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51 14 Fun of Fons: A Cautionary Word about Fondoms July 06 1998 Informal debates about the relevance of traditional rulership in the Grassfield province of the Southern Cameroons has gained much currency especially following the recent creation of the North-West Fons’ Union, a re-emergence of a previously split grouping of sub chiefs, chiefs, chieftains, warlords and genuine Fons. No one is contesting the desirability for traditional rulers to be symbols of dignity, unity and justice, but the fact that most of them have become actively involved in partisan politics since the restoration of multipartism at the beginning of this decade has made it impossible for them to fulfil their ordained mission, thereby encouraging discord amongst their subjects. Before and after the one party system , tribal leaders were and continue to be officially designated by francophones as ‘auxiliaries of the administration- the state’ and whereas the Southern Cameroons had endowed the institution of traditional leadership with a dignified consultative legislative chamber known as the House of Chiefs, the integrity and pride of this institution has steadily eroded in Anglophone Cameroon since the Southern Cameroons was hoodwinked in to an unholy marriage with French Cameroon. The process of undermining the role and dignity of this institution reached its peak in 1983 when President Biya, a few months-old novice in power, was conferred the incongruous title of Fon of Fons by some gullible, attention- seeking traditional leaders of the Grassfield. Was it an act calculated to make fun of the institution of Fon-doms? This act of picking up crowns from the gutter or is it casting pearls to swines, or more appropriately, elevating humpty dumpty to the throne; this gesture was viewed by serious-minded citizens as a buffoonery at best and an abomination at worst. And ever since that act of desecration, every Tom, Dick and Harry who 52 wears a red feather on his raffia skull cap began parading around with the self-declared title of Fon. Who in God’s name is a Fon? Ethnologically speaking, every village head in the Grass field and its immediate ethnographic environs was invariably addressed as FO, Nfon, Nfor, Mvon, but with the coming of colonial administration in the late 19th century, the title Fon and the geographical entity recognized as a Fon-dom assumed a more precise definition referring strictly to kingdoms (not villages or clans) which the colonialist met in place, viz; the Fondoms of Nso, Kom, Bafut and Bali-Nyongha. You may dismiss this as a piece of “ancient” history. Fair enough. But we have no right to distort that history. The arrogation of titles has led to harmful trends such as self-aggrandizement of petty rulers, territorial ambitions of errand-chieftains of the regime, and one of the most recent being a noisome suggestion by pro CPDM plotters that Santa, an asyphalus chief less agglomeration, described by ethnographers as a “no man’s land” could attain the status of an administrative division by an intriguing political algebra that would miraculously subsume the Fon-dom of Bali-Nyongha as part of Santa. This is more than a mouthful of Santa black beans to swallow. This kind of political chicanery is certainly informed by a shameful precedent whereby several years ago, Mbengwi, the chief town of Momo division, after failing to meet the qualifications to become a SONEL centre such as population density and number of electricity consumers, adumbrated a political formula which automatically transformed Bali Nyongha into a part of Mbengwi in order to win its bid. These reckless and irrational consequences of aggrandizement by petty entities and nonentities must be checked, and soon enough, if we are to stop this phenomenon of making fun of Fons or is it Fon of Fons? S-N F. ...

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