Paradise Lost? A Political History of British Southern Cameroons from 1916 to 1972 by Nfor Ngala Nfor

Description

This captivating and detailed book should be required reading for anyone interested in learning
about the current conflict in the Southern Cameroons region of Cameroon where oppression by
the central government has incited an armed insurgency aimed at creating a new state called
Ambazonia. The author, currently a political prisoner in Cameroon, correctly points out that this
conflict is rooted in the reconfiguration of Africa by colonial powers after the First World War and
particularly in the “botched decolonization” of Southern Cameroons during the 1950s.
-Tim Stapleton, Professor, Department of History, University of Calgary, Canada Author, Africa: War
and Conflict in the 20th Century (2018)

This inspirational book is not only insightful and well-written, but also well-researched and
historically grounded. It captures the complexity and multi-layered complicity of the UN, France,
Cameroon Republic, and the UK as well as their roles in the 1961 botched decolonization process
that led to the annexation of British Southern Cameroons which had attained self-government in
1954. The book draws both national and international attention to an end to the glaring injustice
suffered by the territory and its people at independence. The author’s depth of knowledge
regarding the reasons for the current struggle for the restoration of statehood of Southern
Cameroons, is balanced by depictions of the people’s long suffering and their inherent right to
freedom and independence. The book will definitely be of interest to political scientists, historians,
economists, students and friends of British Southern Cameroons and Africa.
-Bridget A. Teboh, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, USA

This book is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the Southern Cameroons
Question. It will enrich the compelling repertoire of scholarship on the Southern Cameroons
heroic struggle for liberation from a vile black-on-black colonization. The author, a prisoner of
conscience, is one of Southern Cameroons’ indefatigable liberation fighters, a man who has
suffered torture and unlawful imprisonment countless times since the mid-1990s and is currently
serving a pre-determined life sentence peremptorily imposed in 2019 under cover of darkness by
French Cameroun’s Kangaroo military tribunal.

-Professor Carlson Anyangwe, Former Executive Dean of Law & a Rector at Walter Sisulu
University, South Africa, Author, Betrayal of too Trusting a People: the UN, the UK and the Trust
Territory of the Southern Cameroons (2009)

Nfor Ngala Nfor is a product of the Political Science Department of Ahmadu Bello University
(ABU), Zaria, Nigeria. He is a Pan Africanist and a lover of humanity. Nurtured in African core values
and trained in mission schools with great emphasis in the fear of an omniscient and omnipotent
Creator, he is a strong advocate and defender of truth and a crusader for human freedom, justice,
equality, and dignity and right of all peoples to be masters of their destiny. As Chairman of the
Social Democratic Front’s (SDF) Constitutional and Political Affairs Committee, he worked hard for
the institutionalization of genuine democracy and the rule of law in Cameroon. To him, life is
worthless and meaningless without the restoration of the Southern Cameroons statehood. He
sees the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), which he came to lead, as the thorn in
Yaoundé establishment’s flesh, and treats members of the organization as members of his larger
Southern Cameroons’ family. At the time of publishing this book, Nfor Ngala Nfor was in prison in
Yaoundé as one of the leaders of British Southern Cameroons renamed The Republic of
Ambazonia. He was abducted in Abuja, Nigeria on January 5, 2018 and extradited to Yaoundé,
Republique du Cameroun.

ISBN: 978-1-943533-48-0 Ι Published 2020 Ι Pan-African University Press