1. It has come to our attention through the news media that the CDC, the largest employer after the Cameroon government has been handed over to foreign investors. A CDC protocol agreement signed on Wednesday 20th June, 2018 in Yaounde finally brought to reality the much rumoured speculation of privatisation.

Three companies are involved: Tylium from Egypt, Fertilore and Timac Agro from France are the new owners of the multi agro industrial establishment in Southern Cameroons.

2. Cameroon Concord News sources revealed that Tylium is interested in the palm oil and rubber sectors, while the two French firms want to revamp production and fertilization of the CDC plantations.

Present during the signing of the protocol agreement were the Minister of Agriculture and Rural development and the General Manager of Cameroon Development Corporation, Njie Franklin Ngoni.

3. It is my duty as a Southern Cameroonian, a bonafide Elite of BAKWERI COMMUNITY and Chairman of United Socialist Democratic Party (USDP) to join my voice with that of Dr. Nfor N Susungi in informing national and international public that this transaction is null and void for two basic reasons:

(1) Because the government of LRC has no locus standi in such a transaction and;

(2) Because the people of the Former British Southern Cameroons were not consulted in this transaction.

4. The validity of these two reasons for rendering null and void the transaction stems from the very origins of the CDC (Cameroon Development Corporation) itself.

5. The CDC was at its inception the brain child of a young German financier/tycoon Karl Ludwig (AKA Max Esser) who founded a company called Westafrikanische Pflanzungsgesellschaft Victoria (WAPV) and Westafrikanische Pflanzungsgesellschaft Bibundi (WAPB)
Max Esser went to Bali to negotiate a labour supply agreement with Galega II, the Fon of Bali in 1894 by which Galega II would be empowered to recruit and send labourers to Karl Ludwig’s plantations on the coast.

6. The availability of practicality free labour coming from Galega I the Chief labour contractor enabled Max Esser to expand his cocoa, banana and rubber plantations very quickly and before long his estates covered over 20,000 hectares stretching from Muyuka to Bibundi and with the steady export of produce to Germany, Karl Ludwig became one of the richest men in Germany and received a special medal from Emperor.

7. When Galega I died in 1904 he was succeeded by his son Tita Gwenjang Fonyonga II. In 1905 Fonyonga II was proclaimed paramount chief (Auberhauptlinge) by German Captain (Hauptman) Hans Glauning of the Bamenda station in front of the Chiefs of some 45 villages of the Menemo and Moghamo ethnic groups over whom the Germans gave him paramountcy. He was given the power and means to recruit plantation labour over all these ethnic groups.

8. However when the Germans were driven from their colony of Deutche Kamerun in 1916 by the an Anglo French allied force, the German colony was divided between France and the United Kingdom, with France keeping 2/3rds of the territory. However, the United Kingdom acquired the part the part that was thereafter known as the British Cameroons which included the territory on which the German plantations were located.

9. When this demarcation was confirmed in the treaty of Versailles in 1918, the British Government decided to place the German plantations under the “The Custodian of Enemy Properties”. However the British Government later decided to offer the plantation owners the possibility of reacquiring their estates through an auction. The same German investors continued to operate the plantations till WWII.

10. When Germany again lost WWII the United Kingdom once again expropriated the the coastal German plantations and placed them under the Custodian of Enemy Properties.

11. In 1946, the United Kingdom signed the UN Trusteeship Treaty with the United Nations by which the territory of British Cameroons was entrusted by the United Nations to the United Kingdom as the Administering Authority. The British Government proceeded to split the territory into Northern Cameroons and Southern Cameroons with the latter being governed under the McPherson constitution of 1951 as part of the Eastern region of Nigeria.

12. In 1947, the Legislative Council in Lagos Nigeria decided to create a statutory corporation to collectively manage the German estates at the foot of Mount Cameroon in the British Southern Cameroons which had been seized from German plantation owners at the end of WWII and placed under the Custodian of Enemy Properties. The statutory corporation was named Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC).

13. Following the creation of the CDC as a statutory corporation, the United Nations Trusteeship Council which was the highest legislative organ over the UN trust territories (including the British Cameroons which was governed as part of the Nigerian Federation) adopted a resolution in 1948 stating that the mandate of the CDC was to manage the former German plantations for the benefit of the people of the British Southern Cameroons.

14. This is a very important historical detail because the implication of the resolution of resolution of the UN Trusteeship Council is that the CDC is effectively the collective inheritance of the people of the British Southern Cameroons.

15. The Bakweri Land Claims Committee (BLCC) was born in 1948 to lay claims to the lands that were expropriated from the Bakweri people by the German colonial administration following the defeat of the people of “Lower Buea” in 1895 in a battle against a German force led by Rittmeister Maximilian von Stetten and the death of Chief Kuva Likenye of Lower Buea.

16. For decades the CDC has been the largest agroindustrial complex that grows and processes (for export ) mainly banana, rubber, Palm oil, Palm kernel. It is the second largest employer with a workforce of around 22,000 employees.

17. During the 1990s the Cameroon government was required to privatise state owned enterprises as as part of the conditionality of the World Bank/IMF for receiving debt cancellation under HIPCs program.

18. Attempts by the Biya regime to privatise the.CDC failed because the attempt was opposed by the Bakweri Land Claims Committee which filed a case at the African Commission for Human and Peoples Rights in the Gambia to reinforce its claims on the land.

19. But the other reason why the Biya Regime could not privatise the CDC is because the government cannot provide legal proof that the enterprise is owned by the government of LRC. Indeed it’s origins in the Legislative Council in Lagos and the 1948 resolution of the UN Trusteeship Council shows that it is owned by the people of the British Southern Cameroons.

20. A presidential decree made public on 20 January 2016 states that the government of LRC became the sole share holder of the CDC. This decree is an act of expropriation under international law and the expropriation was carried out in violation of the UN statutory instrument which brought it into being in 1948 and without the consultation of the people of the Southern Cameroons.

21. From the foregoing backgrounds information it is clear that the Biya regime has no legitimacy to offer any part of the CDC to CDC to Tylium of Egypt, Fertilore and Timac of France becsuse the CDC remains the collective and historical inheritance of the people of the British Southern Cameroons by virtue of the UN Trusteeship Council Resolution of 1948.

22. The decision of the Biya Regime to transform the CDC into a joint stock company whose shares are100% owned by LRC is an illegal act of expropriation which shall be challenged eventually in the appropriate courts by the Bakweri Land Claims Community (BLCC), SWELA and Southern Cameroonian population in general.

23. The acquisition of the CDC by the Egyptian and the French company should never be accepted by the Bakweri people, SWELA, and by Southern Cameroons in general for the following reasons:

(I) the Bakweri people, and SWELA who are the beneficial owners of the CDC were not consulted;

(ii) the matter of the Bakweri Land Claims Committee which went to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights was not addressed

(iii) at a moment in history when the people of the Southern Cameroons are in a State of war which was declared on them on December 2, 2017, the Biya Regime cannot sell the assets that are part of their collective inheritance in order to raise the money to wage a war against the beneficial owners of the assets.

24. For these reasons it is our duty to inform the general public that the privatisation protocol by which the CDC was said to have been acquired by Tylium of Egypt and Fertilore and Timac of France is null and void.

25. The BAKWERI People in particular and the SWELA deserve due respect for what rightly belongs to them. In the meantime, the representatives of the respective companies shall not be allowed access to any part of the CDC plantations until the process and necessary consultation with the appropriate legitimate owners of CDC is done