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The outspoken Economist and Statistician has publicly lambasted the Cameroon Government’s handling of the Anglophone crisis and has warned that Anglophones are going to separate from Cameroon if Government insists on using violence in solving the crisis.
Speaking at Vision 4’s Club d’Elites program, Dieudonné Essomba categorically said that the government at present does not have the economic, financial, political and strategic means amongst others to fight the secessionist movement that has now brewed for four whole years.
The economist also blamed the armed conflict on Government’s sturbonness and unwillingness to listen to the Anglophones when the crisis began in 2016, and later on sending the military there mostly made of francophones.
“When we are in a Unitary State and then you send the military to a zone like the Anglophone regions, that army appears exactly as an opposition to the people. In this case you can’t see Anglophones whose children are in the bushes collaborate with these forces to kill the separatists. It is inconceivable,” he said
“Anglophones sitting in their region, with their children in the bushes become faced with Beti’s whom they don’t know, Fulbe’s dressed in military attire and we expect them to collaborate with them against their own people. How is that even possible?” He added.
Dieudonné Essomba maintained that the present Unitary State has been an utter failure and must be revised if the Government wants to save and maintain the unity of Cameroon.
“Anglophones are no longer with the Unitary State. They have absolutely no interest in it anymore. What the Government has to do is to sit together with them and propose an alternative system which to me should be at least a Confederation…Africa has had 4 countries which were formerly Federal states but abandoned it; There is Ethiopia-Eritrea. Ethiopia abandoned the Federal system and Eritrea left. Same thing with Somaliland and Sudan. When a States leaves from the Federal Union, the other secedes completely. The Fourth one is Cameroon. If we are not careful, the Anglophones will go,” he said.
