At Reunification Major Colloquium:
PM Yang booed
over SCNC in Buea
BY
ATIA TILARIOUS AZOHNWI
Sympathisers and frontline activists of the
secessionist Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC have booed at Prime
Minister and Head of Government Philemon for stating that the SCNC should organise
itself into a political party if they ever want to dialogue with government.
This was during the Major Colloquium on
Reunification held at the Amphitheatre 750 of the University of Buea on Monday,
February 17, chaired by PM Yang, personal representative of the Head of State,
President Paul Biya.
 |
| Prime Minister and Head of Government, Philemon Yang |
“The Government is consistently dialoguing
with whoever wants to dialogue. Let the SCNC constitute itself into a political
party,” PM Yang said amidst shouts of No! From the SCNC sympathisers who
attended the colloquium.
They said it was unacceptable for the PM to
ask them to constitute themselves into a political party when he very well
knows that they are a liberation movement.
“...The SCNC can’t be asking for secession
and then want dialogue with government. Cameroon is one and indivisible... As a
political party, there will be dialogue with the SCNC. The SCNC should come on
board,” Yang stated.
Hon. Ayah Paul Abine, 2011 Presidential
candidate on the ticket of the People’s Action Party (PAP) stormed out of the
meeting in protest to the utterances made by PM Yang.
His words: “I’ve stormed out because there
is no colloquium. It is a fine joke. You don’t give somebody the opportunity to
talk about great issues in five minutes. If you must have noticed, almost all
those who are given the floor are above 80 and people who are going to sing praises.
We who can tell them the truth can never be allowed to talk. All the noise they
have made about reunification, nobody has told you when reunification started.
Which is the document that gave birth to reunification? So, what are we talking
about? You cannot talk in the air. Tell us the truth about what happened before
reunification came into being. What are we here for?”
“Nobody who is called the Prime Minister
will say things that he has said and I’m surprised because he is a lawyer, a
legal mind. Nobody will expect a liberation movement to register as a political
party. It doesn’t happen. You don’t dialogue with people because they are
members of a political party. All those who have talked here today are not leaders
of political parties. Why do you expect the SCNC to become a political party?”
he wondered.
“They call it colloquium, but I will say it
was a small symposium by all standards. It is a total failure because they are
just beating around the bush. I will not participate in the celebrations. I
came here just to let them know that there is nothing called secession,” Ayah
said.
On whether he is an advocate for secession,
Ayah said “there is nothing called secession. We have never been a country.
We’ve never been together in the eyes of the law.”
The
colloquium
Opening the Buea Major Colloquium, a climax
of activities organised by the Studies, Conferences and Debates Commission,
Prime Minister, Philemon Yang said the colloquium was a moment for Cameroonians
to look at the evolution of the country, stating that the processes that led to
our independence and reunification are irreversible.
He called for patience in nation building
describing it as essential and a mark of wisdom. He enjoined the speakers at
the colloquium to bare the facts as they were so as to better inform
Cameroonians of their history.
The Chairman of the Studies, Conferences
and Debates Commission, Prof. Jacques Fame Ndongo described the colloquium as a
time for academic reckoning, a time to reflect on the story of our beloved nation.
He stated that there was no taboo topic,
urging the various speakers to give out the facts and testimonies to the best
of their abilities.
The colloquium held on the theme: “From
Reunification to integration: fifty years of Nation Building.”
Organisers say with regards to the theme of
the colloquium, its relevance cannot be denied. If independence is a permanent
process, reunification on its part is linked to the situation at hand.
Independence and Reunification have lived
on and are today validating the relevance of a concerted and dispassionate
approach, an approach credited as basis for national integration and internal
unity; a guarantee of Cameroon’s external strength and influence.
Topics like: Cameroon’s national unity:
myth or reality?, the integration dynamic 50 years after, the dynamic of
convergence between the francophone and Anglophone educational sub-systems and
Bilingualism, 50 years after reunification: stakes and prospects were addressed
by eminent professors among them Njoh Mouelle, Nalova Lyonga, Fanso Versijika,
Victor Julius Ngoh, Ephraim Ngwafor, Chalres Owono Onana, Tala Kashim, Lobe Monekosso,
Uphei Melo, Rose Leke, Jean Emmanuel Pondi and Joyce Endeley.
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