To boycott or not to boycott: Anglophone Secessionists & Irredentists Use Poor Students as Child Soldiers to Fight Their Stillbirth Separatist Claims

To boycott or not to boycott: Anglophone Secessionists & Irredentists Use Poor Students as Child Soldiers to Fight Their Stillbirth Separatist Claims

Every secessionist movement chooses tactics strategically to generate legitimacy in the eyes of international audiences. To build legitimacy, secessionists engage in certain behaviors, such as governance and international diplomacy, while avoiding others, such as terrorism and the use of child soldiers. The blocking of mostly poor students by Anglophone secessionist elements, from getting an education is not different from the use of child soldiers to fight a civil war.

The callous school boycott, the burning of tarred roads, destruction of public property, and the threats to life imposed by secessionist criminals are not behaviors of a group that wants to prove that it can manage, administrate, and govern its territory to show that they are ready for self-rule (or a practice-run for statehood).

Generally, two strategies are used by international audiences to access the legitimacy of secessionist movements:  violence against civilians and social service provision. Violence against its citizens or the citizen of the parent state generally decreases legitimacy, while the delivery of social services can improve the legitimacy of the secessionists. The Anglophone secessionist movements are committing violence against its citizenry and taking social services away from its people in the name of school boycott.

Who are these callous and violent separatists? The peaceful self-determination quest of the Anglophone lawyers, teachers, and all concerned Cameroonians has been highjacked by backward atavistic tribal chauvinists. These blood-thirsty despots and tyrants terrorizing our people and depriving our children from assessing basic education, do not represent me, nor my values. Neither, do they represent the values we hold as Cameroonians- In fact, the Anglophone secessionists and irredentists and junta Paul Biya are two-sides of the same coin.

Most Cameroonians, irrespective of their linguistic heritage are longing for a forward-looking, progressive, modern-looking democratic state.  Not this threat to our territorial integrity and nation building. As Cameroonians, we cannot develop into a modern state until we become loyal and obedient to the state.  By this definition the secessionists and irredentists, as well as the CPDM apparatchiks, rent-seeking Ni John Fru Ndi and his SDF, and all those who are pilfering on the national purse are anti-nationalists.

Make no mistake, Anglophones, like any other minority group in Cameroon has genuine, legitimate and rational right to self-determination within the state of Cameroon. The weak and moribund post-colonial administration needs to be replaced with a more viable alternative government that is stronger, more coherent and governed by the people themselves, not by despots like Biya Paul. The irrational juvenile secessionists and the parochial Biya regime are tapping into our primordial tribal tendencies, and seek to divide and rule us while turning our beloved country into chaos.

Finally, the redundant arguments by the separatists that there is no need for schools in Anglophone Cameroon, because of the high rate of unemployment in the regions is not only shortsighted but stupid -  stupid, because the benefits of education go far beyond jobs. Education can feed the mouth, feed the mind, and feed our character. The benefits of education may include the enhancement of material values, social values, cultural values, spiritual values and intrinsic values. Recently, I moved my sisters' kids to English boarding schools in Douala. The two young men at the University of Buea are transferring to schools in neighboring Nigeria. I believe many people who can afford to do same are doing exactly so. Therefore, the school boycott is a secessionist ploy to deprive the poorest of the poor of getting basic education.

Augustine Enow Agbor                               Proudly Cameroonian

 

The outcome of my life is not more than three lines: I was a raw material I became mature and cooked And I was burned into nothingness. Rumi