The North West province of Cameroon: a province with her own codes of operation

The North West province of Cameroon, even though she is majority Christian of Protestant or Roman Catholic faiths, she has a minority Islamic population and a mild brand sharia law is applied via her Islamic courts. But, there are almost no inter religious confrontations. The only recurrent confrontations in the province are that of the farmers versus grazers. And the sources or causes are the ever reducing vegetations, whereas the population of livestock and people are growing. But, to add to the complexity of the province and her people, even though they are highly Westernised, Christianised and some Islamised, they have not abandoned their traditional beliefs. Above and beyond all the codes that civil servants needs to master before embarking into the province in order to work without any polemics, the North West province could easily be one of the best province for any civil servant in Cameroon to dream to work in.

But since most civil servants sent there are most often French-speaking Cameroonians, who are not very religious and who also snub their own traditional values and thus show little respect for the conservative way of life of the people of the province, confrontations always occur. The most hazardous thing for a civil servant in the province to do is to snub her Royals, Churches, Temples or Mosques. Any civil servant who doesn’t belief in God can work in the province, but if he/she tries to bring any libertine ideology or wants to destroy traditional values, he/she will meet the resistance of the people. However, civil servants posted to the North West and who have taken time to study the people and respect their own set out rules, do succeed and is also a benchmark and an assurance for promotion in Yaoundé. But if he/she fails in the North West, it might chime the toll bell of the end of his career promotion within the civil service.