CI-NEWS

Ngolle Ngwese dissects special status for Anglophones.

2019-10-14

No: 451

Ngolle Ngwese dissects special status for Anglophones.

Ngolle Philip Ngwese, former minister of forestry and wildlife (MINFOF), is thick-skinned. He has the propensity to manage pressure. This was discernible in his firm handling of emotional outbursts that flared up at the decentralization and local authorities committee he headed at the recent Major National Dialogue. Delegates had come to blows over the fact that debate on federation was being muzzled at the committee, but level-headed Ngwese stuck to his guns, insisting that the terms of reference did not give him the mandate.

It is thanks to this unbending posture that delegates came to understand that the name adopted did not matter. In debates that ensued, Article 62 of the Constitution granting special status to the Anglophone regions was raked up and dangled as a concession to Anglophones on the committee. But that remains to be defined by the head of state who might set up a working group and eventually get parliament to adopt a bill defining that status.

Speaking on CRTV’s political focus last Saturday, the former MINFOF boss who is a legal mind sought to set the records straight on the special status provision. Approaching the subject with a lot of caution, he insisted only the head of state would provide a definitive solution to the jigsaw puzzle it had become.

Quizzed on whether councils in the North West and South West would be managed differently from those in the other eight regions, he was inclined to a no. The former minister, however, conceded that powers of the supervisory authorities over decentralized collectivities would be curtailed in the new dispensation. Apriori controle of council session deliberations will yield way to aposteriori controle, he indicated, explaining that if resolutions of the MND were adopted the local councils and regional councils would not have to wait for the SDOs and Governors to apply their deliberations.

“In 2004 these provisions were considerably revised. The list of matters that fell within that controle apriori were reduced to the barest minimum. They fell within the ambit of what we call controle aposteriori. The council sits, they deliberate on what to do. They go ahead with their business while the supervisory authority stays behind to see whether these deliberations conform with the law,” Ngole Ngwese explained.

On the appointment of government delegates, he said it was suggested they be henceforth elected or the post scrapped all together. In towns like Yaounde and Douala where the government delegates must stay on, he said delegates insisted on having a say in their selection.

Venturing in special status definition, he said the NW and SW would be given free rein to run a House of Chiefs, maintain the Anglo-Saxon educational system and common law systems.

“The work of our commission was not to define the special status. I want to imagine that the head of state will put in place a team to determine the content of the special status. You talk of the Anglo-Saxon system of education and the Common Law legal system for example. I want to believe that issues of that nature will be addressed. In former West Cameroon we had the House of Chiefs. I don’t want to speculate on what the content will be but I am just trying to imagine that some of those issues could be factored into the content of how special it could be,” the former MINFOF minister stated.

Ngwese didn’t think councils in the two Anglophone regions would be run differently but wished they be given a free hand to conduct business without too many bottle-necks.

“I don’t have the feeling that councils will be managed in a different way.”

On the second recommendation concerning the endowment of the two regions with a special allocation, he said it would enable them start again with their activities that have been hampered by the crisis.

Asked if he were satisfied with the outcome of the MND, the decentralization committee chair said:

“I was humbled by the responsibility I was given. I thank the head of state and the PM who believed that my humble self would be able to conduct the business of the committee. I prayed God that He should grant that I be equal to the task.”

He said judging by the reaction to our report, “I have the feeling that we didn’t do badly.”

Did it have any sense of history to you that your deliberations took place in that tripartite hall?

It never occurred to me to make any rapprochement between the tripartite and the work of the commission which I had the honour to chair.

Ngwese recommended patience from Cameroonians during the implementation of the resolutions which he said will take year, while some may have to go through parliament.

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Ngolle Ngwese dissects special status for Anglophones.