“We need to Talk Anglophone Issues, not Shy Away”

By Ignatius Nji

                                     Mayor Bunyuy Emmanuel Nyugab (Ndu Council)

I think this gesture to my mind is a side stream to the main current. Side stream in the sense that the Senate is there because of Councils and it’s just normal for Senators after being elected to come back and show some appreciation. At the level of the bikes this is going a long way to help us particularly with our municipal police, the control unit to check traffic, to facilitate collection of revenue as well as improve on sanitation within the municipality. I want to appreciate the Senators for the bikes. On the question on salaries for mayors and councilors, I don’t think that is anything new. We have heard about the issue of salaries to some mayors in the last seven years. The last time we met with the Prime minister, he said the file was on the table of the highest authority of the land and today we are saying the same thing. We want to get things off the ground. There is already insinuation about Mayors going on sit down strike from the month of August because of the non salaries for councilors and mayors. It is immoral to run a country where mayors are unpaid and we have a situation where there is no information that has been kept in the fridge. The issue of marginalization of Anglophones is so glaring in this country and the Senators are quiet about it. Bilingualism is on paper not in practice and the Anglophone is largely marginalized. These are hard facts that we need to address. We need to talk about Anglophone issues and these are Anglophone Senators and should not shy away from it. There was a private members bill that came up and never passed through the chairmen’s’ conference relating to the protection of water catchment and was rejected which was a bill to protect water catchment. Water is a primordial issue not only in Donga Mantung but the whole of Cameroon.  And that parliament waved it with the hand is unimaginable. The Senate is also supposed to be talking about the decentralization fund. We can not decentralize competences without the means. We are not going to emerge by 2035 and emergence is not going to be by a decree rather it can only be by an enabling environment. If money were made available to the councils with clear cut

projects within the next five years we should be saying how far have gone. We can not put 2035 and when are we going to do evaluation which is both informative as well as formative. These are the challenges we are talking about and the Senate should not just be a rubber stamp just like the lower house. We should be able to address the things that make this country click and should not be the laughing stock of Africa. This is our concern and I want to appreciate the Senators for the bikes. We talked on our tender’s board and we had met the minister of public contracts who gave us assurances two months ago and we are now in July and we hope they get out of the fridge. On the separation of the Nkambe/ Ndu single constituency is like leaving the leg of an elephant for that of a fly and there are more serious issues to address than that.