Images
of chopped off fingers and wrists, schools charring from fire, school children
scampering away like rates, hands and faces bandaged with antiseptic gauze,
heath centres and churches emptied by force, doctors and nurses take to their
heels are the daily scenes the Northwest and Southwest regions in the last
three years.
Forces
of law and order ambushed, attacked and kidnapped, along hardworking
individuals whose crimes, ostensibly is the fact that they have worked hard to
make a life. Roads blocked, bridges destroyed and activities grounded and all
these are for those lucky to not have been killed execution-style, after long
hours of torture and demand for ransoms. This goriness, even if it is a movie,
would have been too gratuitous for the audience. But, then again, it is
happening in real life, in the Northwest and Southwest regions of our country,
perpetuated by scattered armed groups, bent on establishing a new country even
if that means creating a country with no humans, just ash.
Haven’t
we lost enough? Why can’t we end the conflict now, must we wait for the next
bus, when we can save lives now? The only solution is peace. Those who fled
want to go back home and those who are at home want to stay. This is the only
choice. We must sit and talk because after the violence; ending the rounds of
guns in the Northwest and Southwest that have become an unending ‘boxing match’
is the right thing to do. If we talk frankly from Monday September 30, we will
save the ones that were to die tomorrow. There is murder on a large scale in
the two English-speaking regions.
Death
counts keep growing in the two regions and this has shifted heavily from
combatants to civilians. These numbers are overtaken by those injured. Our
people are dying of treatable diseases in bushes because they cannot reach the
hospital. Those traumatized and wondering without homes overshadow the number
of those killed. In an unprecedented decision, President Paul Biya convened the
Major National Dialogue wherein delegates are expected to propose solutions to
fix the two troubled regions. This is an opportunity to change things through
frank talk than unprovoked violence with spine-chilling fallouts.
Dialogue
is for Anglophones to change the dynamics in the two regions. Delegates from
the Northwest and Southwest live the pain of the gaping crisis in the two
English-speaking regions. Those out of these regions are only affected.
Cameroonians from the two regions living abroad (Diaspora) especially
Anglophones despite their distance from home remain corded to the
English-speaking regions in particular and Cameroon in general. However, it is
deceitful to compare the agony of those living the crisis to those affected
from a distance. Voices from the delegates in these two regions are
preponderant. A fact, self-styled leaders of Anglophones living abroad must
humbly accept.