Open letter to Ebenezer Akwanga reveals aversion within the SCNC. Still to be determined leader’s conference aggravate rancor

“Granted that Ebenezer Akwanga suffered in prison, but for him to argue vehemently and not to see and be sensible to the fact that some people paid the ultimate price of life is something that any rational mind cannot understand.”

By Martin AYABA

As the debate on how best to organize and canalize the efforts of Southern Cameroonians towards achieving emancipation and statehood rages on, various opinions and positions are being advanced mostly through the internet as to what is the best way to move on. One of these calls has been for the convening of a leader’s conference that will be aimed at closing the ranks and helping to forge a common platform in this faltering process.
In a heated and acrimonious argument that this author had with Ebenezer Akwanga, a bitter argument during which incident he threatened to ‘bring out a knife’ against my person, The SCYL chairman tried to dictate and impose his position as to who is to attend and not attend the still to be determined leader’s conference.

Upon my insistence that such a conference can be productive only if it is inclusive and broad based, Ebenezer Akwanga singled out two persons as an example and tried to bamboozled me on why Chief Charles Taku and Mola Njoh Litumbe should not attend such a conference. According to Akwanga, a lot of these leaders do not represent anybody and went on that, ‘I can hold Muea as my constituency, but these other leaders do not represent anybody’. He went on explaining that he had sent a proposal to Prof. Carlson Anyangwe proposing how the conference should be designed and who should be invited to attend.

In the ensuing exchanges, I told an enraged Ebenezer Akwanga that over 50 years today after a handful of supposed leaders were cowed into mortgaging our future as a people and nation; we will never accept or allow another group of unrepresented individuals to lead us into any form of independence arrangement whatsoever. If at the dawn of independence in the late 1950’s our leaders then made momentous errors due to lack of sharp, pointed, intellectual and legal counseling, today, I reasoned, the people of Southern Cameroons have come of age and the presence of legal luminaries like Charles Taku and seasoned and articulate political leaders like Mola Njoh Litumbe must be on the table for their views to be head on how and what we expect for a future country.

I told him that until further actions are carried out to know who represents what, no group can claim representation or legitimacy, and therefore all those who have been visible, and who have always stood by the side of the concerns of Southern Cameroonians cannot be left out of such a conference for lack of representation or for not being part of a movement following a similar logic and talking point

Another sharp point of disagreement with Ebenezer Akwanga was on an issue that he has made his principal bragging right and welcome song of sorts, which is that ‘I have sacrificed so much for this course by going to prison, what have you done?. For all those who have had any discussions with Ebenezer, they will agree that he has made the issue of his incarceration as a veritable weapon to use to intimidate and disarm even people who shared and sacrificed in the suffering that he and many other patriotic Southern Cameroonians suffered in the dungeons of the colonizer. Granted that Ebenezer Akwanga suffered in prison, but for him to argue vehemently and not to see and be sensible to the fact that some people paid the ultimate price of life is something that any rational mind cannot understand.
Apart from the hundreds of people who have died in one way or the other because of the injustices of colonization, and their strong belief in a free and independent state of Southern Cameroons, there are many out there who are silent, but who have paid a far higher price in terms of sacrifice than some parochial minds can want us to believe During my many years of work as a journalist, I have seen and counted my heroes in this struggle.

During a visit to Kumbo in 2005 while I and Ulrike Kobach a German journalist were doing a documentary on the horrors and atrocities of colonization in the Southern Cameroons I came first hand in contact with the high price that many have paid in this struggle. Standing in tears in front of the bare grave of his late husband, and holding the had of her 4 year old daughter who also was in tear, I developed ghost pimples and shed tears as she narrated how his husband Mr. Konyuy was tortured and killed by gendarmes. ‘They were beating him several times a day and he was shouting in the gendarme cell and we could hear how he was shouting saying that ‘I am going to die, they are killing me’. For well over one week, they refused him food, water and even any visits as he tried to refuse the accusations that he was involved in killing a gendarme’ Mrs Konyuy narrated her husband’s ordeal in tears. ‘After one week, we didn’t hear him shouting again,
that is when news went out that he had died of the torture. Somebody who saw the corpse of the late man said most of his teeth had been removed, deep wounds and cuts were all over his body, and burns of electric use were visible on him.
In another separate interview, Pah Kongso, a once prosperous business man and a very successful secondary school proprietor sat with red bloodstained eyes, and shed tears as he narrated and took the two of us around the carcass of what was once a big and bustling school and explained how the school and his businesses were targeted and burnt down because of his involvement in the Southern Cameroons struggle.

The above cases to me are those of the unsung heroes in this struggle, and only a king who has no clothes can try to compare and berate the price the Konyuy’s have paid and will continue to pay to that of somebody who is trying to make as much personal benefits from his incarceration as possible.
As to his famous question of ‘I have gone to prison, what have you done for this course? I want to remind Ebenezer Akwanga that his very limited notion that only those who have gone to jail have done something for this course is completely fallacious and unacceptable. As a participant at AAC 1 in Buea in April of 2003, I cannot waste my precious time to defend my record as a strong advocate for the Southern Cameroons course to somebody who thinks only of his own contributions. In my writings, and my actions I stand by my contributions. Even while Akwanga was in exile in Nigeria, my Newspaper was the first to grant him an exclusive front page interview in which the headlines read ‘We shall be in the bush until the Southern Cameroons is free’. I cannot recount the number of anonymous phone threats, and dejection from powerful advertisers for taking this editorial line

When I came to the US, I spent over one month to single-handedly write a book called ‘LIONGO’ on behalf of the SCYL. This book was done in the perspective of using it to look and sell our problem to a Washington lobbyist. When we met the lobbyist and he accepted to work for us by first beginning to work to organize the Southern Cameroonian community here towards what he said would lead to ‘a blanket amnesty towards all Southern Cameroonians seeking asylum in the US like what happened to Ethiopians’, I thought this was a big deal, not until the idea was torpedoed because Akwanga was against ungrateful Southern Cameroonians gaining a blanket amnesty. Today he has the guts to venture ask me what contributions I have made in the struggle.

On a more trivial note during this argument that almost degenerated into fight in Akwanga’s residence, he accused ‘you and your brother (Cho Ayaba) for having chopped SCYL money’. This is a line that Akwanga has used to blackmail me and my junior brother, a gentleman who has made un-pararelled sacrifices in this struggle. During a visit to Europe sometimes early this year Akwanga, unable to look Cho Ayaba in the face planted his people to chastise my brother.

For those who are interested in this saga, the issue is about a taxi cab that Cho Ayaba insisted against my advice to purchase. Knowing the state of the bad roads then in Cameroon, and having in the past owned a cab, I had warned my brother about investing in cabs. He insisted, and when the cab was bought, it turned out that the deal was a bad one because the vehicle had issues that could not be determined at the time of buying.
Equally, before going into this business, I held no position in the SCYL and I was doing the service because of my family lien with Cho Ayaba.
So in this regard, I refuse to answer any charge from whosoever that I don’t have any obligation towards.

On the contrary, despite his attacks on genuine citizens of Southern Cameroons, it is a well circulated open secret in the DC metro area that Mr. Akwanga has reaped a well known La Republique citizen of over $10.000 to try to force the immigration system here accept an asylum claim in the name of the Southern Cameroons.

Until our people started looking at this struggle as a serious issue of national sovereignty where people have to make various kinds of sacrifices and where all hands need to be onboard and not a trivial matter of self aggrandizement, chest beating and political points scoring, it will take a much longer period for us to move our common suffering to the higher stage