OPINION:

By  Teghen Harrison

Ama Muna and hatred for Anglophones

 

Permit me space in your widely read and authoritative daily newspaper to comment on the in-exhaustible crimes of Ama Tutu Muna, minister of arts and culture on the Anglophones. I burn with anger and airing my views can free me from unrestricted hysteria.

 If I have decided to write this opinion it is because I believe like Jim Rohn that: "If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn't need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around." Ama Muna is plunging headlong on the wrong direction and needs to be told some home truths in order to bring her on the rails.

In fact, I frowned every time somebody judged a Muna on what they considered the past glories or crimes of their late father, ST Muna. I humbly thought that every person should and must be judged on his or her own merits and not on the omissions and commissions of the parents.

Ama Tutu Muna, the lone daughter of  the late ST Muna has torpedoed everything with her inexplicable hatred for the Anglophones, pushing most detractors of the Muna family to ask wrongly or rightly what good could ever been expected from a Muna. However, I take great exception to such generalization. Yet a catalogue of glaring instances of Ama Muna’s hatred for Anglophones cannot leave any right thinking Anglophone indifferent; including myself who have been following her with unalloyed allegiance.

I can vividly remember that when I attended her home-coming in Mbengwi some years back, one of her brothers publicly described her as a ‘spoiled child.’ She sobbed publicly and was as meek as a lamb. I was incensed by the brother’s comment for I thought it was a joke in very bad taste. I stand corrected today, for that was a near-apt or better still, prophetic description of Ama Muna.

I thought that she was not as bad as the brother had purported, but now I fervently feel that she is much, much worse. This contractor turned minister has over the past years developed thick skin and takes delight in denigrating Anglophones. In fact Ama Muna gives the Francophones a field day and is more Francophone in her deeds and misdeeds than the born and bred Francophone.

To say that she is a perfect incarnation of the unpalatable notion that the greatest enemy of the Anglophone is an Anglophone is to miss the point completely. To say that Ama Muna is a self-proclaimed Amazon and a sharp and willing instrument in the hands of the Francophone regime for the total annihilation of the Anglophones is to approach the truth.

Somebody told me the other day that Ama Muna is ready to embark even in the supreme sacrifice to maintain her ministerial portfolio. I told my interlocutor that I saw where he was driving to and that he was being unsympathetic, but he retorted angrily that I was certainly crying more than the bereaved. He asked whether I was not aware that Ama Muna is power-drunk and oblivious of the admonition of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14^th Dalai Lama that, our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them. I listened with keen interest when he said: Ama Muna is not helping the Anglophones, yet she takes immeasurable pleasure in hurting them. Then it dawned on me that he was absolutely right in his acerbic criticism of Ama Muna.

I reminiscence in anger and realized that in her blind plunge to please the Francophone regime, Ama Muna stealthily moved to the North West on a Saturday and carted age-old artifacts of the region to Yaounde. Irrespective of the general outcry by the Anglophone population and traditional rulers, the ‘spoiled child’ remained defiant and unperturbed. The damage she caused the Anglophones by carting away their artifacts can never be repaired.

It is common knowledge in Cameroon that appointments are for the appointees to carter for their people. Francophone ministers excel in this. With Ama Muna at the helm of the arts and culture ministry, some Anglophones erroneously thought she could be of help to the Anglophone community as is common practice by her Francophone peers.

Unexpectedly, and to the chagrin of Anglophones, her stock in trade is victimizing the few Anglophones who she met in that ministry. Some Anglophone musicians insightfully created an association to carter for their plight and rightly curried for financial support from her. If information circulating is anything to go by, then Ama Muna instead slighted them as she promised the association FCFA 6 million and has never honoured her words but yet would give tens of millions to Francophone musicians.

 Who in Mbengwi does not know that were it left for Ama Muna alone, the CPDM would have been history in that sub division? Her power-hungry attitude, scores-settling and the witch-hunting of any CPDM official who tries to rise in Mbengwi are elements that have prevented the ruling party from growing as would have been the case in the area.

Yet, when it came to the election of a mayor to run the Mbengwi CPDM council, she not only energetically fought those who worked for the party’s victory but imposed a stooge who she can manipulate to consolidate her stay in government. Let Ama Muna be reminded that for denying the people of Mbengwi the mayor who would have greatly developed the municipality, the gods of Metta would haunt her all her life.  

The recent distribution of author’s rights money to musicians by her ministerial department portrayed the level to which she hates the Anglophones. While Francophone musicians went home with juicy packages, the few Anglophones who managed to cross the Rubicon had to be contented with pittance.

I call on the authorities of this land to investigate alleged swindling of millions she took for the construction of a court house in Kumbo. I remember that the fon of Nso in a bid to cajole her do the work gave her a traditional title but yet the move was not enough to spur her to do the job for which she was paid. I cannot help but feel sorry for the Anglophones.

I can say without any bias that there are several people in this world who I find unbearably obnoxious, and Ama Muna is all of them. What she is lacking in intelligence, she more than makes up for in stupidity. Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some like Ama Muna abuse the privilege. She has an inferiority complex and it is fully justified. One can rightly pontificate that Ama Muna hates to be identified with Anglophones and shows her disdain being of Anglophone descend.

As I end, let Ama Muna be reminded that she would not be in government for all of her life. Let her also not be oblivious of the fact that even if she would leave government after fifty years as she has been dreaming, she would still come back to Momo to meet the same Anglophones she has been discriminating against to please her Francophone hirers. She might have gotten her ministerial job thanks to her father’s closeness with Biya or through intrigues, scheming and unorthodox means but it takes character to keep her there. I have no problem with Ama Muna doing all to please Francophones in order to continue to stay in government but let her do so without hurting the Anglophones.