FOR
A NEW MORAL ORDER IN NSO:
An Open Letter to Dr. Godfrey Banyuy
Tangwa
(alias GOBATA)
My
very dear Dr. Godfrey Tangwa,
The
opportunity, which has been offered me, of writing a letter to you, will not, I
trust, be misemployed if, at the start, I venture to express a hope that its
views on the great question of ‘Nso rebirth’ may secure for it a far-reaching
broadcast, as well as the kind study of all the key players attentive to the
condition of the Nso Kingdom. Nor can I doubt, that careful scrutiny of the subject will eventually lead, if not to the embracing of approaches entirely
new, at least to a general adjustment of those older methods which are
considered, today by our generation, as most disadvantageous to the civilization of our times.
Gobata,
not even for a split of a second have I thought of implicating you, in any mode
or manner, in a responsibility which is purely and entirely mine, but for the key reason, when such a task is laid in my hands to address so honored
a kingdom as Nso, it seemed my duty, in meeting this challenge, to gain the
support, if I could, of one of the most reputed African moral philosophers and
bioethicists, who happens to be my own Wirnso brother, Dr. Godfrey Banyuy
Tangwa. I thank God, for enabling me, to associate myself with you, on many
intellectual accounts so dear to me - you who have made the Nso Kingdom
scholarly proud, you who are the storehouse of Nso traditional ethical wisdom,
you who are the very quintessence of contemporary Nso genuine intellectualism,
you whose time-honored career has invigorated thousands of fledgling African thinkers
in the academic calling.
But,
I have said enough, by way of announcing your arrival; and without added delay,
I turn to the subject of the day.
My
dear Dr. Tangwa,
I
should say, that I have no ‘real’ Nso, to argue for. I do, however, have great
respect for the potentials and capacities of the kingdom of Nso, to battle for
their vision of what they are, and what they want to be. There has been a
colossal and premeditated attack against the notion of Nso society, without
even a trace of doubt that such schemes don’t exist out of the figment of the
imagination of those who foster such cultural ferocity. Allow me to come back
to this later.
A gentleman read some pages of a work I wrote
about Kumbo and with the boasting of someone who went through some writing of a
place he prized, asked me what sort of Nso identity I want to see emerge? My
answer must have disappointed the chap. The question is not really a concern to
me, I told him. I believe, I continued, that the real thing in life is a
spiritual experience and that that experience is wholly a human experience. Nso
is given to me, and it is what I do with it that matters. Being Nso came
accidentally but it is the sole home. But Nso identity is quite confining. I
believe that trying to define yourself as merely a regional being is childish.
So I write about Nso not because I define myself as Nso, but because my
spiritual pilgrimage, that is, my human experience won’t make ample meaning if
the Nso cold morning harmattan skies, my grandpa’s mouthwatering orange trees,
the Tooy thin dusty squirrel paths, my mother’s mesmerizing corn-fufu, the
sacred night music of the dreaded Kikum-ke-vitse’e,
are not consulted. And I really see it as a kind of nonsense for anyone to have
to beat the chest and boast ‘I’m Nso!’ I mean Gobata, isn’t it obvious I am?
Now,
the picture of Nsoness I argue for, is not one of assertive cultural
sermonization and Nso narrow-minded dogmatism. It is that which allows, as
well, ample space for intensive critical thought and concerted historical
evaluation. People must know, that Nso is not a passive static fact of landscape. People make their history, that is, the Nso are a people who have energetically
moved from place to place, dynamically made treaties with neighbors,
passionately fought wars, occupied lands and extended their geography. So, Nso
is both a geographical, cultural, and religious entity. Since the remarkable
reign of Tah Mbinglo, great interest and variety in contextual Nso traditional
paradigms has developed. This has likewise featured the splendor and color of
customs and scholars in Nso land. This, in its measure, is a step in the right
direction. But to take the thesis too far, that Nso is merely a making of its
peoples’ struggles is to be disingenuous. They are a people who have their
stories, their Supreme Power, their gods, their ancestors, their myths, their
folklore from time immemorial. Sheer dynamism is at work here.
Dear
and beloved Dr Tangwa, in this high-powered campaign for a new Nso, in this
sheer collective ethnic camaraderie, in this family feeling that fetches all
and sundry, what do we keep our eyes peeled for? The conceivers of this bold
idea have made a difficult choice, a daring choice, and the right choice. The
emotional effect is that, an enabling environment for all of us to apply our
energies, our intellects, our creativity, has been generated for rebirth and
reincarnation of the lost poise and vanished values symbolic of our proud
Tradition. Nobody has to teach you and me that an African kingdom must have two
heads – one for its homegrown customary sensibilities and one for the modern
exterior susceptibilities.
In
a little less than a generation, we have distanced ourselves from Nso
Traditional Religion, and have sharpened our secular identity, of putting
foreign convictions at the center of native life, at even Taakibu’. This has not augured well for Nso. To continue the
unbridled quest for individual power and pomp at the detriment of communal
peace, let them know that when one man cooks for the public, the food will be
exhausted but when the table is turned and the public cooks for one man, his
waterloo is only a matter of time. Let them begin to leave when the ovation is
still rising on octave. For those who decide, instead of leaving, to joining
the stream of agent provocateurs and overseeing the plummeting of Nso into a
sinkhole of disaster, doomsday is around! How bad did tradition have to be to let
sociopathic, conceited, spoilers of power enter where they are not supposed to?
When a Kingdom strays dangerously close to a frantic devotion to one man, and
cuddles the tendency to treat any disapproval as heresy, and hugs partisan
arcana and faction-fighting, it stokes up steadily the fires of its own
undoing.
But, with the facts before us, a candid
analysis must go beyond the defenders of the Fon arguing that it was solely
down to the enemies of Nso; a candid analysis must go beyond the critics of the
Nso King, pinning all the blame on the Fon and Nso Kingdom. The condition we
are in, now in Nso, is one where not just everyday medicines are effective for
communal health – we need a complete paradigm change in diagnosis, a radical
adjustment in way of thinking, and a revolutionary path to treat chronic
cultural chaos. Gobata, I have occasionally been berated for putting conscience
before laws/customs, a charge that comes often from people whose life is yet to
witness blood-curdling agony. And I have not changed my idea because no one is
presenting a better and more charming one. Unfortunately, under pressure from a
growing social diversity and globalized secularity, combined with a decline in the consciousness of rich Nso ethical values, some people are pushing for more
legalistic and inhibitive options as a means of redeeming vanished customs and
lost lore. The desire for real reform is noble, but it is dangerous when the
space for good conscience is arrogated by all sorts of beliefs and
superstitions in the name of reform.
A
wirfon myself, of unadulterated Nso blood, I trust in authority; but in
authority that wells in from within and not just from without. That is why,
though comfortable with the power our Fons and Shufais and Fais and Sheys
wield, I respect each individual's right to be their own moral arbiter. Let
conscience take center stage now that culture’s place in our lives has come to
occupy so many headlines. Yes, we are fortunate – fortunate to know these
things. Because, of course, being part of the Nso kingdom, I wouldn't dream of
sending out to kinsfolk what I myself have not already tested and seen to be
true and good and beautiful. This is why I say, my brother, that conscience is
the word in our society so attacked by forces unknown before.
Conscience
is the feeling of being inside your head, looking out, of having a soul.
Conscience has saved me from recent deadly perils. Conscience shoulders
collective customs and ethics. Conscience is divine because it is God’s
domicile in that still, small space of man’s heart. Conscience has been my soul
mate to my voyage towards answers that came each time to me as if there was
always a voice telling me to go that way, to take that direction that leads to
peace and capacity and ecstasy; that river shore, it took me always, where ‘me’
meets God.
Moral
conscience silences the blabbermouths of unthinking crowds, conscience shames
the flagrant fake news heating media pages, conscience takes me deep inside the
beating pulse of my heart saying: you are what you are, not what they have
made-up you are. Leadership in Nso must be comfortable with conscientious
objection. Consciences like rights, do clash. I understand that there are
unformed consciences among us. But I would prefer an unformed conscience at
work, to an incarcerated conscience. Of course to change the anti-conscience
arrogances that we have planted in our hearts and in our culture over passing
generations, is a pretty big deal. But then again, moral conscience is the real
big deal.
There
is no harsher satire passed upon us, no starker malice done to the Nso than by
the Nso who assume that they are unfit for higher duties than that which
consists only in creating trouble for kinsfolk and tearing the Kingdom into
pieces. Dr. Tangwa my brother, there is a wretchedness in every human heart
which wretchedness cash or capital can’t buy. This strange misery is not
deficiency of funds or fortune; it is feeling unwelcome and unwanted. God has
created Nso with plenty. The God who is plenty has gifted Nso enough.
Conscience
is a word that has yawning roots in all salutary cultural traditions.
Christianity for example, is my first book and I would think it remains my
first book. The first people who predisposed me to the challenges of the world
did so preeminently from a Christianity platform – mum, dad, Bernard Fonlon,
John Henry Newman, etc. – and I have nothing but gratitude to the Catholic
Church. But do not make the mistake of thinking that my high praise for the
Church is one of blind and stupid conformity. I have wrestled with those who
represent the Church in my vicinities on what true Christianity is. This
tussling takes birth from a heavyweight lifting consciousness of a
still-divine-voice in me called conscience.
Dr.
Godfrey Banyuy Tangwa, it cannot be doubted that those who disrobe life of
conscience disrobe life of responsibility, disrobe life of human rights.
Conscience is not liberal consensus or a democratic counting of votes on a
truth about a thing. Conscience is not man’s creation, but God’s. Its home is
solitude, and solitude dreads the madding crowd. On conscience, the trouble
with Nso is, that among those who lead, there is always fear to find
accommodations with those who disagree with them. Our laws and practices are
tangled and wanting in renewal; the said laws and practices find no resonance
with the populace, this, because we don’t permit them think for themselves and
accept rules from deep-seated unwavering convictions. A community leader, of an
aboriginal well-meaning public like ours, must accommodate mature consciences,
must harbor those who represent a loyal opposition to all that he does, must
entertain those with difficult questions who expect from him mature answers.
Conscience is the heart - passion for the good. Not in a vacuum it works well,
but in zones infected by strong human feelings and passions. Its finest terrain
is at the crossroads of human itchy impulses and wild affections, and the color
of conscience is not the white garment of a medical doctor, but the red blood pours in the perturbing operation room.
Dear
Gobata, tyrants, and imperialists have conspired to inflict on you and me,
colonial conditions not very far removed from those described for us by Thomas
Paine to his American compatriots of more than two hundred years ago, that
“Tyranny like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with
us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph”. Today in 2021,
the words of Paine resonate with colonized Bui and our entire country.
Revolutions occur. They shape and inform history. The Southern Cameroons’
revolution is irreversible. A new spirit, of NsoFirst, has arisen and insists Nso packs its bags and walks out of
the mayhem. Enemies of progress may not cheerily wave us off with a shrug. And
we want today, nothing short of jumping to the island of Nso prosperity in the
middle of this difficult river. The running of the liberation struggle from
elite leadership has been a communal disgrace and the mounting amount of
abductions and massacres a humiliation. The Nso Kingdom bus cannot remain on auto-driver,
while the driver strolls up and down the aisle assuring passengers that all is
well. Like unserious people we have played the ostrich, refusing to face
painful facts about homeland and unpleasant truths about why our people are so
auto-determined for liberation. We have proposed ridiculous solutions of love
devoid of truth, of mercy devoid of justice, simply because we don’t want to
deal with it. And we expect to heal!
Today,
young spirited men and women have risen up like one man, determined to plunge
our nation into previously unchartered waters, and inserted a mob of question-marks
into the presuppositions of ‘One Cameroon’. This accomplishment is not merely political;
it writes the more familiar historical colonial course. It moves the unspoken
question: “is there a Cameroon?” away from a one-dimensional political
stricture – away from mere verbiage and custom – to the more critical arena of
morality and interior interrogation. It serves notice on the conscience of Nso,
rips apart the hollow claims of legacy, and replaces them with hitherto minor,
yet commonsense confirmations of moral conscience. Their actions have
challenged the hypocrisies of international politics and the pomposity of our
elite class. They have pointed it frontally to the African that the question is
not that of mere survival but one of ringing back total dignity from a colonial
unrelenting foe. Despite their exaggerations (and here there have been
pitifully many such exaggerations), the young freedom fighters have cut the ground
from under our feet and are ready for anything. A man recently clattered (and I
think he is right) that a review of
today’s Nso without a word on these defenders of our land is as laughable as a
word about a Nso without Ngonso. The
Nso-First cultural crusade is sure to herald a fresh firsthand kind of Nso
Kingdom. And such productive populism must also open the way for truth and
justice, and self-determination and independence. It must pierce into the entrails
of Nso intimate life and do a clinical operation on all ailments.
Healing
is the oxygen of the world. When I invoke healing, the staple of this word I
appeal to, is that which is candor-loving. Healing is moral, and I am not
talking about bourgeois, fatuous rule-ridden, pharisaic, self-incriminating
morality here. The new therapeutic moral order for Nso, I talk about, blows
around, like the free wind we breathe. It is the instinctive urge to wish another
well, in this upsetting pain-producing world. It is not purity, least of all
righteous bigotry. It is compassionate Jesus in his Good Samaritan metaphor. It
is Ubuntu’s “I am because you are and since you are, I am” and “he who will
hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.” So, it is
cathartic.
The
power of compassion is the dire need of the hour, also the supremacy of
empathy. And we must complement and affirm. Compliments are sunshine to the
winter of the world. Candid compliments disarm souls and if the soul is in mud,
they wash them clean. The power is in vulnerability. Everyone likes to be given
accolades – a pat on the back. So, praise, hug, cuddle, kiss, compliment, but
wait for no fee, for an encomium that awaits a prize, is an implement; an
implement is a device and devices are schemes and stratagems. The trick with
compliments is that you can also give yourself one. But not always when no one
gives you one – always compliment yourself, like the mythical lizard who fell
from a big cola nut tree and complimented himself “I did it!”. Your dignity is
at stake if you starve yourself from compliments. Because compliments are
affirmations of the truths people have done, they are sister to the virtue of
truth. So they are morally charged because they give value to the human spirit.
And therefore in a genuine moral order, compassion, courage, and compliments are
three magically words. But among them, courage is the most necessary and the
most precious too. Without the courage to face evil, to accept your true self, to
turn around and begin again, there is no moral life.
Dear
Dr. Tangwa, some twenty-five years ago, I paged through Dr. Bernard Nsokika
Fonlon’s To Every Son of Nso.
In that work, he defined Nso and explored Nso identity. It was a hypnotizing
read. I take up today, with pride, his superlative perspective, on cultural
leadership. And I say that homegrown governance if it is effective, must be
questioned, must be quick to learn, must be open to people from outside its
habitual circles, must be prepared to pay attention to opinions it might find
unsettling. The apathy against his name as a consequence is understood – for,
genuine intellectuals do not play it safe with compatriots. It is an
intellectual’s duty to depict the shabbiness of corrupt cultural clumsiness
imperiling communal bliss, to shine a light on dangers ahead and carve out an
alternative course. If complicit now, what can Elites say when traditional
leaders wreak social havoc, emptying the treasury of Nso trustworthiness still
left?
Today,
Nso initiative is everywhere on the increase; it has received unprecedented
encouragement from NSODA, it is the
talk of the day in NFU Europe in the
popular hachtag #NsoFirst - it has
won hearts with and in the Diaspora. Unfortunately, in Fonlon’s day, the
reverse was true; and his publication of his To Every Son of Nso was an act of political suicide from
which his character, was to suffer severe assassination, among his people.
Shortly before he wrote the work, there was the old spirit of peace. Our
people, under the banner of Fonsuiy,
were a peaceable people. It was infuriating and even frustrating, to raise a
voice against established traditional authority and established political
bigwigs. Then Bernard Fonlon came and called us to accountability and to an examination of conscience. To Every Son of Nso is therefore fundamental
not only to a fuller familiarity with Fonlon’s theory of Nsoness, but to an appreciation of a fearless putting to use of
conscience.
Dr.
Bernard Fonlon has seared his mark so indelibly into the consciousness of
modern Nso. His enduring vision in To
Every Son of Nso was that, in the dim days that were approaching and
have now inescapably come upon us, the fullness of the Nso idea demanded that
the Nso intellectual becomes traditionalist and the devout traditionalist
intellectual. He had expected that it was his mission to bring this honorable
project to completion. But it was not to be so. His was that noble calling
still: to witness by the way he experienced and understood the apathy,
antagonism, hostility, persecution, and unpunctual appreciation of his
contribution to Nso progress to the very personification of that model he had
devoted his life to foster: the formation of the saintly Nso scholar. The work
bore a message: it was a missile against narrowness. This parochialism – the guilt of his people – the very keynote of closed-mindedness, had narrowed Nso
down to a point where it was dwindling in its obligation to embrace all and
sundry. Instead, it was producing small-minded people who were living in their
small worlds and thinking it was a big world, people who preferred the solitary
“Nso” sky to the challenge, also, of the world outside, and – in failing to
turn to the good and wise people of the Kingdom or to allow a thousand
consciences to speak out – were failing to prepare Nso for the challenges of
today.
Dear
Dr. Tangwa, when you look at the many photos of Dr. Bernard Fonlon, you find a
man who as he grew older, sorrow and pain fixed themselves upon his aspect. And
it was the sorrow and pain of one who had a fundamentally and chiefly saintly,
because Christ-like, tenacity to form human consciences and liberate minds and
hearts. Of him, during this time of reproach and counter reproach, it can be
said: “Now cracks a noble heart”. But this was a heart that could be satisfied only
in the God who wished all were one, in a Nso Kingdom in which the intellectual
and the traditionalist are determined to grow even more closely together in
that camaraderie of kinsfolk shining like a big light on the mountaintop.
Full
justice has not been done Bernard Fonlon. There is about this man, we must
admit, an abundant deal that is enthralling; and perhaps, in the appalling
calamity through which Nso Kingdom has passed, such a personality – perplexing
and controversial – is necessary. And, if Nso must rise from the gutter of its
current chaos where what’s most senseless is regarded as most learned, if it
must break its injurious run as a contentious community, here is one indication
of that progress: more and more of us would be acquainted with the Bernard
Fonlons, in our midst. And they too would recognize we wish them ingrained at
the core of our collective life, not relegated to Nso obscure confines, to
disappear and expire, little lamented, in a pessimism compacted in the flippant
phrase, “na book we go chop?”
Our
people say shinen she shuu shi yo’ yii
ba’ri la’, that is, a loud and noisy bird would not raise a home, since
like a man with a dead conscience (if only consciences do die), such a bird is
a true loud-sounding empty gong. Conscience calms unmannerly human lips,
conscience stills panic-stricken minds, conscience arouses human confident
action. What I say is that while culture and tradition are remarkable, a people
that hinder the workings of human conscience is heading for calamity. Once
their capacity to think for themselves and make choices is compromised,
communal accomplishment is sacrificed. The foundation for this is human
dignity, and its killer is human emasculation. It would be difficult to expect
anything else. The underlying point is not, as someone suggests, about the restoration of lost lore. It is that the central mystery of human life in a
gifted community like ours is human
conscience.
I
am my own man. Let people be what they are. I say that I see no inconsistency
in my being at once a good Nso and a good Christian. I am an indigene of the
people who believed in the bongabaa-moo-yir-wan
sagacity. But if they keep bigoted pride far away, if they say no to odium, if
they distance themselves away from yimo,
if they turn their backs on calumny and give a welcoming embrace to kindness,
camaraderie and compassion, the teeming fruits thereof would be plentiful,
since precisely, “an animal rubs its
itchy flank against a tree, a man asks his kinsman to scratch him”; and if
these words are true Dr. Godfrey Tangwa, we can no longer be indifferent to the time-honored judgment of our ancestors, that “wir dze wir bi’ wir”.
I
free you then, dearest Dr. Tangwa, from this stretched conversation we have
been kindred spirits, and, closing, pray you, and your whole family, to accept the
best New Year wishes and prayers from your friend and kinsfolk,
Fr. Gerald Jumbam
(Ph.D., Moral Theology)
1 January 2021
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