Re: Human Rights Abuse: Shouldn't the Nwerong be banned?

By Peter Musa

After having read your editoria of Monday 17 - 18th July, 2000 issue no. 933, I was left in doubt about your knowledge of Nso traditional institutions. However, your editorial was no surprise to me as well as to the multitude Nso men and women who do not blame you for being ignorant of Nso traditional institutions but feel that you can, through your media organ, bring disrespect to a people, their beloved leader and institutions such as the Nwerong. In the said editorial, you made no distinction between the paramount ruler of the Nso people and the regulatory society Nwerong.

In Cameroon, Nso has remained one of the few places where, in the face of modernity, traditional values and institutions command respect within and outside the country.  No honest and law-abiding Nso man shall ever put the authority of Nwerong to question. D.K. Musa in "Nso Traditional Sculpture" indicates that the "The limitations to the omnipotent powers of the fon in Nso society are excercised by the Nwerong society".

The Fon cannot have his way in everything; his rule is therefore, only legitimate when it receives the endorsement of Nwerong, which is a regulatory society". To buttress this, Tamara Northern in the Royal Art of Cameroon - The Art of the Bamenda-Tikar states that "The regulatory society is the agency of social control and law enforcement in the the kingdom. Together with the fon, it guards and maintains the mores and values of the kingdom as they have been established by the ancestors. But while the fon embodies the traditional belief and values as an ideal exponent, the regulatory society implements and enforces them. It is therefore likened to the executive arm of government. Its purview includes all levels of civil and criminal justice, as well as the quotidian tasks of guiding and enforcing socially normative behaviour in the kingdom".

How then do you challenge and refer to Nwerong when it is carrying out its duties as terrorist? Could you kindly publish the namesof people to have dissapeared at the Nwerong premises as claimed in your editorial?

The Nwerong it should be noted knows no corruption or bad governance. Unfortunately, this traditional institution is a secret society, else I would have suggested that the Nso Nwerong organises seminars which would have benefitted other tribes in Cameroon and abroad especially Commonwealth and Francophonie countries to which our country belongs.

Is it the United States (world's modern democracy) that allows execution of the death penalty in many of the states or the fon of Nso (no record of having killed a single person) a human rights violator? Have you bothered to thin about the gross human rights violations meted out to our forbears by Europeans who took them away into slavery? What about Africa's chance of hosting the 2006 World Cup which was recently denied? Was it not a clear case of human rghts violation in modern times?

In a democracy, traditional institutions and practicies are not condemned but are happily accepted as part of the society. Nso traditional institutions have a lot of experience in maintaining social order within the Nso fondom.

Cameroon is a state of law and culprits of human rights abuse should be brought before the courts rather than pointing fingers at Nso traditional institutions, His Majesty the Fon of Nso and to the Nwerong.

The Herald No. 937
Wednesday 26 - 27 July, 2000