“We Are Going To Take Part In The Debates ”

Hon. Banadzem Joseph Lukong, leader of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) Group in the National Assembly.

What explains the absence of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) parliamentarians from the opening plenary sittings of the November 2017 ordinary session in the National Assembly and the Senate?

We suspended our participation from the opening plenary sittings because we wanted to draw the attention of everybody to the prevailing situation in the North West and South West Regions. We have been doing this for over a year. If everyone can remember, this time around last year, when the Anglohone crisis just started, the SDF Members of the National Assembly and Senators went up to Bamenda and discussed with the Governor and administration and demonstrated in town to show our solidarity with the population that was being ill-treated. After that, we came down to Yaounde and went to Buea and did the same exercise where the brutality was out of proportion. Thereafter, we took a series of press statements denouncing the situation. Along the line, the crisis went crescendo, mounting from stage to stage and the negotiations that were brought between the government and the stakeholders (striking teachers and lawyers) went on until everything broke down. Since then, we have not had any response. Of recent, the thing went to certain height. The militarization of the two regions had reached proportions that we needed to sound a bell. Information does not circulate. There are two new phenomena that are cropping up now; the refugees to Nigeria (we are now talking of 10,000) and the attack on the military wherever it is coming from. These two phenomena plus the real brutality on the field made us to let the national community and the world to know. National Executive Committee (NEC) of the SDF gave us a mission through its meeting of October 28, 2017 and its resolutions to come down to Yaounde, debate and raise the issues on the floor. We thought that before we do that in the House, we should alert everybody, especially the authorities that be that something wrong is happening in the North West and South West Regions of the country. So, our not participating in the opening plenary sittings was just a strategy to alert everybody of what is happening at this particular moment which is out of proportion.

You led a delegation of SDF MPs to meet the Speaker of the National Assembly on November 15, 2017. What did you go to tell him?

We wanted to give the House Speaker our communiqué and to tell him openly by word of mouth the situation in the North West and South West Regions. This is because the communiqué could not describe all the details. We wanted to tell him all the details about what is going on. We did not go to the House Speaker to bring the solution to the crisis in the two regions because as at now, the solution should come from the Head of State. My colleague of the Senate would see the President of the Senate today (November 16). We are going to see other authorities. The Speaker promised us that he was going to see the Head of State. He may present our communiqué and other issues we told him concerning the situation in the North West and South West Regions. I don&rs...