THE GOVERNMENT OF CAMEROON AND THE ANGLOPHONE CIVIL SOCIETY CONSORTIUM: GLIMMERS TO THE CAMEROON ANGLOPHONE ARMED CONFLICT

Abstract

After the reunification of Cameroon in 1961, some West Cameroonian political class began to cast their doubts on the centralized Federal System put in place. This system according to some Anglophones gave room for marginalization and assimilation of West Cameroon especially with the closure of its development agency. This somehow nursed grievances and in 2016, the bon a fide English Speaking Cameroonian lawyers and teachers rose up in a “peaceful civil disobedient protest” to express their disillusion, over the erosion of the Common Law Judicial System and the Anglo-Saxon Education System in Cameroon. This paper from this angle looks at the origin of the Consortium, Government position and the impact. The paper argues that, Government’s responses and policies towards the corporate grievances and the ban on the Consortium laid the foundation of a radicalized armed conflict in the Anglophone region and within this dispensation; other discourse towards a lasting solution became valuable. The major instrument used for data collection was interviews, secondary literature, author’s experience and a multidisciplinary approach to present the facts. This paper concludes that the failure to break even between the Government of Cameroon and the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC) introduced armed conflict with costly consequences.