After your declaration of Independence on the 1st October 2017, what is the next step forward?
After the declaration of our independence on October 1st, we have come ahead to name a government. We now have a government in place. There are secretaries of states for different ministries. We have a vice president, we have ambassadors to respective parts of the world and we are going to get to work. As we speak now, our main priority is getting nations of the world to recognize our nation. And when this is done, we will look for the recognition from the African Union and eventually at the United Nations, and we will deal with the setting up of our structures and when we go to Buea, it will eventually be a great mission.
What is your reading of the political situation in the North West and South West regions, of Cameroon in general and of Africa?
Well, It is regrettable the political situation in our nation. The situation in Africa is not also not as great except that we got a small hope in Zimbabwe lately but the African Union being silent on our situation given the magnitude of atrocities that Mister Biya has leveled on our people is regrettable. We believe that political situation will only end up in one thing, – the defeat of Mister Biya’s forces out of our land to his rightful boundaries, because we are two neighboring nations. Mister Biya knows and the world should know that there is not act of union between those two nations. So the concocted union of 1961 between the French Cameroon and the former British Southern Cameroon was never materialized and we are going to make sure that as we have started, those two nations will just be brotherly nations, now the relationship between those nations will depend on how we cement the separation because if Mister Biya continues with this his ruthless attitude on our people, then in future the two nations might not be so brotherly.
What is your reaction of the recent acts of violence in the Anglophone regions?
My reaction is that of shock. I am appalled by Mister Biya’s brutality on our people. Our people have been peace-loving, they continue to be peace-loving. This our restoration movement has been peaceful and we are people who are unarmed and we have continued to use the first of the argument of our case. We have the right and self-determination that our forefathers were never handed over the certificate of sovereignty for their independence and most importantly, they did not sign any act of union with Mister Amadou Ahidjo, Biya’s predecessor. On the strength of these arguments, we know that we have the right to form our own nation which we have declared the restoration on the 1st October 2017 and no matter any acts of violence that are perpetrated by Mister Biya on our people, our resolve to form our nation is firm and we are going to make sure that that happens.
What is the situation of the Cameroonians who ran into the Cross River State of Nigeria and what project do you have for them?
The people who have run into Cross River State and most parts of Eastern States of Nigeria are not Cameroonians, they are former British Southern Cameroonians, but now we call them ambazonians. That situation is deplorable because some of them trekked for five days in the bushes before getting into Nigeria. Of course, most of them are women and little children. The question many people ask is what happened to the men? We have just been informed, either some of the men were just killed, some of them have been disappeared by the forces of Mister Biya or some of them are hiding in the bushes. So the situation is bad and in terms of projects, what we have done is to launch a worldwide campaign, a relief campaign and containers of relief material; clothing, food, medications that our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora have gifted and most of those containers are coming and we hope the containers get into Nigeria before Christmas. We are working with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to make sure that some form of accommodation is provided to our people. In the government that I just announced, we have the department of Health and Social services that is particularly handing that, and thankfully, the under secretary for that department is actually here in Nigeria and she has been on the field and she is still on the field and is providing much support to the refugees. We want to take advantage of this to thank all our brothers and sister in the Diaspora and well-wishers across the world who have come to of our refugees to provided them with much needed relief at this time.
What are your projects and what are the means you have to realize them?
We have lots of projects for all the teams and departments that we have created to resolve the ongoing crisis. The seven ministerial departments we have created are working on their mandates now and they have each got projects which are meant to quickly take us to Buea and when we get to Buea, we will enlarge our team to cover all the functional ministries and the act of nation building will get off in endless.
Until which level are you prepared with your project of the division of Cameroon?
I don’t know about the nation of Cameron, those are two different nations. The Republic of Cameroon and former British Southern Cameroon now called the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, those countries have never been one, they are not one today, they will not be one tomorrow. They are two different nations and we hope to keep the as such and to continue to build our own nation that has been devastated and abandoned in the last 56 years.
Have authorities of Yaoundé got into contact with you for dialogue?
No authority in Yaoundé has gone in contact with me or any member of my team for any dialogue what so ever.
Are you prepared to dialogue with the Yaoundé regime, if yes on what conditions?
Of course we are open to dialogue, however the conditions for us to dialogue with the Yaoundé regime are as follows:
1- Mancho Bibixy, Penn Terence and all our brothers and sisters who have been arrested unlawfully and put in all the prisons across the Republic of Cameroon and our ambazonians cells must be released unconditionally,
2- Mister Biya must take his forces of disorder from our zone, the military, the gendarmes must vacate our cities,
3- There must be an unconditional amnesty for all those who are in the Diaspora since Mister Biya’s airport looks like the only airport through which most of our people want to come home, that must be opened to them without any hesitation,
4- Any dialogue that we want to have with Yaoundé must happen out of both our countries, the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and the Republic of Cameroon. That dialogue must be mediated by international organizations preferably the United Nations, the African Union, the Commonwealth of Nations, the European Union, in the presence of France, the United Kingdom and Nigeria. Those are our conditions for us to have a meaningful to look for the root cause of the problem.
A Canadian firm claims to have signed a contract with you to exploit fuel in Bakassi, how true is this and if yes, what are the terms of the said contract?
I have never, not me, not any member of my team has signed any Canadian firm or any firm for that matter, so that is a false claim. We haven’t signed any contract with any company for any fuel exploitation in the Bakassi or anywhere in our region for that matter.
When did you start having the idea of the Independence of Southern Cameroons?
The restoration of independence of Southern Cameroons is something that has been mentioned by our forefathers from the word go, that is why the independence vote or the joining vote was 60 to 40. 40 % of the people voted against that and you have to remember, they were caught between the rock and the hot plate the choice they had was joining the Republic of Cameroon or joining Nigeria. In one side, they had left the Republic of Nigeria in 1954, so seven years later, asking them to go back to the Federal Republic of Nigeria or do anything else, was giving them the octane choice of no choice at all. So our people were given one choice of joining the Republic of Cameroon and yet 40% of the people voted against. For me personally, I think the moment I started reading our history the problems our people were facing, not only the problems they were facing but I read through the right we had to make a decision on our future. That right has been deprived from us for long time. It became obvious to me that somebody had to do something about it and so my quest for the restoration for our independence has developed and grown as I learn more about our history. The realization that our forefathers for our independence were never handed the certificate of sovereignty is an insult to us and the knowledge that even the act of union between our two nations was not signed and yet we have been treated as second class citizens and slaves for the last 56 years adds salt to injury, so I think we have a duty, a responsibility to now move our nation to become independent, to take our destiny into our own hands and that’s exactly what we are doing.
How did you manage and follow up the manifestations of last 1st October?
Prior to 1st October 2017, I declared the restoration of our independence on the night of 30th September to the 1st October. It was a moment of great pride, it was a moment of joy, although the joy became short lived because as we got up in the morning and started seeing the images of our peace-loving people going out of the streets and celebrating the restoration of their independence. And then we saw the barbaric nature with which Mister Biya’s forces came on our people and the genocide that came after. No matter what happened, that is a day in our history that we will never forget, a day that our people decided to stand up as one person to say that enough is enough and that they were taking their destiny into their own hands. I am very proud to be alive to witness this. I am very happy, I am humble to be part of this story, I am particularly humble to be the leader of this great restoration movement at this time. I think we are so lucky to be alive as ambazonians in the 56 years history of our nation. Anyone who is alive now and is partaking in this restoration movement must be very proud because many would have wished to be in our situation, some have gone to meet the Lord. And so those of us who are here now, we have a place in history but we owe to those who have to come after us to tell them what we were doing in 2017. So particularly for the date of 1st October, I think those are the moments of your life where you say, where were you on this date. And I still remember very well where I was on that date. I will see when we get to Buea to tell the world where I was on the 1st October 2017.
Are there any foreign partners on whom you count on this project of Independence?
As soon as we declared our independence, all options for the restoration for a nation, for the sovereignty and of the rebuilding of nation came on the table for us. So we have all the options available now, we would meet foreign partners to make that a reality and I am almost certain that that is what we are working towards and it is looking very good.
What missions are you assigning to the Government you just created?
As I said, we have created a government with seven ministries and ambassadors. The first mission for the ambassadors is to seek recognition by member states. We have deployed ambassadors across the world, to all continents and we are going to continue to deploy more ambassadors as we become friendlier with more nations as we make our case head to other nations, we are going to appoint more ambassadors and we hope that these ambassadors are going to get our recognition for our nation which will eventually translate to the recognition by the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations. That’s the priority project for the government, once we get recognition, all other ministries are still working and preparing themselves for the day when we get to Buea and we hit the ground running.
Par Peter KUM | Cameroon-Info.Net
