“I don’t think the Major National Dialogue was meant to end the Anglophone Crisis,” the human rights lawyer said. “You cannot have a crisis that has been ravaging the country for four years and you expect a solution to come after five days. It was a step in the right direction.”

He furthered that: “The Major National Dialogue is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is one of a series of dialogues: similar ones have to be taking place and I think they are talking to other people, other groupings... So, I don’t think it was meant to solve the problem. The first thing I think we should applaud is that it brought diverse people together to start talking about the problem. That was the psychological part of it.”

Agbor Balla holds that if the recommendations of the Major National Dialogue are speedily implemented, it may hasten the return to peace.

Hear him: “The implementation also will help... when you start implementing reconstruction, when you start implementing Special Status it might go a long way. The Special Status was an empty shot that was given at the Grand Dialogue. What is the content?”

The President of the outlawed Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, CACSC, says when the government said it will grant Special Status to the North West and South West Regions, he was among those who made reference to Special Status in other places.

“For example, we looked at Monaco, we look at Corsica and other areas which have Special Status. In Monaco, for example, they have their anthem; they have a kind of autonomy where they are ruled by a king, although they are still part of France,” Agbor Balla said. “That’s the kind of status we expected, but, unfortunately, the Government is not ready to give us the autonomy that we need. Regional elections are coming, but the Governor will still be appointed to lord over the appointed regional Presidents. So, there is really nothing much to write home about with regards to the Special Status for the time being.”

Cameroon-Info.Net recalls that Agbor Balla made a plea for Cameroon to become a federal state after the Major National Dialogue as the only panacea to the deepening Anglophone Crisis.

Speaking that fateful Tuesday, October 1, 2019, at the Yaoundé Conference Center, Agbor Balla said the people who have taken up arms to make of Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions an independent state they call Ambazonia may only be pacified if the form of the state is touched to accommodate federalism.

Apparently taking the Decentralisation and Local Development Commission, headed by ex-Forestry and Wildlife Minister Ngole Philip Ngwese, by storm, Agbor Balla regretted that another dialogue may be ordered by President Paul Biya not too long after the 2019 Major National Dialogue if the form of state was not discussed at the time. 

A video clip of the Human Rights Lawyer’s clarion call filtered out of the in-camera session. In the video, Agbor Balla called on Senator Mbella Moki Charles to bear him witness. 

Agbor Balla said: “I don’t want us to waste taxpayers’ money today and next year the President calls us for another dialogue. We need to find a lasting solution. And like Dr. Munzu said yesterday, I am not prescribing any particular form of the state. But we cannot leave here without looking at the form of the state. As I sit here if I show you my messages from some of the separatist leaders abroad asking if they have at least started talking even about the form of the state.

“Some of us have put our reputation and our image on the line to be here. If you follow social media, they attack some of us just for coming here. But we believe in the oneness and the unity of this country. We believe that Cameroon should be one and indivisible. But we equally believe that decentralisation will not solve the problem. We have to get to a federation. That is the minimum the people who have taken up arms will accept.”