Control of the once vibrant Association created to genuinely pressurize government to carry out meaningful infrastructural and other forms of development in the South West region has been seized by some supercilious barons of the ruling party who have sacrificed the development of the region on the altar of deceit, treachery and self-aggrandisement

Someone once said, “Cry, our beloved country”. We of The Median would rather lament: Cry, our beloved SWELA! Yes, the South West Elite Association is like a girl from a rich background whose parents died too early and who is being persistently raped and forsaken by her uncles and cousins to whom she was entrusted.

Barrister Enaw and a handful of others had overly good intentions for the geographical entity referred to as the South West region when they mooted the idea of and eventually created this Association at the dawn of the 1990s.

Given that the province (at the time) groped and continues to grope in the dark as far as infrastructural and other forms of development are concerned, whereas it has the natural resources necessary to make it the el dorado of Cameroon, SWELA was meant to be an association that would spare no effort to coerce the government into making South Westerners see genuine advancement in their area.

It was meant to be a pressure group that would sing mosquito-like songs in the ears of the government as a way of reminding it of the necessity to use the abundant natural resources of the “province” to develop it.

For instance, it was one of SWELA’s paramount objectives to pressurize the government to tar all the roads of the region. A more pronounced objective SWELA would have obviously been asking questions relating to what Cameroon’s oil money is used for if it cannot be used to tar even one kilometre of road in Ndian division – the source of the country’s oil!

Elite has been defined as the most important people in a society. And from this definition it is clear that Barrister Enaw and co. had expected all South Westerners who fall in this category and who are of goodwill to come together and work selflessly for SWELA to achieve its aim.

But is that what is transpiring today? The answer is, of course, an unequivocal NO! When the founding fathers left the scene, a coterie of supercilious sons of the region imposed themselves as the knights of the roundtable who we must call the shots in the Association.

These were mostly bigwigs of the ruling CPDM party who to all intents and purposes, have proved over the years to have little or no concern for the general interest of South Westeners. They are people who have sacrificed the development of the South West region on the altar of deceit, treachery and self-aggrandisement. If anything must prevail, it is their personal interests and not the general interest of the region.

The sit-tight personalities have transformed SWELA into an appendage of the CPDM. They are the ones who call SWELA meetings, elevate their lackeys to the position of Secretary-General of the Association and address motions of support to the potentate who hires and fires them. As though the latter is one of the South West elite!

Today SWELA meetings no longer pull the kind of crowds it used to pull in the 1990s. Ever since the well-meaning South Westerners came to the doleful realisation that South West CPDM elite had seized control of the Association and use it for selfish ends, they turned their collective back on it.

Today, even the CPDM barons who confiscated and killed SWELA have also disappeared; they have all abandoned the Elite Association.

Justice Paul Ayah Abine was one of the few non-members of the CPDM who attended the last SWELA meeting which held recently in Limbe and at which a new SG was “elected”.

Objective as he is, he told the attendees that they should either be objective and move SWELA forward or persist in their folly and allow the Association to die.

Yet, many consider SWELA already dead. And its murderers are no other than South West CPDM bigwigs in Yaounde, who decide how things are done in the Association and who, pundits say, are acting in fulfillment of the desires of a regime which rejoices in the lamentations of the South West region.