As normalcy gaining steam in NW, SW: Shouldn’t IDP lawmakers, mayors, traditional rulers to return to base?.

Despite the general positive outlook of things that continue to give hope that life can become completely livable again in these administrative units, some key actors of community revival and personalities, who claim to hold a clout of influence on local initiatives, have been missing in this equation.

While things are fast picking speed across communities in the once very volatile North West and South West regions, these persons, who rank as traditional rulers, Members of Parliament, Senators, MPs, and mayors seem to be living in utopia. They seem to have forgotten their homes and are enjoying the status of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in safer areas hundreds of kilometres away from home.

Their absence a few years ago, analysts say, could have been justifiable given the atmosphere at the time. but today, they really have nothing to say as things have veered off the path of destruction and are gaining balance on the path of peace and development.

With the undeniable gains made in elevating communities, towns and cities out of the doldrums of a conflict, which many have described, and rightly so, as “senseless”, observers are now saying, persons holding certain functions must reappear to accelerate the peace drive.

Going by observers, the time is more than ripe for the scores of traditional rulers, members of the National Assembly, senators, mayors and traditional rulers, who have been away from home, to return to base. Their presence, critics say, also has a key role to play in giving new local initiatives extra meaning in turning things for good.

Government alone, stakeholders in the galaxy pushing for peace say, cannot do everything alone. Traditional rulers are viewed as needed to further revive community life, assemble the people and give messages of hope to their population.

Mayors, on their part, many are also saying, must muster the gumption to abandon the life of squatting in hotels in other French-speaking regions and return to ensure the realisation of projects of extreme priority. This, it is being said, especially for mayors elected on the platform of  the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, party, is needed to test-run President Biya’s decentralisation option to respond to grassroots request for local development. 

Staying away from their municipalities at a time when smoking guns have greatly been silenced, many say, is invariably supporting enemies of the state to frustrate government’s development agenda. 

Time to fast track delayed projects, defend mandate

It is no secret that between 2017 and 2023, most council areas in the North West and South West regions have delayed projects. IDP Mayors, keen observers are now positing, must come out of the cocoon and work for the people to whom the projects are destined, given that the climate has greatly improved

Members of the National Assembly and senators, who have been idling in major cities and only occasionally sneaking into communities, have also come under the spyglass of those arguing that the fresh window of peace in the English-speaking regions is a call for them to return home. 

Like mayors, they too are being challenged to return to their communities, understand the current needs of the population and lobby for those in the corridors of power in Yaounde to do something. Their presence, many are also averring, is needed as a proof of the many public declarations they have made also affirming that things have greatly improved in the North West and South West regions.

Ned to benefit from Biya’s reconstruction plan

The fraternity of Mayors, members of the National Assembly and senators jumping across Yaounde and Douala, others say, must join the train of the Presidential Plan for the Reconstruction and Development of the North West and South West Regions, PPRD-NW/SW. 

With the Steering Committee of the PPRD-NW/SW having unveiled a new operational strategy that gives priority to a bottom-top approach to development, traditional rulers, mayors and lawmakers, development experts say, must return to base and enhance community interest in the presidential scheme.

For one thing, communities wherein their elite mayors, chiefs and MPs have returned home, there is a mad rush to apply for projects sponsorship from the PPRD-NW/SW. In this light, the feeling of those keenly monitoring the situation in the two regions is that these IDP traditional rulers, mayors and MPs and senators must seize the opportunity to start rebuilding the communities. The buck, analysts say, stops with them and not Biya, who has already instituted a working policy for such to happen.

Time to make real Atanga Nji’s promise

Others say it is even more reasonable to push for the return of this class of persons to their communities today than it was a few years back. On Wednesday August 19, 2020, the Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, had promised to assist traditional rulers in the two restive regions to regain their palaces.

With the road covered since then in pushing for peace and normalcy, it is also being underscored that there is no time more better time than now for that scheme, which Atanga  Nji unveiled two years back, to be made real. This time around, observers say, it should extended to IDP mayors and lawmakers.

Catholic Bishops salute return of normalcy in NW, SW

The veracity of peace having returned and is still returning also caught the attention of Bishops of Cameroon during their 48 plenary session in Yaounde.

Commenting on the situation, the President of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon, Archbishop Andrew Nkea, had said: “Our ongoing efforts for the return of peace in our country have not been in vain because despite the continuous threat from Boko Haram in the north and the prevailing insecurities in the North West and South west regions, we do not give up”.

In the English-speaking regions particularly, Archbishop Nkea said “relative peace and calm is returning to the North West and South West regions. Some businesses are reopening and many children are going back to school. This is a great sign of hope…”.