Opinions of Sunday, 1 November 2015

Auteur: The Post Newspaper

Letter from Yaoundé to Buea

Dear Mbella,

I am afraid that the gods of communication are not with us. The deadlock was again on us as you have remained mute like a “soya” eating soap boxer.

Take nothing for granted in this current dispensation. Heads will roll in the khaki fraternity following the shocking outing of that bold crowd of individual cowards. The individual cowards will face the music until the bold crowd is cowed into submission. The message is loud and clear that at this time when BH is calling the shots, no one has the right to cry in public.

Don’t forget your ID card because you will suddenly be treated as a BH. But this is stupid, the BHs have ID cards. Will you get it from my mouth that the soap-boxers have made the Cameroonian ID, the identification paper of the United Nations?

Otherwise, tell me why Nigerians, Chadians, CAR citizens are acquiring the document with all ease. You see, Mbella, we should call these things by their names and get rid of this hypocrisy and intellectual hooliganism.

In the heydays of our cosmetic democracy, political Iagos committed a lot of crimes in the name of love for the country. That is why the meaning of patriotism has become an enormous semantic palaver among legacy hunters of the political divide. In the circumstances, the meaning depends on the geo-ethnic and political provenance of the speaker.

Mola, when I raised the issue of the auctioning of our nationality to foreigners, all-knowing pen pushers took me to the cross for crucifixion. In all megalomania, the boys set out to pick holes on an issue they did not master.

They ended up exposing themselves to public ridicule as all-knowing ignoramuses. These are the kinds of things that made Dina to throw in the towel in all dignity. She is quitting the stage to swim out of the murky waters of double standards in a corrupt corps.

Un-free is the country led by celebrated hypocrites who say one thing when they actually mean the other. Such a situation has produced a new form of slavery for people who remain speechless. They are unable to speak out on issues ailing them because they are slaves to certain individuals.

Double standards have become a norm here and it is now a common political etiquette of this epoch that the smile comes before the smack. That is how many evil forces hurled the night at the noon of many young people by taking greed, self-aggrandisement and individualism to the high heavens. If not, how come every concern of the “miners” has met with aristocratic disdain? Sadism agogo!

I am tired of reading the cliché-ridden pieces from the simpletons. I do not know where to hide my face because clichés are very resilient, given that even the linguistic purists still use them. There has been an outburst of verbal excoriation on the issue.

The situation is akin to the trappings of a spiritually bankrupt nation whose rulers are sheer atheists in some of the decisions they take. The craze now is “cheating” one’s way to heaven without passing through the super highway of paradise-death. It is the hurly-burly of a fallacy, wherein one goes to heaven without dying. Take it or leave it, its euphemism is the prosperity gospel, wherein emphasis is laid on material gains rather than the Cross that the followers of Christ are expected to carry.

The preachers behave like “ngambe” men who play on the psychology of desperate people by telling them what they want to hear. Only God rescued the desperadoes of what would have been a deadly stampede in Sawa the other day. Followers of the Son of Man should accept the Cross with all equanimity.

But spare us the upsurge of “racism” that is taking hold of the ongoing reorganisation exercise. It is common currency that candidates will be stigmatised as people from elsewhere once they declare their intention to gun for section President. You can live in a place for over half a century and still be stigmatised as a stranger just because you are vying for the coveted post.

Yours sincerely Ngwa