IIARD International Institute of Academic Research and Development

AFRICAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY (AJHA )

E-ISSN 2579-048X
P-ISSN 2695-1851
VOL. 6 NO. 1 2022

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The Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon: Unmasking Government’s Implication in the Radicalisation of the Crisis

Christian Pagbe Musah

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Abstract

This paper unravels government’s implication in the radicalization of the Anglophone Crisis that broke out in late 2016 and degenerated into what has been otherwise termed the “Ambazonian” secessionist war that ensued in 2017. This came on the backdrop of what started as a resistance against the Francophonisation of the Anglophones and the Anglo-Saxon institutions in what came to be known as the Anglophone Problem. This resistance had been a daily struggle of Anglophone activists, Anglophone pressure groups and the Anglophones in general since the early 1960s. Their struggles were however less violent until late 2016 when pacific protests put up by Anglophone lawyers and teachers trade unions against corporate grievances and social vexations took a twist in 2017 and escalated into a violent political crisis and war of separation. The paper based on primary and secondary sources, makes a critique of government’s responses and policies towards the corporate grievances and the Anglophone Problem in general and begs the conclusion that they in one way or the other contributed in escalating the situation. The paper reckons that, though the potency of secession for Anglophone Cameroon/former Southern Cameroons appears gloomy, however, if the government does not seek and implement authentic consensual measures other than the military option in resolving the crisis from its roots, there is fear that it will become a protracted warfare with much violent and bloody episodes and may lead to a full scale civil war in Cameroon and within the central African sub region.

keywords:

Ambazonia, Anglophones Crisis, Anglophone Problem, Government, Radical, Repression, Secession.

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