Preventing Conflict and Ensuring National Peace through Folklore: Option for Cameroon

This paper focuses on those aspects of Cameroon’s folklore whose promotion will enhance peace, security and national unity. Life in Cameroon is to a large extent oriented toward the study of Western art and models that Cameroonians have become like ‘albinos, neither Whites nor Blacks. The strive, conflict and destruction cause by the Boko haram and civil society in the North, North West and South West Regions has made true in Cameroon Eliot’s assertion that, ‘a people who ceases to care for its literary heritage (which includes folklore) becomes barbaric, ceases to move in though and sensibility’ (14). If Cameroonians to use Achebe words wish to ‘regain belief in themselves and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self –abasement’ (by the colonial masters, corrupt governance and now Boko haram and the Civil society; if they have to continue to sustain a sense of nationhood and national security; they must fall back on their folklore. The functional approach is used and our contention is that conflict can be resolved and peace ensured through a reorientation of the mentality of Cameroonians and this can be effectively done through governance that is based on their folklore. This is possible because no matter the level of education and sophistication of a people, their behaviour especially with regard to daily routines of life is guided mainly by the standards and principles traditional transmitted by their ancestors. Some forms of Cameroonian folklore are analyzed to show how they promote national consciousness, identity, national pride, harmony, unity and peace.