Dual Nationality Law of Cameroon: Time to Change.

American

Swis

French

Background

Can Cameroon – a country which wants to have its emergence by 2035 - afford a development policy which shuts out some of its most resourceful and skilled citizens on the counterfeit claim that their patriotism is questionable because they reside abroad and have taken up foreign citizenship, usually for practical reasons?

After Cameroon won the first Afro-Asian football finals against Saudi Arabian Jeddah in 1985, the Saudis refused to hand over the trophy on grounds that Cameroon had fielded an ineligible French player during the first leg encounter in Yaoundé. The player in question was none other than the legendary Roger Mila who had showed up for the game with his French passport. The Cameroonian government insisted that even though Roger Mila carried a French passport he was still a bona fide Cameroonian citizen who had the right, in fact the obligation, to defend the colors of his native land.

Another recent incident involving the Cameroon makossa king and author of the celebrated “You must to Calculate” Ndedi Eyango was in 2013 refused the opportunity to manage the Musical Copyright body on the claims that he has an American citizenship.

In the 1990s, the same Cameroonian Government barred another Cameroonian icon, the irascible novelist and critic Mongo Beti, from running for the 1997 parliamentary elections on grounds that he was not a Cameroonian. The reason? Mongo Beti returning from exile a few years earlier, had entered the country using a French passport. Until his death a few years later, the Biya regime continued to describe Mongo Beti as a foreigner who was ceaselessly meddling in the affairs of his host country Cameroon.

These three incidents involving passports from foreign countries clearly capture the weaknesses and arbitrary application of Cameroon’s outdated and highly restrictive nationality law (Loi no. 68-LF du Juin 1968 portant Code de la nationalité) which is out of step not only with the reality of Cameroonian society today, but also with current world-wide trends. According to article 31 of the 1968 nationality code, any Cameroonian who acquires the nationality or citizenship of a foreign country, shall, upon that acquisition, cease to be a citizen of Cameroon.

Why the Rush for Foreign Nationality?

Until recently, dual citizenship was a marginal issue which primarily concerned Cameroonian athletes (particularly professional footballers) in Europe. In fact, it is an open secret that practically every European-based player on the Cameroon national team holds a foreign passport. Like other Cameroonian professionals in the Diaspora, footballers take up foreign citizenship for practical reasons (e.g., to avoid UEFA and national league quotas on foreign players and Non-EU Players). This is not only applicable to footballers, even other athletes have also rushed to get foreign nationalities with François Mbango and Hassam Ndam one of the latest in that domain. In other cases, dual citizenship stems from the fact that some of these athletes were born in countries that grant citizenship by birth, but they later decided to play for Cameroon rather than for their country of birth.

Why Now

Today, thanks to the establishment of a vibrant and ever-growing Cameroonian Diaspora communities around the world (particularly in Europe and America) and the equally growing number of children of Cameroonian parentage born in these foreign countries, the issue of dual citizenship has become a critical one.

Reasons to change that Law

Five principal reasons command this change:

1. The necessity to anchor our country onto the current and ever increasing context of globalization'
2. The urgent need to normalise the status of many Cameroonian families currently living in very uncomfortable and exceptional circumstances imposed on them by the current law and being lived by many as a denial of the cultural heritage of our country to them for which they are nevertheless considered to be co‐owners. This injustice seriously undermines the harmony of these families ‐ who are fundamentally Cameroonian – and at the same time, it plunges these families into an unnecessary and harmful moral insecurity which is detrimental for our country;
3. The supreme interest of the image of our country which is also brought about by the exposure and performance of our sons and daughters abroad'
4. An encouragement and further motivation of our Diaspora so that it can quantitatively and qualitatively increases its participation and contribution to the emergence of our country that we hope to attain a little earlier than expected;
5. The arbitrary application of the Law is an indication that the law needs to be revisited. Almost all Cabinet Ministers have a foreign passport (French), including the president who has a Swiss passport.

Fear of the Diaspora?

In 2001, former Prime Minister Peter Mafany Musonge conceded in a press conference in Chicago that the issue of dual citizenship was an important one, and intimated that Cameroon may eventually have to follow the trend towards dual citizenship if it intends to fully exploit resources and skills of its ever-growing Diaspora community. Cameroon is amongst the list of very few countries who still practice this form of discrimination.

As posited by Dubissi Tande in 2006: The fact that most Cameroonians in the Diaspora are considered opponents of the Biya regime and that the dissonant calls for dual citizenship legislation have been coupled with demands for Diaspora voting rights has not helped matters. It has inadvertently created and emotionally-charged and partisan environment where a reasoned and informed debate on the issue has become virtually impossible since many in the Biya regime consider the granting of dual citizenship rights to the Cameroon Diaspora as an unnecessary and reckless reward for the very people who are trying to bring down the regime in power.

Today, the issue of dual citizenship in Cameroon is less about excluding foreigners who are reluctant to give up their old nationalities, and more about including bona fide Cameroonians who now live abroad and are part of the highly-skilled, much sough-after and extremely mobile international workforce. Other countries are furiously competing for these skilled workers by offering them attractive incentives ranging from high wages to permanent residence and even citizenship. Cameroon must be willing to offer equally enticing benefits - the most obvious being dual citizenship – if it also intends to compete on an equal footing with these countries and benefit from the skills of these professionals.

To date, there is no evidence to indicate that Cameroonians who have taken up foreign citizenship have become less attached to or less interested in their homeland, or that they are a threat to national security as a result. The case of Lydie Eyoum and Thierry Atangana cannot by any means squash the debate on Dual Citizenship. On the contrary, the Cameroonian Diaspora is contributing significantly in shoring up the Cameroonian economy. The remittance of Cameroonians abroad amounts to millions of dollars annually; Diaspora-owned business ventures employ thousands of Cameroonians at home; Cameroonian alumni, cultural, professional, and other Diaspora-based organizations carry out thousands of charitable ventures (from scholarships to communal development projects) in Cameroon each year. In the same vein, many prominent Cameroonians in the Diaspora have given the country a visibility on the international scene which it would otherwise not have had.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Without naming names, many of our countrymen today that make the pride of our country ‐ high profile statesmen, international footballers and other athletes, artists, writers, opinion leaders and businessmen who are all renowned internationally – and who would like to make their talents, expertise and competence sometimes acquired internationally available to our country, are blocked from doing so by this Subsection 31 ( a). They are then unfortunately unable to serve the country they love, above all.

Whenever they have to choose between their professional, economic and social future, by seeking to obtain citizenship of their host countries and the law of their fatherland, they are immersed in an immeasurable distress coupled with a terrible fear between an objective choice and what they have in their hearts.

The 1968 Law is discriminatory because it is homing in its application. As an illustration, we violate this Law by accepting that, for reasons related to immigration and not their choice of heart, most of our players of the national soccer team have foreign nationalities as second choice. It is obvious that if this had not been the case, they would not return to play for Cameroon. Yet they are our ambassadors and spokesmen of our country in the world which, paradoxically, does not recognize their nationality. It should also be noted that the provisions of this Law were invoked by Tunisia to disqualify Cameroon for the 2014 World Cup and we were lucky that there was a flaw of procedure.

Beyond Cameroonians living abroad with other nationalities, there is the important case of Cameroonians from so called mixed families consisting of a parent of Cameroonian origin, the other parent from another nationality and their Cameroonian children, who more so are proud of being Cameroonian. The 1968 Law is in denial of our cultural traditions that claim that our children are Cameroonian even if one of the two parents is not.

Because of situations often related to professional or economic requirements, through this outdated law, we discriminate the right of fatherland to many of our sons and daughters and this is sincerely at odds with our time. More seriously, this law requires brides and grooms of Cameroonians to be forced to choose their nationalities and thereby obliging them to choose between what they are and what they have chosen to become by love and conviction. This has the effect to at best often put our fellow compatriots through a true test of martyrdom and at worst prevent unions between foreigners and Cameroonians that would naturally have occurred if our country was in line with its own realities. The current law ensures that most foreign spouses and children of foreign spouses married to Cameroonians are forced to violate the law or make a painful choice between reason and the heart.

Today, thousands of families are waiting for the Cameroonian nationality law to be firmly sealed in logic and justice. Many of them have lived for many years in Cameroon, where they raise their children in their stepfamilies. They are fully integrated in the Cameroonian society. However, these spouses do not to give up their original nationality, which is an integral part of their identity and their culture which they feel that they must pass on to their children-our children. It is absurd that foreigners who come to Cameroon with the sole purpose of plundering the country are welcomed as heroes and those give who us children, are forced to queue up for months to receive a residence permit which very often confronts them with the uncertainty of the application of administrative procedures.

It is therefore imperative that Law N° 68 ‐LF –of June 11th 1968 is modified and completed in order for us to no longer require our children, our husbands or our wives to choose between their two parents and their two countries. Furthermore, those who lost their nationality due to the provisions of subsection 31 (a) should be given a chance to be able to restore their Cameroonian nationality.

Moses Ngwanah