Mayhem in Buea: Stop the "normalisation" circus.

Without mincing words this time, he cautioned Mekala, coming from Manyu Division, another hotbed of insecurity in the two Regions, to  "pay constant attention against any possible infiltration of arms and ammunition by criminal gangs or secessionist armed groups, some of who are either based here or in neighbouring Nigeria, from where they continue elaborating, sponsoring and executing plans to destabilise social peace and jeopardising the development of the Division...".

Less than a week after that, a gang of some seven separatist fighters, in military attire, descended on the Molyko neighbourhood of Buea and started shooting indiscriminately.

In the mad process, they set at least four vehicles ablaze as they paraded the stretch from the Buea Central Market, leading to Checkpoint Molyko for some 30 minutes from 8:30p.m. to 9:00p.m. on Monday. 

In the melee of confusion and fear, several people scampering for safety were injured while a man identified later as Derrick Luma Musonge, the son of the elder brother of former PM Peter Musonge, was confirmed killed.

An eyewitness told reporters later that one of the attackers had “a heavy automatic machine gun and was just shooting while another was shouting and warning people not to come out of their homes. They warned that people who continue to disrespect calls for ‘ghost town’ on Mondays will be killed and their cars burnt”. 

Videos and audio messages that went viral in the social media claimed the satanic attack was by the Mountain Lions under the so-called faction of the Interim Government led by Sako Samuel, a Fako indigene based in the United States. 

The Buea carnage followed in less than a week another barbaric but not fatal incident in the North West Region, where the equipment pool of BUNS, a construction company that was working on the cherished Ring Road, was burnt by suspected separatist fighters. 

The horrible incidents in quick succession occurred in less than a month when President Paul Biya, in his end-of-year speech, played down the atrocities.

"Thanks to the people’s active cooperation with our defence and security forces, the situation in the North West, South West and Far North Regions has improved significantly," Biya said. 

While conceding that "atrocities committed by terrorists have not completely disappeared", he gave the assurance, nonetheless, that: "...it is now possible to calmly implement the reconstruction and development plans for the said Regions".

We know his speech was based on information from his men on the field, but can Mr President sincerely and conscientiously affirm that with the experience in Buea and Ndu within the past one week, residents in the North West and South West Regions can "calmly" live and carry out their development, reconstruction and business activities?

We beg to tell the truth to power that it is impossible. In their circuit show, some pseudo-politicians and chiefs in the South West Region, in their groping to curry favours from Yaounde, use the divide and rule tactics and blame game, in their circuit show to propagate that the fighting is now only in the North West Region.

Monday's Buea attack, which followed that in Egbekaw village in Manyu, which the Head of State even mentioned in his end-of-year speech, debunk such myopic, blinkered and xenophobic propaganda to search for lasting peace.

Normalisation is a fallacy. President Biya talked of "constructive dialogue" in resolving the teachers' debt issue in his New Year speech. The Major National Dialogue has never had that genuine description of being "constructive".

Now, more than ever, the two Anglophone Regions need constructive dialogue to live, work and go to school "calmly" without  the fear of the invisible ghosts on Monday, which the so-called Mountain Lions of Buea, for 30 long minutes,  unleashed their fangs on an innocent population in the heart of the South West Regional capital, clustered with security checkpoints round the clock.