Decentralising Peace Initiatives Too

Who says decentralisation is not the way forward? Yesterday it was the central body sending out Government personalities to initiate peace processes at local levels. This, in response to the peace threats shaking Cameroon in the Far North, in the North West and South West Regions. Today, peace echoes have reached far afield. Gladly, the peripheries are visibly picking the pieces with the local population galvanizing peace meetings and setting up machineries to convince armed groups to look in the same direction with the communities for peace. This concord will be the condition for the young innocent generation to be given their right to regain classrooms. The various communities, too, will enjoy progress with development projects allowed for execution.    
The media of recent is awash with reports of peace initiatives from the base. While Ndian Divisional elite mobilized and stormed the Division last weekend 23 April, 2022 for a peace conference, other areas alike are closing ranks to see a return to normalcy for development to take the scene. Another recent example of peace rising from the base was the “Fontem Peace and Development Conference” organised in Buea last week assembling the elite of the community to talk the same voice for school resumption and for development projects to be executed in the locality after a six-year wrangling.    
Can these initiatives be seen as the fruit of decentralization whereby locals can take public creativity? With the resourcefulness touching the real fabric of society, who can deny that the community consciousness for the local and general good has been engineered by the current drive for decentralisation? Someone murmured that “when Yaounde used to come talk and go there was less feeling of self-enterprise than now that the foot can decide against the pinching shoe”.    
An academic and researcher, Associate Professor Fonkeng Primus, presenting to a peace conference listed some peace attainment recommendations to include: “acknowledgement of guilt, showing of remorse and repentance by the perpetrator of injustice, asking for and receiving of forgivingness, paying for compensation or reparation, as a prelude for reconciliation and peaceful co-existence.” Professor Fonkeng styled this concept of peacebuilding as gaining its origin from the Ubuntu philosophy of African Conception of peace and conflict resolution. He added that the principle is based on reciprocity, inclusivity, and a sense of shared destiny between peoples and communities as well as about democratic participation for peace.    
The advent of peace initiatives from the base augurs well for its sustainability, functionality and utility for all. A dearth of peace necessitates a bottom-top initiative for a solution. If brothers differed in opinion and the situation escalated to a conflict, only solutions of general interest can shift their positions and pull them together once more. When schools don’t function, the young generation loses its hold on societal progress. When the cocoa and other farm produce cannot get to the market because of insecurity the entire community mislays its stability. Worse, if people have to flee their homes to present as refugees in strange localities, how painful it can be. What if people’s plans to develop themselves and their communities fall like a pile of cards? Many public servants working outside their places of birth would love to resettle back home during retirement, but when this dream is abruptly shattered what becomes of family stability? The list of consequences of a breach of peace is long and nightmarish. It necessitates a profound solution so that such indigestion of life is overturned.    
It is however understood even from the study of the 1789 French Revolution, which brought about social and political liberties to the world, that people do not rise and risk everything against a system for nothing. But when it overflows to self-destruction and lacks direction, it...