallacious notion constantly parroted by the Ambazonians and some Anglophone Cameroon nationalist alike, namely, that the UN “grants” independence or granted independence to Southern Cameroons.
The U.N does not and cannot grant independence. Independence is achieved solely through the expression of the sovereign will and desire of a people as freely expressed in a plebiscite, a referendum or an election (see General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 bearing on the Declaration of the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples).
So the UN does not “grant” independence, and definitely didn’t “grant” independence to any of its trust territories, including the UN Trust Territory of Cameroons under UK administration (which some now refer to as “Ambazonia”, and the other part is now an integral part of Nigeria). The UN only “RECOGNISES” and “UPHOLDS the independence/sovereignty of a people as freely expressed by them in a plebiscite/referendum or an election.
The position of the UN on the former Southern Cameroons Question (decolonization) is very clear.
As far as the UN is concerned: THE DECOLONIZATION PROCESS OF THE FORMER U.N TRUST TERRITORY OF SOUTHERN CAMEROONS ENDED ON 01/OCTOBER/1961, THE DAY SOUTHERN CAMEROONS ACHIEVED INDEPENDENCE BY JOINING THE REPUBLIC OF CAMEROON, PURSUANT TO THE RESULTS OF THE 11 FEBRUARY 1961 PLEBISCITE. ALL OTHER MATTERS ARISING THEREFROM ARE CONSIDERED THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF THE STATE OF CAMEROON.
This position was clearly conveyed by the late UN-SG, Kofi Annan, to Southern Cameroon’s leaders during a meeting he had with them in IRIC in 2005. Some of the SCNC leaders who attended that meeting are still alive today.
So, to my younger brothers, the “Amba Boys”: If you have been told to attack schools and kill your brothers and sisters so that the UN General Assembly can take notice and come “give you independence”, you are being duped. You are being manipulated into committing grievous human rights violations, for which you shall be liable. But if you choose to protect school children and guarantee their right to education, you shall earn the respect of the both the national and international community. You may even be remembered and celebrated as a hero. It’s all in your hands.
The author is a serving United Nations Senior Political Affairs Officer.