How Ahmadou Ahidjo Under-Developed Northern Cameroon

By Jing Thomas

A sophisticated and scholarly people, with a longstanding history of trade, politics, learning and animal husbandry, was lulled to sleep with the narcotics of "balanced development" and its dangerous by-product of favoritism.

Balanced development is not a new concept. In the context of post-colonial Africa, with its fragile ethnic patchworks that pass for nations and a development landscape disfigured by history and culture, the concept seems all the more imperative and provides a perfect recipe for social justice and political stability. After all, is there any greater claim to true development than one that is collective? And did all parts of any country see the light the same day?

In a multi-ethnic nation, while the benefits of development enjoyed by each tribal or regional component may not necessarily be commensurate with its contribution, a minimum sense of fairness demands that everyone should be seen to be making maximum effort, at least to justify entitlement to such benefits. The same sense requires that any development experiment should be based on strict and morally sound rules and devoid of double standards and opportunism. Here, Ahidjo's efforts at uniting around the notion of balanced development start to develop warts.

 

In Ahidjo’s native North Cameroon, children were compelled to go to school and all kinds of incentives and inducements were provided, from free books and uniforms to attractive scholarships. It was far easier for a Northerner to join the military, a formidable lever of power, than members of other regions; special entrances, often made simpler to suit northern whims, were reserved for people of this region to gain easy access into most of the professional schools.

It was almost standard practice for many of its businessmen to grab huge loans from banks and some national financial institutions like FONADER with no intention of repaying.

To cap it all, there was a tarred road that linked Garoua to Maroua, the most important Northern cities, at a time when even the national economic capital was not linked to the political one by such a road infrastructure. For good measure, a modern stadium, complete with synthetic grass, for a region that still did not own a division one soccer club, was thrown in.

The official version of this discrimination, for this is what it ultimately degenerated into, one that has been mindlessly regurgitated by people who know very little of Cameroon and tend to depict Ahidjo in angelic light, held that the former president acted because the North was a "disfavored" region that needed to catch up with the rest of the country. A superficial appraisal of the situation may tend to lend some credence to this claim, which in reality has no bearing with the history and sociology of the country.

If Ahidjo's action was to protect a vulnerable people,Eldridge Mohammadou, one of Cameroon's greatest scholars on the history of North Cameroon, tells a different story. In a series of very brilliant and interesting articles that were published in Abbia, he has demonstrated the central role trade and education played in the rise of north Cameroonian cities such as Garoua and Maroua.

Long before Western institutions really began to take root along the coast of Cameroon, the north was already reaping the benefits of the trans-Saharan trade that linked Bornou, gateway to Hausaland, to Kano. The Diamare region supplied horses to Sokoto and other parts of northern Nigeria and in turn received a wide range of products from them. With the blossoming of trade came Arabic scholarship and its profusion of koranic schools where instructions, contrary to popular belief, were not confined to religion but also extended to other fields such as grammar, astronomy, poetry and mathematics. This development of trade and scholarship accelerated after the jihads that fastened Fulani grip on North Cameroon and gave rise to an organized administration.

It is a measure of the efficacy of this system of education that led early German administrators to note the propensity of Northerners to grasp and speak Arabic better than the German language. At a time when Islam reigned supreme in the region, the fact that Arabic was the language of the Koran and the prophet was no small inducement

This brief account, depicting the North in full stride ahead of the rest of what became Cameroon in almost every sphere, is ample evidence that Ahidjo perverted his own "balanced development" program. Assuming that he saw development only in Western light, could Fulani children have been more disfavored than those of the "Pygmées?" Rather than balancing, was he not trying to tip the balance in favor of the North? What it amounted to in the end was that a sophisticated and scholarly people, with a longstanding history of trade, politics, learning and animal husbandry, was lulled to sleep with the narcotics of "balanced development" and its dangerous by-product of favoritism.

After Ahidjo's experiment, are the Northerners better off today than the rest of the country? Illiteracy still has a firm hold on the region whose population of the blind, of beggars and armed robbers continue to outstrip the national average. Diseases such as river blindness and meningitis are constant companions.

Balanced development indeed!

Originally published on Imhotep.

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Comments

[dango tumma]

ahijo or biya are all french appointed
governors of their oversea colony of french cameroun. their mission is to gather wealth for their masters and themselves, not the people, they store the remainder in europe, after their death,these money stays on in european banks, to pay europeans ddevelopments and pensions, same true yesterday , true today.
problem is they cross the line and invaded british southern cameroon, and we want paul biya who speaks no english to carry its tail and military and be gone.

[Dr A A Agbormbai]

This article truly describes what can happen to any group of people who have had it too easy. They stop working and very soon lose the ability to work hard.

Then, when they are overtaken by events and lose their power base, they turn to crime (the easy way) to make ends meet. Because of their laziness, they are overtaken by other groups who know the value of hard work.

Ahidjo turned the North into a group of good-for-nothing people by giving them undeserved privilege. This is like the child who grows up in a privileged home that made life too easy for it. When the child became an adult, he (or she) couldn't cope with adulthood because he was brought up to know that life is easy.

Now, are you sure that the same fate doesn't await Biya's tribes people? They too seem to be having it all too easy in Cameroon. With them appearing all over the government (be they competent or not) it is not surprising that most of the government incompetence and embezzlements (that set back the country) derive from Biya's tribes people.

[Ma Mary]

Dr Agbormbai, I nominate you as management consultant on assignment to the Camerounese government to fix their problem, and your salary is $750,000US plus chauffeur, furnished house in Bastos with servants and expense account, French health insurance. Otherwise, don't waste your time. Join us to fix our own country.

[Martin 'Nko]

If Ahidjo had favoured business men from northern Cameroon by taking money from bank & not paying back, we can say thanks to Ahidjo because at the same time Cameroonian people has seen that despite all, some stupidities were not tolerated even among his own people; (since when reading you, we have the feeling that he was not the president of all Cameroonian).
Thanks also to Ahidjo because there were no deficits in those banks when he was leaving Etoudi; tell us then what become all these banks few years after he resigned?
You mentioned Garoua-Maroua highway but you forgot that the money he left to build Douala-Yaoundé modern highway had vanished & a so called highway was built instead.
Why didn't you thank him for the job he did in the West province by connecting cities for exemple.
In the end, I don't feel any intellectual honnesty in your writing; if you were as good as you pretend to be in your analisies, I think you shouldn't talking about Eldridge Mohammadou in that way after he has passed away. Great writer do not use their pen as you do.
Sorry but you seem not to be the type of Cameroonian new generation wants. We are looking for uniters but no dividers who do not propose any positive solutions for Cameroon.

[kidzeru austin]

If thats all Ahidjo could do for his people then I really pity him. Give us a chance one day; God 's time will come though and see what we can get for ourselves. he couldnt even give them a school. We'll begin with the ring road and the rest will follow like manna from heaven. Wait and see

[Abdu]

Mr. Nko, unity does not mean that we should run away from our history - that is the typical Cameroonian attitude of burying our heads in the sand because we don't want to face the bad news. Mr. Jing Thomas has not written anything new here. Check out the works of former CRTV journalist and CPDM member of Parliament Zacharie Ngniman or the memoirs of Ahidjo's Protege, Dakolle Daissala, just to name a few, to understand that Ahidjo was in the end a very regional leader more interested in the Fulbe/Muslim hegemony in the North than anything else.

Tomorrow, when some historian will write how the Biya regime tried in the 1980s to create an artificial Beti business class to counter the Bamileke, he will be called a "divider"...

[elbatida mohd ibrahim]

actually we were kids when ahidjo was sworn in.but nevertheless history has proven it self again.y is cameroonians now wishing if it were ahidjo? we are all human we are bound to make mistakes. if ahidjo was a regional ruler then there is bello b maigari nd the rest of the fulani who were in his cabinet but still he gave the mantle of leadership to p.b. let tell ourself the truth cameroon of yesterday nd of today which one is accomodating.pls i want all cmrs to ask their elders who re above 60s to tell them the balance.nd if we continue with this rhetoric concept then we will not stand the chance of building cmr. the effort of unifications that took place in 1961 well be in vain.long live cameroon