By Ikomi Ngongi, Esq.
The Fako Land Crisis
did not begin today. It began 130 years ago. It is not a one-aspect issue that only
concerns the illegal dispossession of Fako citizens’ lands occupied by CDC
since January 1947, and which are being grabbed, stolen, by so-called agents (e.g.
Administrators such as SDO’s and DO’s and some others in privileged government
and private positions) of the government in connivance with some sons and
daughters of the soil. It is multi-faceted, simple and complex at the same
time.
Many Cameroonians, including,
sadly, indigenous Fako citizens, both young and old, do NOT understand or quite
appreciate the depth and breadth of the problem. This is because they do not know their own
history-our history. Unfortunately, this
ignorance of our history, both in Fako and the rest of the country, is
perpetrated by our country’s dysfunctional educational system, which emphasizes
“doctrinal” history that favors the selective teaching of history and strives to
obliterate a people’s past for one sole purpose – power and control - power and
control that benefits a handful of corrupt elites and power traffickers.
The Fako land crisis as
we know it today, reared its ugly head in 1884 when, in the town of Berlin in
Germany, a few arrogant, greedy, power hungry, European leaders met and decided
to arbitrarily “carve out and divide” Africa and allocate to themselves vast
inhabited territories on the continent as their personal or state’s property.
Probably the most egregious manifestation of this arrogance of power can still
be seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo today, where the then King Leopold
of the miniscule country called Belgium, ascribed to himself the “ownership” of
a territory more than 100 times the size of his own country - a territory the
size of a sub- continent, endowed with immeasurable natural wealth and
resources.
Cameroon is not as big
geographically as the DRC but it has its own fair share of God’s generous
endowment in mineral wealth and other natural resources. Amongst the territories within Cameroon with
the greatest quantity and quality of such natural endowment, Fako probably stands
out as Number ONE. The Germans, on
arriving Africa and forcefully appropriating lands that were never and would
never be theirs, were quick to identify the natural wealth of Fako. They
decided to make it theirs – peacefully or by force. This is when the Fako land
crisis began: 1884.
In 1884, per force of
the Berlin Treaty, Cameroon became a German Protectorate. After scouting the different parts of the
territory, the Germans discovered that the area around Mount Fako, bordering
the Atlantic Ocean, home of the indigenous peoples of Fako, the Bakweris and
all their related sub-groups like the Mungo, Bimbia, Balong and a few others,
who settled in later, was an “agricultural paradise”. They quickly established
a harsh, inhuman policy of indiscriminate, wholesale, confiscation,
appropriation, seizure of indigenous native, ancestral lands for the
establishment of large-scale agricultural plantations to feed their insatiable
industrial growth at home. They used
brute force, coercion, and a long list of repressive “laws” to force the local
indigenes, the Fako citizens, to give up their vast expanses of native,
ancestral lands WITHOUT COMPENSATION.
To ensure that the
Bakweris were thoroughly dispossessed of their lands, the German Colonial
government established a notorious and barbaric policy of “packing and driving
the Bakweris into inaccessible, disease infested and inhospitable “Native
Reserves” similar to the kind that the white European settlers in the Americas
and Australia put the natives, the indigenes of those territories, the American
Indians and Australian Aborigines, into.
As a result of this policy, thousands and thousands of Bakweri people
were forcefully and forcibly herded into strange, unfriendly patches of land
that had no water, no streams; had dense, uninhabitable forests and very rocky
and accidental terrain. Thousands died! The result?
One writer of the British colonial Administration puts it this way:
In one swoop, the Bakweri, who,
prior to the arrival of the Germans, were described as aggressive, independent and dynamic[i],
were transformed into a dejected,
despondent, lethargic, and dependent people. Ripped from familiar
surroundings on which their entire traditional culture derived its strength,
the Bakweri began an alarming downward spiral that would continue for over half
a century - a fate no different from that of Native Americans [and
the Aborigines of Australia].
My late Grandfather,
the Right Honorable Venerated Reverend Daniel Ewung’a Mbua Efokoa Lyonga, one
of the pioneers of the Basel, now Presbyterian, Mission in Cameroon, in one of
the many history lessons he gave me when I was much younger, recounted his eye-
witness experiences of German atrocities committed during their presence in our
territory. He told me of how the Germans carried out genocidal, or near
genocidal, acts in Fako after they had been valiantly resisted and thoroughly beaten
in several battles by the proud, independent, assertive, aggressive, noble Bakweri
people. He told me how, in their determination to break the Bakweri people’s collective
spirit, they subjected them to untold inhuman and degrading treatment. One of such
series of acts he described thus:
The Germans would round up all the
men of the tribe within site, line them up from the Government Station (that is
where we now have many of the government office buildings and structures) to
the newly created reserves fences (the Kott’a Mboa- the artificially fenced off
village areas}, make them take off their clothes and lie down on the dirt, face
down, but, sometimes, face up. Then they would WALK ON THEM, with their hard
German military boots on, using them like human carpets.
Another one of such
recurrent inhumane acts was the merciless, hateful, thrashings they gave the
Bakweri men-the njum’a phonji:
They would have a Bakweri man
manhandled by several men, mostly German soldiers. They would tie him down and place his body
between two empty and hollow wine barrels whose top and bottom had been removed
for that purpose. In one barrel they
would place over his upper torso, lying face down. In the second barrel they would place his
lower extremities, leaving just a little opening that exposed his uncovered
buttocks. In that little space that exposed his unprotected buttocks, they
would flog him mercilessly, over and over until he bled, sore and wounded - his
skin peeling and sticking on the whip, most often a leather belt with buckles
on it. What made this punishment so
particularly cruel is that, enclosed in these hollow barrels, the victim of
this abuse was stuck inside, immobile and totally incapable of any movement
whatsoever. His arms, body were bound
and all he could do was screaming in pain until he passed out, fainted, or
died.
The women were spared
this hateful physical abuse but they were treated no less worse. They were raped and abused; allegedly infected
with what was then known as the “white man’s disease” - syphilis.
The Germans achieved
their objective. They succeeded in
breaking the spirits and moral of our people – the Mokpe’s. It is even claimed,
and this is still subject to verification and validation, that the Germans,
when they saw that they could not get the Bakweri to do their will, embarked on
a mission to exterminate them by introducing syphilis in their population. This, it is alleged, resulted in very low
birth rates amongst the Bakweris, as we can witness today. I am shocked to note that, to this day, these
Germans have NOT yet been indicted for crimes against humanity and held to make
heavy reparations to the people of Fako for all these abuses they poured on our
ancestors and from which we still suffer till this day, with scars so fresh and
raw!
In the 1922 Annual Report
by the British Government to the League of Nations, the precursor to the United
Nations, this is what is said of the Bakweri people:
Uprooted from the homes of their
forebears, settled willy nilly on strange soil, deprived of their old hunting
grounds and fishing rights, the Bakweri-[Fako People]-have retained but a small sense of tribal
unity and cohesion.
This is the measure of
the collective psychological, cultural, social, economic and political damage
the Germans wrought on my people – The People of Fako- a people who, before the
fateful arrival of the Germans, had been known for their cohesion, nobility,
aggressiveness, pride, assertiveness, independence and self-sufficiency, a
people who jealously and courageously defended this same territory we are
writing about and are now fighting for; a people who readily, unhesitantly,
spilled and sacrificed their own blood to protect this land from the German
invaders and intruders. Sadly and
ironically, here we are today, a hundred and more years later, facing similar
mistreatment from our own so-called “brothers” and “sisters” in privileged
administrative and other positions in Fako.
They treat us as if they have conquered our territory like the Germans
did. They bully us and steal our lands
from us. They are in such a hurry to
take as much of our lands as can, one would easily believe the devil was,
literally, chasing them.
And so, here we are,
again, 100 years later, fighting to hold on to the same land our ancestors
spilled their blood for and for which they suffered all kinds of degrading,
horrible humiliation. We are simply
witnessing the substitution of one colonial master from Europe with another,
this time, from Africa, of Cameroonian descent, called SDO’s and DO’s (Prefets
and sous prefets) working with some civil servants in privileged positions, who
make claims, spurious, bogus, claims, of being our brothers and sisters because Cameroon has now
“become” “one and indivisible”.
The
Beginning – The First Facet of the Fako Land Crisis - the “Stranger Problem”:
Now, after having
seized our lands, the Germans set out to make vast plantations on them. They then tried to force the Bakweris to work
on these plantations as slaves, or laborers - terms which cannot be
differentiated because the salaries offered to laborers in those plantations to
this day are only meant for slaves in the true sense of the word. Of course, the proud, noble Bakweri people
would not be subjected to such further humiliation. Many of them preferred to
commit suicide, die, rather than be enslaved as laborers on their own ancestral
land by their wicked conquerors. And so began the importation of labor, slave labor,
from other parts of the vast expanse of this African territory now called
Cameroon. The Germans went up north, now,
north-west to be precise. They found and brought in abundant, cheap, willing
labor for their ill-gotten plantations.
And this is where another facet of the Bakweri – Fako - Land Crisis
emerged: “The Stranger Problem” as
it was identified and called by Messrs W.M. Bridges, Victoria District Officer
in 1935 and D.A.F. Shute, Victoria District officer in 1938, both working under
the British Colonial Government in Southern Cameroons, in their “Intelligence Report on the Bakweri”[ii],
prepared for the British Colonial Authority in London.
In that Report, and
long before the Cameroon Development Corporation was established in January,
1947 by the same British Government to address the Bakweri Land crisis, this is
what they wrote of the Bakweri, or Fako, land problem, in paragraph 41, on
pages 11 to 12:
The
stranger problem now requires attention[iii]. Since the inception of plantation
work, an increasing number of native strangers have found their way to this
country [Fako]. Some remain continually at work on the
plantations and do not affect the local native organization at all. Many
others, however, give up their plantation work and settle down in the various
villages. The local natives are indolent to inform them of their customs and
the strangers do not bother to enquire about them. Friction thereby ensues and the locals term
the strangers “strong-headed” while the strangers consider that the Bakweris
are trying to take advantage of their being foreigners. LAND AND WOMEN CONSTITUTE THE MOST CONSTANT SOURCE OF TROUBLE[iv].
For example, a stranger is allowed by a Sango Mbua[v]
to farm on some land. He does so and then later decides to return to his
country, but before leaving, he sells[vi] the
farmland, which he has used to another stranger, generally one unknown to the local villagers. The second stranger is
indignant when THE VILLAGERS CLAIM THEIR
RIGHTS ACCORDING TO THE LOCAL NATIVE CUSTOM, BY WHICH THEIR LAND CANNOT BE PARTED OR SOLD; while THE VILLAGERS
ARE ANNOYED BECAUSE A STRANGER HAS PRESUMED TO THINK THAT HE CAN OWN A PORTION
OF THEIR LAND[vii].
These problems described
above, and the practice of illegally selling off land that does not belong to
them, by these “strangers” continues to this day here in Fako. Now it is done not only by private settlers
or strangers but by government officials, agents of our Government, misusing
and abusing their privileged positions as administrators, civil servants, lands
surveyors, ministers, etc., to GRAB, steal, Fako native, ancestral lands.
After the primary,
major land crisis created by the Germans, three sub-sets of crises have since
emerged in Fako. The first facet was “the Stranger Problem”,
which I have just been described in the 1935 British Government Intelligence
Report on the Bakweri quoted above.
The
Second Facet: The “New Layout” Problem:
The Second facet of the crisis emerged
after the political “independence” of the then West Cameroon or Southern
Cameroons. Successive directors of the Lands
and Survey Department, in an effort to obfuscate, disguise or cover up “the
Stranger Problem” described above, started an illegal program of creating
so-called “New Layouts”. I do not yet
have records or evidence of the actions of the first Director of Lands and
Surveys of West Cameroon, the late Mr. Njikam, of blessed memory. But we know what his successor, Mr.Anyangwe,
a.k.a. the Duke, also of blessed memory, did.
He created a New Layout in Great Soppo, Buea, right under our eyes and
noses, and proceeded to populate it, almost exclusively, with his tribe’s
people from Ngie Ngwo or Oshie. The
evidence is here to see today. Most of
the land in Great Soppo is “owned” or, rather, occupied by families such as the
Ozimba’s and others.
Overtly, “New Layouts”
were claimed to be created for public purposes, to provide land needed to carry
out government, or other public purpose developments for the benefit of the
local community. But this was not, and
has never been, the case in Fako. Since
then the “new culture” of fabricating “New Layouts” has become a popular practice
of subsequent administrators to enable them to illegally GRAB land in
Fako. This practice, in its many
ramifications, continues to this day with impunity!
The
Third Facet: Destruction and “Privatization” of Government Residential Areas
(GRA’s’), Federal Quarters and Clerk’s Quarters:
The third facet of the Fako Land Crisis constitutes
the illegal carving out of PRIVATE property from Government Residential Areas
(GRA’s). Again, this practice is rife only in Fako. In Victoria, now Limbe, The
GRA we knew when growing up as children, has been decimated, totally destroyed. It is no longer the low density residential
area designated for Government workers by the previous colonial administration. Through the instrumentation of creative,
crooked officers of the Lands and Surveys Department, with the connivance and
support and/or encouragement of successive administrators (SDO’s and DO’s,
amongst others) working in cahoots with some government ministers, directors
and other officers in Yaounde, parcels of land are carved out from otherwise
beautifully manicured government residential compounds and made into private
property for which land certificates are illegally and hastily awarded
overnight. The same is true of Buea,
where the Federal Quarters, Clerks’ Quarters and GRA have become the property
of private individuals. In Buea, we see
buildings going up every day next to the “boys’ quarters” of GRA houses in Buea.
Some of the most conspicuous of such buildings – incomplete and complete - can
be seen today opposite the Buea Mountain Hotel and next to the Military Station
opposite the Nigerian Consulate in GRA. More
new ones are emerging opposite the Mountain Village Guest House next to the
residence of the Director of the Buea Regional (General) Hospital. Some more new, private, buildings are seen
interspersed between several such government residences all around GRA and
Federal Quarters and Clerk’s Quarters in Buea.
Again, this phenomenon
seems to flourish ONLY in Fako. Not in the Center Province or Mefou Division;
not in the Littoral Province or Duala; not in the North-West Province or in
Bamenda; not in the Northern Provinces or in Garoua, Ngaoundere or Maroua; not in the Eastern Province or in
Bertoua; not anywhere else – ONLY IN FAKO!
What do these people take us for?
Fools or idiots? These we certainly are NOT! We have just been quiet for far too long,
hoping that justice will one day prevail and these wrongs and abuses will be
righted. Alas! It has all been but a
matter of wishful thinking and illusory expectations on the part of the peace
loving, accommodating, friendly but traumatized and indecently abused and
insulted citizens of Fako.
The
Fourth Facet of the Fako Land Crisis: CDC Land Surrender.
While the previous
instances of land abuse in Fako seem sufficiently egregious and blatant, here
comes the real bombshell: The CDC Land Surrender. The previously discussed abuses can be traced
to corrupt individuals both in and out of government but the CDC Land
Surrender, one of the largest and most shameful and disgusting abuses of a
peoples ancestral land rights, emanates, or seems to emanate, directly,
apparently, officially, from our own Government’s appointed agents – Divisional
and Regional Administrators.
Following the defeat of
the Germans by the Allies in the two World Wars, the land they had illegally
and forcibly seized from the people of Fako was re-purchased from the Custodian
of Enemy Property by the Colonial British Administration, then under the
Governor of Nigeria. The sum of 850,000 (eight
hundred and fifty thousand) pounds sterling was paid for this restoration.
In the meantime, a
movement of young, brave Fako nationalists was set up in 1943 to advocate for the
recovery the lands stolen from the Fako indigenes by the Germans. This resulted
in the creation of the Bakweri Lands
Committee (BLC) (later known as the Bakweri Lands Claims Committee). This Committee comprised many enlightened
sons and daughters, elites of Fako. members,
personally known to the author and with whom I was privileged to hold long,
educative discussions about this problem, this crisis, included such notables
as the late Pa Effange of Small Soppo village, the late Chief Ewusi, of Mokunda
village, to name a few.
In 1946, David Mafany
Endeley, the Secretary General of BLC, addressed a written complaint to the
newly created United Nations Organization, in which, on behalf of the Bakweri
Lands Committee (BLC) and the Fako (Bakweri) people, he demanded the
restoration of Fako lands that were illegally seized, occupied, used and
transformed into more than 23 (twenty-three) plantations by the Germans for
over 50 years. This land constitutes the
most fertile and strategically-positioned, resource-endowed, ancestral lands
that belong to the people of Fako.
In response to this
justified demand, the United Nations ordered the British Government, under
which the then Southern Cameroons (in which Victoria Division, now Fako
Division, is found) was being administered together with Nigeria as a Trust
Territory, to perform the following acts in law:
1.
This land, this “ex-enemy property” that
was illegally occupied by the Germans for over half a century, covering an area
of approximately between 400 and 600 square miles of prime Fako land that
comprised about 23 vast German plantations and some, was mapped out and
declared Bakweri Private Native Lands
by Ordinance (Law). (See Lands and
Native Rights Ordinance (1958) Cap 96 # 3, Nigeria).
2.
The Governor then borrowed money from
the Government and paid the sum of 850,000 Pounds Sterling to the Custodian of
Enemy Property as compensation for the plantations that existed on this land.
He promised to have this money repaid by a new Statutory Corporation to be
created for the benefit of the Bakweri people whose lands these plantations
occupied.
3.
This land was then placed under the
custody of the then Governor of Nigeria to HOLD
IN TRUST for the Bakweri people, who were deemed, at that time, not to have
enough trained and qualified manpower to manage these vast estates without
outside technical and managerial assistance.
4.
In January 1947, after ensuring that the
legal ownership of these lands had been transferred to their rightful owners,
the Bakweri people, by an Ordinance, the CDC
Ordinance No. 39 (1946), the Cameroon Development Corporation was created
as a Statutory Corporation. Under this
Statute, a sixty (60) year lease was granted to CDC by the trustee (The
Governor of Nigeria) of Bakweri lands, on behalf of and for the benefit of the
Bakweri people. CDC was then to be managed
by an expatriate staff from the Commonwealth Development Corporation (also CDC)
with HQ at Hill Street, London, U.K.
5.
Cameroon Development Corporation would
be managed for the Bakweri people for a sixty year period, during which it was
expected that the Bakweris themselves would have developed enough manpower –
managerial and technical- capacity to manage their own corporation, the CDC,
without outside help.
6.
Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, would
pay the Bakweri People land rents for ALL the lands occupied and being used as
plantations for the duration of the 60 year lease. These rents would be paid to the Central
Bakweri Local Council.
7.
CDC, responsible for repaying the
850,000 pounds loan taken out by the Governor of Nigeria to repay the Custodian
of Enemy Property, was able to effect such repayment within three years of its operation. The plantations, and CDC, now debt free,
remained the unencumbered property of the Bakweris-the indigenes of FAKO.
The management of CDC
continued under the “assistance” of the British Commonwealth Development
Corporation until 1973, when, after the alleged 1972 “referendum” which “resulted
in the creation of a “unitary state”, CDC was arbitrarily and illegally appropriated
by the Government of Cameroon and made into a State Corporation, WITHOUT COMPENSATION TO THE BAKWERI PEOPLE.
It is worthy of note that CDC has never
paid any rents or royalties to the Bakweri people during the life of the 60
year lease and since the expiration of the same lease in 2007.
This state of affairs
persisted until 1994 when the people of Fako, led by the Bakweri Lands Claim
Committee, strongly supported by Fako Chiefs (as they then were), elites and other
indigenous citizens of Fako, challenged the Government of Cameroon for trying
to sell off parts of CDC – the Tole Tea Estates- without the permission and/or
authority of its rightful owners - the people of Fako.
After a long spell of
Government reticence and/or refusal to address the legitimate concerns of the
people of Fako over this issue, in an unprecedented, bold and commendable move,
the BLCC, led by its Secretary-General, the avuncular, venerable, no-nonsense
Mola Njoh Litumbe, hitherto subjected to various forms of Government agents’ intimidation
and harassment, sued the Government of Cameroon at the African Human Rights
Commission Court in Banjul - The Banjul Court.
The matter is still pending before that tribunal, which has now
recognized the legitimacy of the Bakweri people’s claim against the Government
of Cameroon and has re-instated the matter, which under the Commission’s
Communication No 260/2002 had been put on hold awaiting attempts at an amicable
resolution of the matter between the parties – the BLCC, the People of Fako and
the Government of Cameroon.
In the meantime, while
this matter is still pending before the African Commission of Human Rights, the
Government, by the mechanism of some of its crooked, corrupt agents, began a
process, a surreptitious, obscure and most questionable system, of “handing back”
Bakweri People’s land occupied by the CDC to some Fako Chiefs and some Fako
indigenes of very questionable origins and/or character. This is what is now called the “CDC Land
Surrender” Problem.
In a Memorandum dated Thursday,
June 06th, 2013, addressed to the Senior Divisional Officer for
Fako, Mr. Zang III, the President’s administrative representative, his AGENT, in
the Fako Division, who has arrogated upon himself the ecstatic duty of dispossessing
the Fako people of their ancestral lands through this “CDC Land Surrender”, I
raised my concerns about the questionable nature of this surrender that results
in alienating the lands in questions from their rightful owners. I demanded
that a freeze, a stop, be put on this “surrender” until the Fako people
themselves were properly constituted to strategically manage their own
property, their own lands. For more
than nine (9) months, I waited futilely for the SDO’s response. Nothing.
Rather, we all have witnessed, and continue to witness, a frenetic
acceleration of the “surrender” of Fako lands, which we now all know as a fact
end up in the hands of the same SDO and his cronies. As of December 2012, I am reliably informed,
about 2,800 hectares of prime Fako lands have been “surrendered” through the
instrumentality of successive SDO’s and DO’s in Fako, who, ironically, are NOT
Fako indigenes.
Much of these
“surrendered” lands have been and are still being converted, as we write, into
the private property of these SDO’s and DO’s and many of their cronies, including,
unfortunately, some Fako Chiefs, so-called elites and other similar land
traffickers, of Fako and non-Fako origin, who are registering these lands and
obtaining land certificates for them as private personal landed property. In an interview on CRTV Buea Press Club Program
a couple of weeks ago, (Saturday, April, 06, 2014) an alleged spokesman of the
Fako Chiefs Conference told us, members of the panel of discussants: “We the chiefs sell land so that we can live
a good life. We can buy luxurious,
beautiful cars; build big houses so that we can BE RESPECTED”.
There was no regret in the tone and attitude
of this young (about thirty years or so), arrogant, naive, covetous, self-centered,
uncouth, uncaring person who passes, or wishes to pass, for a chief of our beleaguered
Fako people! Little wonder that their
other colleagues from other Divisions and Regions in Cameroon treated some of them (the likes of the alleged
spokesman) with such disdain and disrespect during the 50th
Anniversary occasion, right in front of President Paul Biya, right here in Fako
on “their own former territory”, “their own former land”, which now “belongs”
to and is “controlled” by, “strangers” (thanks to the reckless and illegal land-selling
extravaganza of some).
This,
my dear and honored Ancestors of Fakoland, my Mothers and Fathers of Fako, the
True Chiefs and Custodians of Fako land, elites and citizens of Fako, opinion
leaders, politicians, lawyers, historians, students, Youths of Fako, our President
of Cameroon, our Prime Minister of Cameroon, Presidents of the National
Assembly and Senate of Cameroon, Parliamentarians, Senators, Civil Society
leaders, readers, fellow Cameroonians, is
the nature, the makeup, the true and unadulterated picture of the FAKO LAND
CRISIS.
I have seen my own
share of conflict, truly bloody conflict, in this world. Having participated, in various professional and
leadership capacities in several conflict-ridden countries and regions of this
world, I know, and I have the honest conviction, that Prevention of Conflict,
timely prevention of conflict, is more useful and welcome that futile attempts
at restoring peace in already damaged, wounded, traumatized and fragmented
communities and countries. In my experience and knowledge, most of the
conflicts in this world are provoked by injustices, especially injustices
deriving from the dispossession of a people’s ancestral land rights. I witnessed the conflict in Burundi, in
Rwanda, in Cambodia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to name a few.
They all have one common denominator: LAND. The Fako land crisis has the making of a time
bomb, waiting, seething, silent, but deadly.
It is a symptom of a larger problem in our country: The arrogance of power and the abuse and
misuse of the privileges of the dominant ruling section of the population in this
country. It is also a symptom of the
“The Stranger Problem” that the British so succinctly analyzed in their
Intelligence Report of 1935-1938, which I quoted above. These problems must be
addressed and resolved quickly. The status quo ante must be restored and the
lost harmony and justice of our society regained.
It is now long overdue
for us to have a truly INTERNATIONAL INDEPENDENT COMMISSION OF IQUIRY
comprising members from the African Commission, the United Nations, The
Commonwealth, Experts and Elites of Fako origin, duly constituted to carry out
an in-depth and exhaustive investigation of this Fako Land Crisis dating back
from 1946 when the Bakweri Native Lands Ordinance was promulgated in
recognition of the ancestral land rights of the Fako people, by the Trustee
Administration of the British Government. Our Cameroon Government has the obligation,
the duty, under International law and under our Constitution, to honor, defend,
protect, project, enforce and respect these ancestral land rights and to
protect the people of Fako from some of its corrupt agents in Fako, who are
acting, with impunity, outside of their authority, outside of mandate and
outside of the law.
If this is not done, and
done quickly, this Government of Cameroon in its present administration will be
held responsible for the INEVITABLE EXPLOSION of CONFLICT that will result, in
due course, in Fako and in all other Regions and/or Divisions or Communities in
this country where similar injustices are being perpetrated by Government
Administrators, SDO’s. DO’s, Agents and other dominant individuals or groups, against
other minority peoples like the peoples of Fako.
I Rest!!!
[ii]
See File No. EP.113372 A, registered on 12-6-1935, South West Provincial
Archives, Buea.
[iii]
My emphasis in bold.
[v]
This should actually read “Mboa” not Mbua. Sango Mboa means Village or Family
Head.
