Some prominent stakeholders of the Anglophone struggle met in Toronto-Canada, recently and resolved to adopt the unity of purpose, despite their different ideological complexities.
Their meeting was/is a huge flicker of hope; hope because the stakeholders would federate their ideas and mainstream them into a one-stop-shop proposal for a peaceful solution to the Anglophone crisis, which enters the sixth year.
Discussing an issue is already a first step towards problem-solving. That is why prominent figures of the Struggle went the whole hog and “talked-talk”, despite fighting and bickering among frontline groups of the struggle.
Although some moderates and hardliners are still at each other’s neck over different solutions to the crisis, the Toronto Retreat that ran for four days from October 29 – November 1, 2021 emboldened hope, especially because of the caliber of personalities who enlivened the event.
Organized by US-based Coalition for Dialogue and Negotiations, CDN, the meeting was a novelty in attempts to arrest the deadly crisis,which erupted in late 2016.
The Toronto Retreat came after a botched attempt by Cardinal Christian Tumi (late) to assemble actors of the Anglophone crisis to speak with one voice.
Prominent attendees of the Toronto meeting like Prof. Carlson Anyangwe, Dr. Felix Agbor Balla; PCC Moderator, Rt Rev. Samuel Fonki; former SDF Parliamentarian, Hon. Paulinus Jua, Dr. Julius Nyih of the Interim Government, Yerima Dapney of the Interim Government the Archbishop Emeritus of Bamenda, Fontem Esua, the CBC Executive President, Dr. Nditemeh Charlemagne, Esther Oman of Reach Out Cameroon, Sally Mboumien of the Northwest/Southwest Women’s Task Force, John Mbah Akuro, and Mark Bareta of the Consortium among others, gave it the clout it deserved. For one thing, these were people with different ideas and ideals as to how the crisis could be laid to rest.
High profile attendees of the meeting from the international community included: representatives of G-7 countries, including Switzerland and officials involved in the Swiss-led Mediation Initiative. Paradoxically, the Ambazonian Coalition Team, ACT, was absent. The zeal of participants was to find a pathway to credible and mediated negotiations in a bid to break the logjam.
The stakeholders recognized the importance of collective engagement in negotiations. They resolved to, henceforth, work together to build trust, respect, tolerance and courtesy; to work with humility towards achieving a consensus. Such a code of conduct, they averred, is very crucial, especially in the first stages of internal negotiations, dialogue, unity in efforts to defend the legitimate rights and aspirations of Southern Cameroonians.
Going by the Co-Chair of the CDN, Dr. Foretia, the onus was on how the various actors could strengthen internal collaboration for the unity of purpose. The stakeholders equally committed themselves to a Memorandum of Understanding on communication etiquette and use of the social media that would be elaborated. The stakeholders embraced such an initiative given that factions and entities of the Ambazonian struggle have been denigrating each other on the social media.
It has been a dog-eat-dog saga given that factions have been trading accusations and counter-accusations instead of focusing on the common enemy. It has been a dirty game of the kettle calling the pot black. The infighting among Ambazonian leaders has been a serious damper on the struggle. Going by a recent CNN report, the Anglophone crisis is one of the most neglected deadly crises in the globe because of infighting among Ambazonian leaders.
Despite wide approval that the Toronto Retreat received from Cameroon and the rest of the world, hardliners still subjected it to scathing criticisms. One of the hardliners, Dicken Tassang Wilfred, in a frontal write-up in The Post, noted: “How can they do this after conducting a survey that declared that 86 percent of Southern Cameroonians as wanting outright separation, complete independence? Why did they conduct the survey if they won’t’ believe and abide by its outcome? The haze surrounding the CDN was uplifted in Canada. Now, I am fully convinced that this group does not mean well for our people. This is a group of hired hatched men, their mission being to mess up the negotiation process in view, by setting confusion, pitting a certain Ground Zero against the Diaspora and set up the stage for a Win-Win outcome”.
Tassang raised more arguments to drive home his opinion on the Toroto meeting. One Leonard A. Abang accused Tassang of being angry that the laudable CDN initiative did not come from his group. He hailed the Toronto Retreat as the largest and the most credible gathering that has brought stakeholders of different shades of opinion to sit eyeball-to-eyeball round the same table.
The animosity ailing leaders of the struggle has been the greatest undoing and remains counterproductive to those who claim to be holding brief for the Anglophone masses. Some groups in the Diaspora strive in propaganda and misinformation just to run down rival groups. They ignore brilliant suggestions from other groups, holding tenaciously to their ideological fort.
Otherwise, why are the hardliners not accepting that the Toronto Retreat came up with reasonable proposals to mitigate the overwhelming effects of ghost towns and school boycott on the civilian population? How could they contend that the initiative is not in consonance with the aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian masses?
Such hardliners believe that for any initiative to work, they must be in charge. How can these people be so pained by CDN’s bid to federate ideas of the various factions to enable them speak with one voice on the negotiation table? The Post-Toronto period should be a defining moment for hardliners to shun fighting and espouse the imperative of the oneness of purpose.
If not, they would have betrayed the spirit and letter of the very democratic Southern Cameroons which they are battling to defend. For, Southern Cameroons was known for its tolerance and sense of decency, and not self-destruction.
Stigmatizing instead of discussing with the federalist group led by Dr. Simon Munzu, is unfair. And it leaves one with the impression that the hardliners are dictators, who want everyone else to be a think-same and act-same robot of their ideological convictions. Leaders who believe that, only their ideas and proposals for the way forward should triumph need deliverance and liberation from “l’etat c’est nous” mentality. For the sake of the people, all Ambazonian leaders must stand up as one man in order to be seen as the mouthpiece of Southern Cameroons. Toroto might have just been the beginning of the process to unity.
Thus, remarks by doomsayers that the event was a gigantic flop are fallacious because the meeting was not the be-all and the end-all of what the organizers intended to achieve. It is now incumbent even on the hardliners to board the train for the Toroto Retreat that sired the zeal and umpired the bid for the much -needed unity for the struggle.
Toronto lit a flicker of hope that will continue to illuminate the way to the ideal situation.
