Ø Embattled Public & N.W Hierarchy
question How & Why Should the Long Settled Land Dispute Between Njirong
& Ntumbaw be a Call for Concern Now, in the Heart of Escalating Anglophone
Crisis…
Ø Also In this Edition all you need
to Know about the Hidden transaction that Ensued before Njirong was Invaded,
How the DO was Instrumental, Fon Kenedy Writes to MINAT Boss, Njirong Village
on Red Alert…
Reports on the ground and eye
witness accounts holds the DO of Ndu Sub-Division captive for being very
instrumental in the invasion of Njirong by Ntumbaw Villagers who for over 14
Fourteen years have been doing all in their best to swallow Njirong mindful of all
the commissioned resolution reports of 2004 and 2012 respectively as it is
confirmed that the DO led the mob to Njirong who later took on the helpless
Njirong Population.
This operation could not have
been single handedly manned or carried out by the chief in command of that area
without the go ahead of his Boss the SDO, who under normal circumstance as
opinion poll holds should not have visa such an adventure which may spark
another trouble zone in the heart of escalating Anglophone crisis in the North
West.
To have placed his accord, means
the SDO meant business with the Ntumbaw Fondom and Village elite. Whose result
was the abusive attack meted by Ntambaw villagers unto Njirong village. It
should be noted that Njirong village is envied for its fertile nature, its
terrace, its hard working people, its culture and its investments.
Hear Rev. Pastor Philemon Nfor on the grounds version, as he relate the sad
and pathetic incident “ Good
morning Sir.
As I told you last night, we needed the morning to get the real
picture of what happened in Njirong village yesterday. This is a
summary:
*I heard the DO on tape saying the 2004 Land Commission Decision has
stayed fourteen years without the Minister Signing, so it is not valid
any more.
*The DO provoked the violence when he ordered and the forces of law
and order to throw teargas and shot guns in the air.
*In the violence that broke out at Mbawrong, four houses belonging to
Njirong people were burnt and at least eight people were wounded.
*In the midst of the violence the DO and the Ntumbaw people left back
to Ntumbaw and Ndu.
*When the people came up to Ntumbaw, a group led by Mr. NFOR George
went into Njirong (to the upper part of the village, where the palace
is) in the night and attacked it.
*Most of the men had gone down to Mbaw so the few men and most my women
and children, ran for refuge into the Baptist Church.
*The group burnt a number of houses and destroyed many houses.
*They tried to burn the main building of the palace but did not
succeed because some young men followed them unnoticed and put off the
fire. However they burnt the traditional house, (ndapnging) of the
palace.
*Destroyed the windows in the palace as in many other houses.
*They also destroyed the lone corn grindingmill in Njirong.
*They carried all our artificates and all the articles of the most
secret society, the Nwarong, away.
*They wounded a few people at the palace last night, and cut a Prince,
NFOR Lawrence, with a cutlass. He is the most wounded.
*When the group was entering Njirong I called the Brigade Commander
for Ndu and he said he could not go to Njirong because he does not
have a car.
*This morning it is calm in the village and I have told them to relax
and try to see how to help the wounded and those whose houses were
burnt, Thanks”
Note should be taken that, the
Mbawrong land dispute was laid to rest in 2004 by a land Commission led by the
then SDO Nasare Paul Bea. The 2004 land Commission decision came out in
favor of Njirong. Ntumbaw petitioned against this decision. In 2012
the government ordered the then SDO Nseke Theophile to constitute a second land
Commission.
His findings
again favored Njirong and Ntumbaw was given up to December 31st 2012 to
regularize the situation of the land illegally acquired with the DO
for Ndu and the fon of Njirong failure of which they forfeit everything.
Ntumbaw failed to comply. In 2013 Ntumbaw elements ambushed and
killed a prince of Njirong, chopped off the finger of one of them and
destroyed the spinal cord of one. The then administration came in and chased
them out of Mbawrong. Ntumbaw again petitioned . The petition went
to Yaounde and came back to SDO Ngone who wrote to the governor that the
Mbawrong matter was settled and file closed.
AN APPEAL FOR AN URGENT INTERVENTION TO STOP THE
CONFLICT
PROVOKING ACTIVITIES OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF NDU SUB-DIVISION AND
DONGA/MANTUNG DIVISION IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NTUMBAW AND NJIRONG VILLAGES
IN NDU SUB-DIVISION, DONGA/MANTUNG DIVISION
I come to your
high office Sir, with respect and honor. Your Excellency, my people and I are
having sleepless nights because of the fraudulent activities of the Divisional
Officer for Ndu Sub Division and the Senior Divisional Officer for
Donga/Mantung Division. I plead that you intervene and kindly bring this matter
to a close.
Permit me simply
mention that these two villages have been in conflict over a piece of land in
Mbawrong, Njirong village but we believe that the issue was solved, when a land
Consultative Board led by HE Nasari Paul Bea held in 2004 and concluded that
the land belongs to Njirong. The Ntumbaw people were told to continue
cultivating but to pay allegiance to the Fon of Njirong as the custodian of the
land. They refused to obey the decision. It ended in violence and the
government evicted the Ntumbaw people off the land in 2012 after they killed a
Njirong Prince.
Ever since, all
the SDOs who have come to the Division have upheld the Land Commission
Decision. Unfortunately, even though the Present SDO upheld the decision and
spoke at the beginning of his term, emphasizing that the dispute had been
concluded; for reason we do not understand (but suspect corruption), his
language changed from January of 2018. He and the DO for Ndu started insisting
that the Ntumbaw people would be taken back to their farms in Mbawrong.
Eventually he
got the two villages to a meeting on June 20, 2018; a meeting I attended with
five others from Njirong. We thought he was looking for a way forward for the
two villages to live peacefully but realized afterwards that he was not. For
example, he criticized his predecessors for making the decisions of the Land
Commission known and giving that decision to the two villages, something
required by the Cameroon Land Law, claiming that the Minister had not signed it
into law. At the end of the meeting, he announced the resolutions insisting
that he, the Senior Divisional Officer and the Divisional Officer for Ndu Sub
Division will take Ntumbaw people back to their farms in Mbawrong whether we
like it or not. We objected to that decision because they had no reason to
overturn three previous decisions by the Land Commission duly constituted by
their predecessors. We responded to that kind of unprincipled decision and
arbitrary administrative actions that are not grounded in facts, in a letter
dated June 22, of which you were copied.
Sir, on July 31,
2018, the Assistant DO for Ndu, accompanied by about ten Gendarmes took over a
thousand people of Ntumbaw village, and headed to Mbawrong. The incident almost led to violence. As we
had pointed out to the SDO, the Ntumbaw people would only go to Mbawrong if
they were going to own the land which the previous Land Commission had ruled in
favor of Njirong. We are thankful to God that July 31st did not end in
violence. We wrote a report of the day to the Governor and copied your office,
Sir.
The Divisional
officer for Ndu Sub-division called the leaders of the two villages again to a
meeting on Thursday August 16, 2018. At the meeting, he insulted my personality
and my village very well in the presence of the Ntumbaw leadership and insisted
that what he wants done must be done and Ntumbaw people must go down to
Mbawrong regardless of what the previous decisions stated. Our people were
shocked to hear a Divisional Officer say that he does not read anything and
does not care to read anything written about the land dispute. To our shock, he
handed to us a letter from the SDO dated 8 August 2018, supposedly containing
the minutes of the meeting of June 20, 2018. It is embarrassing to us because
the minutes do not reflect the discussion we had but rather states what the SDO
and the DO want to accomplish, things which from our perspective will
compromise security and disturb the peace in the region. Permit me to observe
here that the stipulations of the Land Law are clear; if the SDO were treating
the meeting as a Land Commission, the only legal entity that can make changes
to previous decisions, he should have constituted a Land Commission according
to the Law and appointed one of the Head of Services of the Division to serve
as Secretary as the Land Law stipulates. However, for some reason only known to
the SDO and his DO, they have chosen to act singlehandedly, and their actions
leave a lot to be desired. If they were working to uphold the law, they would
have been transparent, but the secrecy with which they work and their collusion
with our neighbors, the Ntumbaw people, demonstrate not only bad faith, but ill
will. Interestingly, when the meeting was over, the Fon of Ntumbaw handed an
envelope to the DO, which he took with a smile! Justice?
Because of how
the Ntumbaw people were boasting of their relationship with the administration
and given that the administration had acted suspiciously, we recorded the
meeting and if need be, can produce the audio of the meeting which proves the
divergence between what the SDO concluded in the meeting and what the minutes,
published two months after the meeting, says. Here are some of the
inconsistencies in the so-called minutes:
1.The SDO’s
minutes talk of “sale and other transactions on the farms of other citizens”
(page 1) referring to the allegations that Njirong people sold land to people
from Bui. We have repeatedly told the SDO and DO that the allegation is not
true and that they should investigate it. They have not done so but keep
talking about it.
2.The SDO says
he called the meeting because, “the administration had received new files from
the hierarchy for study carrying new evidences tendered by some parties in the
dispute” (Page 1). Sir, what the SDO calls new evidence was a document that
Ntumbaw had submitted to the Governor’s office before 2012, which was examined
before the confirmation of the Land Commission Decision in 2012. How could the
SDO be so untrue? Why the renewed interest in the document? Was he questioning
the competence of his predecessors who looked at that document or was he simply
looking for a way to please Ntumbaw?
3.In the
Resolutions (5) on page 6, he states that “Traditional rights of both
villages should be respected by people of the two villages concerned while
waiting for MINAT to pronounce on the owner of the Land.” This is strange
given that he emphasized in the meeting that the Ntumbaw people who go back
to their abandoned farms must respect the traditions of Njirong in consonance
with the land Commission Decisions of 2004 and 2012 which clearly states that
the land belongs to Njirong. Sir, does it really make practical sense for
an administrator to say that two villages should work on the same piece of land
respecting two traditions? This is worse when we consider that there are people
working in Mbawrong from Bamum, Yamba, Banso, other Mbum villages, and of course
Njirong and Ntumbaw people who are working there now faithfully obeying the
traditions of Njirong. Even though the resolutions of the meeting were simply
stated by the SDO, he did emphasize that everybody working in Mbawrong should
respect the traditions of Njirong. How then can the minutes read something
else?
4.In Resolution
(8) page 7 he states that “Njirong farmers who have cultivated permanent crops
on farms previously owned by Ntumbaw farmers must abandon or remove them for
the farms to be handed back to the rightful owners.” This is not what we
discussed. Why should they be asked to go back to a place where they caused
violence and killed a prince of Njirong and wounded several people over land
which the Land Commission concluded was not their property and to not hold any
religious or traditional rituals at Mbawrong? Could an administrator really
conclude that people should remove permanent crops like palms when there is
enough land for whoever wants to work, on the pretext that the crops were on
farms belonging to others? The Ntumbaw people were asked to come to us as
individuals and ask for land to cultivate their crops, but their leaders have
blocked them from doing that because they want to forcefully annex what is not
theirs and the Senior Divisional Officer and the Divisional Officer, against
previous Administrative officers who have served in Nkambe and Ndu since 2004
are facilitating the breaking of the law!
Your Excellency,
it still baffles me that despite repeated calls for the SDO and the DO to at
least come and see the land they are busy trying to settle a “dispute” over,
none of them has tried to go there. The SDO and the DO have never been on
the field to see the said piece of land! In fact, there has been peace at
Mbawrong since 2012 and the present tensions only came about because of the
recent activities of this administration.
We are calling
on your urgent intervention, Your Excellency, for five reasons:
1.To avert war. We are informed,
that the DO for Ndu has told the Ntumbaw people to plan and go down to Mbawrong
in a surprised manner; going at the time the Njirong people will not know and
so not be ready. Is that kind of advice for war or for peace?
2.To liberate the Ntumbaw people. In the meeting
of August 16, the DO ordered and these minutes were read in the Church in
Ntumbaw (the Baptist Church) with the explanation that the government is coming
to take them to their land in Mbaw. The people are living in false hopes and
thus the common Ntumbaw person cannot go to the Fon of Njirong and get a farm
and work, thought there is evidenttt hunger in the village. Sir, by ending this
matter, you will free the Ntumbaw people to go to Mbawrong as individuals,
respect the custodianship of Njirong, work and take care of their families.
3.To restore God relationship between the two villages. As stated in
the minutes, “The Senior Divisional Officer made it clear that the Land
Consultative Board minutes that mentioned that the land belonged to Njirong was
not yet enacted into a Law by the Minister of Territorial Administration” (page
2) Sir, the settlement of this matter and the peace and restored good
relationship between the two villages largely depends on your enactment of the
Land Commission decision of 2014 into Law. We appeal, Sir, that this be
done for the sake of peace for our dear nation.
4.It is what even the elites of the villages had recommended
before. The Elites of Ntumbaw, Njirong and other surrounding villages, under
the leadership of the late Dr. Solomon NFOR Gwei; then Secretary of state for
Agriculture held a conflict resolution meeting on March 12, 1988 in Yaounde
with representatives from Ntumbaw and Njirong villages, over this same Mbawrong
issue. The conclusion was that the Ntumbaw people should continue working in
Mbawrong while observing the traditions of Njirong. This is exactly what
the 2004 land Commission decided. The consistency of this decision by both
administration and elites shows it is the right thing to do. Unfortunately,
Ntumbaw people refused at that time as they are refusing now; aided by the SDO
and the DO. Sir, your ministerial order will bring this matter to a close.
5.To Promote Peace in our land. Finally, Your
Excellency, The Nkambe Plateau is no stranger to land disputes, and every
administration in our Division has worked with the chiefs and villages to
resolve these disputes. The steps being taken by the present administration,
the daily insults, the childish text messages he has been sending to me
insulting me, undermines traditional authority. I know that His Royal
Majesty the Fon of Ndu, Head of the Wiya Clan has advised the Divisional
Officer of Ndu to avoid his erratic behavior to no avail. Your decisive
action in signing the decisions of the Land Commissions which were constituted
by previous administrators in line with the law of the land, will proclaim to
the whole world that our country is a land of laws and no one and no village,
no matter how strong, or how much money that person has, or the village has, is
above the law.
Sincerely Yours,
His Majesty Fon Kennedy F. NGANJO
II
(Njirong Village)
Cc: For information/assistance:
§ The
Prime Minister, Head of Government, Yaounde.
§ The
Governor, North West Region;
§ The
Senior Divisional Officer, Nkambe;
§ The
Divisional Officer, Ndu Sub-Division;
§ The
Divisional Delegate of Public Security, Nkambe;
§ The
Company Commander, Nkam
