Christmas and Cameroon's Redemption

   Christmas and Cameroon’s Redemption

Beyond the festivities of Christmas, Cameroonian Christians are once again challenged to live up to the core values of their religion, and impact positively on their socio-cultural and political environment.

                                        By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai*

     The birth of Jesus Christ, which is celebrated every December 25, is the portentous event of the Incarnation, from which Christianity draws its essence. Christians the world over, mark the birth of the Son of God and the Savior of mankind, whose spectacular life of virtue, revolutionary teaching and sacrificial death on the Cross of Calvary, form the basis of the over two thousand year-old Christian religion. Even in a world overrun by secularism and materialism and other social forces impacting negatively on religion and morality, a world witnessing an inexorable decline in Christian values and Christian worship especially in Western industrialized societies, the continued influence of Jesus Christ in a global context is unmistakable.

     Across the globe, Christmas has come to be associated with the festive spirit, family reunions and the celebration of family life and friendship with the exchange of greetings, visits and gifts. It is that time of the year when many are inspired to stretch out the hand of fellowship and solidarity in charity and thanksgiving to all who have survived the stresses and the strains of the passing year. The legend of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of all generous people played out in the form of Father Christmas or Santa Claus, has always excited the curiosity of children, while orphanages, hospitals and prisons will often witness a boost in charity visits at this time.

     For Cameroonians, however, Christmas 2013 brings to a close a year of shocks and pains and blood and tears. Cameroonians have been struggling to cope with bad governance, decrepit social infrastructure, worsening economic fortunes and widespread social insecurity. And as the year draws to a close, many are counting their losses with a fair dose of stoicism and characteristic hope. Given the terrible scenario playing out in the country, manifested in mass poverty, high corruption in government, gross official recklessness and near zero governance, this Christmas should serve as a poignant reminder to those in power, to embrace service to humanity and improvement of people’s welfare as a central theme of their governance activities. This, in any event, is enjoined of them in the 1996 Constitution, which Mr. President swore to uphold.

     In spite of the agony and the social chaos that have endured in the country, however, the celebratory spirit of the Cameroonian will not be dampened. The incurable optimism in the Cameroonian; their resilience and undying spirit, now obviously stretched to the limit, is what appears to have secured the peaceful quiet that prevails amid the subsisting trauma of life in the country. Perhaps in the view of many, Christmas is too important a milestone in the Christian life cycle to be abandoned to the vagaries of disoriented and misguided politicians and robbers in government who are in the habit of distributing food items to the poor during Christmas, as if the beneficiaries have no need to eat outside of the month of December. Ideally, government should do better to embark on measures to empower such poor people to feed themselves all year round. Many Christians will go out to worship and to celebrate, if only to demonstrate to their so-called leaders that they do indeed have a substantial stake in this country, and that despite the wholesale plunder of the treasury, they cannot and will not be denied the conduct of their religious obligations and festivities.

     The Cameroonian condition has taken on a life of its own, however, somber such life. The mindless looting that is going on in the country in the name of governance, with telling outcomes in mass poverty and collateral damage, has become an embarrassing trademark of public office. Cameroon’s social conundrum today is exacerbated by the heightened incidence of corruption and obscene display of stolen wealth by public officials without due regard for the majority of citizens who continue to wallow in poverty and misery. The result has been rising criminality by unemployed youths who have resorted to armed robbery, such that travelling home for Christmas has become risky and daunting as weathering the siege of war. The government has dropped the ball allowing bike riders to take virtually every principal city in the country hostage; all in the name of survival. The bend skin menace (for want of a better expression) has been allowed to fester for too long and has now degenerated into some kind of a low-intensity insurgency against state authority. It has gotten to a stage where the government is now helpless and clueless on what to do to address the issue. This is an affront on the government and the people of Cameroon that is unacceptable.

     Christmas is, however, the proclamation of good news. It is a celebration of joy and of hope. The Christ, whose birth is marked every December 25, has given the world a roadmap to abundant life, peace and prosperity. Taken seriously and applied in our individual and corporate lives, the values preached by Jesus, namely sacrificial love, justice, compassion, leadership by service, forgiveness, humility and purity of heart, will transform Cameroon for the better. The disposition towards crass materialism, excessive wealth accumulation and blind pursuit of pleasure is clearly at variance with the spirit of this holy day.

     And so beyond the festivities of Christmas, Christians in Cameroon are once again challenged to live up to the core values of their religion, and impact positively on their socio-cultural and political environment. There is need for sober reflection on the moral imperatives of the political and economic choices before the nation. The values which symbolize the life of Christ – love, truth, justice, humility, service, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, remain elusive as Cameroonians struggle for the soul of the nation. Incumbent and aspiring Cameroonian leaders must abandon the path of selfishness, greed, primitive accumulation and inordinate ambitions if the country would prosper. Christians and non-Christians alike must embrace the higher value of sacrificial leadership that make for lasting peace and prosperity.

Merry Christmas and a more prosperous New Year 2014; to all Cameroonians.

*Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai is a Public Intellectual and graduate of Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was Managing Editor of the Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy. A former Research Analyst for Freedom House, he is a Consultant and lives in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.