Your Excellency, I address you with respect as Cameroon's Prime Minister, a traditional chief and a son of the South West. For those very reasons, your reported assessment of the crisis in the North West and South West demands a frank response. Many of us from these regions disagree with it completely.
I address the following statements as reported; I have not seen a full transcript of your remarks.
1. “The Anglophone crisis will die a natural death in 10 to 15 years.”
What exactly do you mean by the Anglophone crisis? Is it only the fighting? What about the grievances that preceded it, the people still in prison, the families displaced, and those living with kidnapping, sexual violence, hunger and fear? What about a parent who cannot safely take a sick child to hospital or return home to bury a loved one?
A crisis does not end because its victims grow exhausted or fall silent. Nearly ten years have already passed. Asking our people to wait another 10 to 15 years could mean sacrificing a generation's safety, education and future. What is the government's plan to end the crisis now?
2. “Foreign partners still consider the South West a security red zone, so development has stalled.”
Insecurity certainly deters investment. It also prevents farmers from working, traders from moving goods and patients from reaching care. But which specific roads, hospitals, factories, farms or tourism projects have been delayed? What funds were committed? What steps are being taken to make those projects possible again?
And before the war, how much new investment and industrial development had the North West and South West received? The government owes our people a public account of both the opportunities lost to this war and the development it intends to deliver.
3. “We are receiving information that fighters are tired.”
If that information is reliable, use it to open a path to peace. Where is the offer of serious negotiations, a monitored ceasefire, safe disengagement and reintegration?
Recent lockdowns have again kept people from moving and earning a living. A family afraid to open its shop or travel to hospital cannot be told the crisis is fading because some fighters may be tired. What protection and public assurances were offered to civilians during those shutdowns?
4. “The real battle is now in the Far North.”
The Far North deserves the full attention and protection of the state. So do the North West and South West. One region's suffering cannot cancel another's.
Our communities continue to report killings, kidnappings, attacks on security personnel and severe restrictions on movement. The reported killing of civilians in Ekona, like every reported killing of a soldier, gendarme or civilian, calls for an independent investigation and accountability based on evidence. How can this war be treated as a lesser battle while families still live with its consequences every day?
Your Excellency, waiting is not a peace policy. We need serious negotiations, a ceasefire, protection for civilians, safe access to hospitals and schools, support for displaced families, and a funded plan to restore livelihoods and essential services. Dialogue must confront the political grievances that began this crisis as well as the devastation the war has caused.
Please tell the people of the North West and South West what the government will do this year to bring them peace. Another 10 to 15 years of war could destroy far more than any future development plan can rebuild.
— Dr. David Makongo