IIARD International Institute of Academic Research and Development

JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL POLICY (JHSP )

E-ISSN 2545-5729
P-ISSN 2695 2416
VOL. 9 NO. 1 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56201/jhsp.v9.no1.2023.pg78.97

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Armed Violence and the Desecration of Traditional Authorities and Emblems in Anglophone Cameroon

Ngam Confidence Chia

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Abstract

Violence tops the chart of key Security challenges that have provided anxious moments to governments at local, national, and international levels in the 21 st Century. While protests and other civic engagements are basic requirements for vibrant democracies and governance, armed violence from criminals and militia on various counts has not only multiplied but grown to impose new and quite exacting security concerns, especially for African countries already hunted by heavy debt burden, hunger, strife and other forms of troubles. It is easy to understand violence against the state or any other organized system as a response to poor governance and mismanagement since all of them combine to nurture or implant grievances in some groups and people but it is difficult to understand why armed groups will turn to exert violence on its own established traditional authorities and Institutions which they have held for long as custodians of anything that protects their wellbeing. This paper has a mission to examine how armed violence has desecrated and repeatedly toyed with both the traditional authorities (Fons, Chiefs, Lamidos, notables) and insignia that formed the nucleus of traditional private and public elegance in the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon prior to and during the violent phase of the war of secession that has been raging the Cameroon political economy since 2017. The arguments sustained plus submissions of this paper are a product of scrutiny of the synchrony of data gleaned from primary, secondary, and other sources. After presenting the context of the study which critically engages the issues and background required for an understanding of the key matters in discourse, we argue that(a) the desecration or practice of violence on traditional authorities and their insignia in Anglophone Cameroon has destroyed the key elements of hope that bonded not only people but also the segments/regiments of the society together, (b) such macabre action

keywords:

Armed Violence, Traditional Authorities, Emblems, Desecration

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References:

Victor Julius Ngoh. Cameroon 1884-Present (2018) The History of a People. Limbe: Design
House.2019.

V.G.Fanso. Cameroon History for secondary schools and Colleges, from pre-historic times to the
twenty-first century. Kumbo. Teamwork Press 2016.

P.N.Nkwi, Elements for a History of the Western Grassfields.Yaounde, 1982.

E.M Chilver and P.M Kaberry, Traditional Bamenda. The Pre-colonial History and Ethnography
of the Bamenda Grassfields. vol 1, London, 1967.

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