ANA in a State of Critical Ferment: A Disheartening Discourse by a Cameroonian Writer

 

ANA IN A STATE OF CRITICAL FERMENT: A DISHEARTENING DISCOURSE

BY A CAMEROONIAN WRITER

 

Cameroon and Nigeria are twin-brothers. Each time there is an almost dying Head of State in Cameroon, there is a similar one in Nigeria. But this time, that of Nigeria has completely ruined the economic livelihood of every Nigerian resident at home. Apart from Nigeria, there is no other country on earth where the citizens are deprived of government subsidies on the prices of their natural resources. Due to grinding economic hardship, Nigerians are suffocating to death every blessed day. As the largest body of writers in Africa, ANA would have distinguished itself from the madding crowd as the citadel of transparency, justice and of human integrity. On the contrary, ANA has blundered pell-mell. 

 

There are over four million Nigerians in Cameroon (see google.com), and I cohabit with them to the extent of feeling at home either in Cameroon or in Nigeria proportionately. That is why each time I am coming to every ANA Convention, I bring books and assorted edible and non-edible items from Cameroon and share them with some ANA members for the sake of fraternity. I don’t expect anything from them in return anyway. This notwithstanding, after four successive years of my charity to ANA and its members, I have come to the realisation that the majority of Nigerians don’t like to give something to outsiders. Maybe they give among themselves. None of them has given me anything. We Cameroonians are born givers. The day Nigerian writers will come to Cameroon, they will be loaded with gifts which they may not be able to carry back home. 

 

Since 2019 till date, I have donated hundreds of my books to the ANA library at the Mamman Vatsa Writers Village, Abuja, and to some State Chapters. During the 2020 ANA Convention in Ilorin, I gave about fifteen copies of my books to Dr. Usman Oladipo Akanbi for his Imodoye Writers Enclave. When he saw me at the 2023 ANA Convention in Abuja, he starred at me deviously like a Muslim starring at pork. It seems to me as if that Dr. Usman Akanbi only bothers himself about who he is. He doesn’t bother himself about who other people are. I neither compel nor persuade anyone to know who I am. I am who I am, and I will be the greatest creative writer of all time in the nearest future. I hereby invite anybody who disputes the foregoing assertion to confront me using my contact at the end of this discourse.   

 

I don’t attend ANA Conventions from anybody’s pocket. I attend them from my pocket. And in my life, I don’t queue up to fight and eat food as I saw some delegates doing during the ANA Convention this year queuing up to eat a meagre cuisine, fighting and disgracing themselves. Cameroon is a paradise on earth, abundantly blessed with a myriad of foodstuffs. Come to Cameroon and eat as much as you like. If venerable men and women of that high intellectual and artistic repute from all the nooks and crevices of Nigeria are compelled to wash plates as a condition sine qua non to be served food during an ANA Convention, it puzzles me what makes the presiding ANA President proud of. What a woeful failure in organising a convention of just about seven hundred participants which was announced about four months ago!

 

Let me put sense into his head. Serving people food in a decent manner is more respectful and more honourable to them than decorating them with academic robes. In which schools or homes did the outgone ANA President learn manners? You can’t treat aged people with superior portfolios to yours like dogs and be grinning up and down the hall as if everything is alright. You are thus stupefying yourself. In Cameroon, in a grand occasion like this one, we would treat an outsider or outsiders as our special guests. This seems to be absent in Nigeria where almost everybody bothers only about his or her survival. God did not create man to survive. God created man to live. So, if you can only afford to survive, the best thing for you to do for yourself is to commit suicide.    

 

Two days before the 2023 ANA election took place, a senior member of ANA said to me passionately that Hajiya Farida Muhammed will not win the position of President because Dr. Usman Oladipo Akanbi is more educated than her, he comes from a wealthier family background than her, and his running Vice President, Gomba is just fresh from winning the most heavenly Nigerian Prize for Literature with a financial package which is capable of bringing everybody to their knees. I replied to him that like Benjamin Franklin says, “I give your choice of side fair quarter. Let what will be, be. This world neither belongs to me nor to you. It belongs to its Creator. And ANA election is not the end of the world.” 

 

Another senior ANA member said to me that I would not be allowed into the hall during the ANA election because I am a foreigner. I replied to him that he was absolutely correct, and that I was not desperate to enter the hall. I am not desperate for petticoat things in my life. The only thing I am desperate for is the sublime. And the sublime is so uncommon to be found on common ground. 

 

When I returned to my hotel room that afternoon and was preparing my return to Cameroon the next morning at 5.30 AM, it dawned on me for the very first time that writers count among the most narrow-minded individuals I have ever come across. Maybe their life-sworn creativity occupies the most precious portion of their heads. To be very candid, I had never known that in the midst of writers, I am in the company of individuals with the most petty mentalities ever known to humanity.      

 

Although I should not bother myself too much about ANA (which is none of my businesses), I must honestly say that by intentionally hurling Hajiya Farida Muhammed to the bottom of the abyss with all kinds of electoral scheming and machinery, ANA will live to regret the nationwide and worldwide connections and multi-dimentional opportunities which her Presidential tenure would have brought to ANA. Farida was poised to take ANA to a level where no one would have ever imagined. Its a blunder which must be mourned by every ANA member, because the time is NOW, not another time in the future.   

 

Never underestimate the power of a woman; one of impeccable substance and great influence for that matter. I recently read a message on Facebook posted by Dr. Usman Oladipo Akanbi calling for cooperation, and some laughing stocks were praising him. How miserable! We don’t call for cooperation. We cooperate. Leadership is not intellectual knowhow. It is instinctive. You don’t tell a baby that you love him, but he knows that you love him. He cannot express it in words, but he can feel it.

 

The callous ploy to implant Dr. Usman into the ANA Presidency (maybe against his will) is not based on anything else than on the outgone President’s unwillingness for his EXCO to also rise to prominence. When you market positions in an association to highest bidders and completely sideline competent former EXCO members like Farida, Adedoyin, Yogiza etc, do you know what you are doing to the future of the association? It is not too late. If ANA is wise, it should come to a compromise and repair the impending damage which this election has done. 

 

When you buy a position by buying voters to vote for you, you can never be committed. I hope Nigerians are now very happy for having received large envelopes and voted their current President. If they are happy, then, why did ANA caption its 2023 Convention as “A Nation in a State of Critical Ferment”? If they are happy, then, why have the prices of fuel and transportation skyrocketed? Show me just two out of close to two million Nigerians who are living happily right now. Like Nigeria, ANA is in a state of critical ferment. When you sell competence and commitment in exchange for mediocrity, the only thing you have left is no other than critical ferment. 

 

I have a special proposal for Dr. Usman Oladipo Akanbi. Fortunately, having been one of the beneficiaries of my lavishing largesse, you know me either physically or otherwise. The only help I have for you at this juncture is to inform you that you have been used by the outgone ANA President to settle his scores, and sooner than later, you will realise that you are the scapegoat. Don’t be excited that you won the 2023 ANA election. You have the greatest opportunity at your disposal right now, which no ANA President has ever had. Make a press release thanking your electorate, however, informing all and sundry that you have stepped down with honour. Honour is not sold in the market. It is borne by an individual for the sake of his or her self esteem. Don’t be deceived by praises from friends, colleagues, family members, classmates and age mates. If you like, do as I have proposed. If you like, don’t. There is a today, and there is a tomorrow.  

 

Yours sincerely,     

 

Nkwetatang Sampson Nguekie

Literary Mentor & Versatile Facilitator

Bamenda, Cameroon, 13th November 2023

WhatsApp: +237 677 26 19 86