By Sonita Ngunyi Nwohtazie
Graced under the theme “peace building through films,” Mokun Njouny Nelson, Station Manager of Foundation Radio said that the project is a nonpartisan and apolitical one to go through a complete circle of conflict, peace, justice and reconciliation process.
Having as its driving aim to support democracy and humanitarian causes in Cameroon, the Fomunyoh Foundation alongside its founder, Dr Christopher Fomunyoh, a senior Associate and Regional Director for Central and West Africa at NDI an international organization based in Washington reassures continuation to looking for a sophisticated method in reconciling peace in the two English regions of Cameroon.
“We have as objectives to do a pre-test phase and maybe in the future with a target audience being administrators, journalists, those involved in the conflict resolution studies, not forgetting the church” Mokun Njouny Nelson said while adding that “With all the experience that has been gathered here, we can continue to move ahead to increasing the size of our target audience depending on their level of participation oh involvement in the process of reconciliation.”
The manager of the Foundation Radio explained that the film 100 days was based on the Rwanda Genocide in 1994. The film narrates the tale of the lady Josette who is a Tutsi with dreams of building a family with her boyfriend that was killed in the Genocide that saw the Hutu community massacring and killing about 1,000,000 Tutsi population.
Linking the case to that of the ongoing crisis in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon, he said that “it comes into context with the anglophone crisis as we have seen the devastating effects of the crisis, properties burned down to arches, one million people dead, families separated. Anglophones living in the five years conflict have very bad narratives on the effect of the conflict,” Mokun Njouny Nelson said.
“The devastating effect in 100 days began with a conflict with the night of truth that speaks the steps you can use in resolving a conflict by ensuring peace and beyond right and wrong. Focusing on justice, forgiveness and peace after the conflict we hope to encourage peace discussions to help solve this conflict, we find ourselves in and also to reconcile peace despite our various.”
Mokun Njouny Nelson added: “The Fomunyoh Foundation has always been showing that democracy is respected. But with the unfortunate crisis that we find as serve in, which is helping no one; we can’t continue to advocate for democracy amid a conflict. So, we thought that while moving ahead, we ensured that we handle matters as they occur.”
Etoh Anzah George, a participant in the” film watch” and the North West Bureau chief of the Horizon newspaper, both the church nor the United Nations did not play their role. “To begin with, I should say that we have often seen The United Nations coming in but this time they were late. Which was one of the aspects picked out from this movie. We should recall it. Again, with the church, we saw that in the movie, the church was to play her role.”
“It adds us a moment to think again that as a journalist to be able to direct our writings towards peacebuilding, which should be educative so that even the common man should be able to picture out the ills of the situation we find ourselves in,” Enzah George advised.
“Journalists though we don’t have the main actors or those fighting on the ground we have to sensitize these two parties because what we dish out as news, is what our public takes for the truth be it negative or positive. So, if we can be more constructive in our writings the process of peacebuilding might be reconsidered.”
