The internet, still slow and inaccessible to many, has been restored in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions, sources and digital rights groups say.

Access Now, a global advocacy group that has been pushing leaders to stop disrupting the internet under the #KeepItOn campaign, confirmed the internet was back as of Thursday (Mar. 1). While social media sites were back, users continued to complain about pages uploading slowly while some websites still couldn’t be accessed without a virtual private network.

Otto Akama, who runs the Makonjo media startup in Buea the capital of the Southwest region, also said the network was “very unstable.” This was especially true, he added, for the national telecommunications service Camtel. Since it operates the country’s fiber-optic backbone, the company has a monopoly on the nation’s internet infrastructure—making it easy for them to shut down the internet or pressure other telecom operators to do so.

“It is several times slower than it used to be,” Akama, whose company uses the Camtel service and was contemplating switching to other operators, said. “We lose several hours per day waiting for pages to load.”

For over a year now, the internet in the two Southwest and Northwest Anglophone regions has either been completely off or slowed down for more than 240 days as of Feb. 28 this year. As the blackout dragged on, the country recorded one of the longest shutdowns ever on the African continent. The internet was back on for 48 hours in January for a diplomatic visit, but otherwise, it’s been off for the entire period. There are strong doubts about the permanency of the current restoration.

With mounting international pressure, Access Now and Internet Sans Frontières joined a lawsuit along with a consortium of local and regional civil society organizations, which cited violations of freedom of expression, access to information, and discrimination based on language.

But that wasn’t before businesses like internet cafes, microfinance institutions, money transfer agencies and many of the digital startups in the Silicon Mountain were deeply affected. Akama said his company lost 3,000 euros ($3,700) every month. Ayuk Etta, whose company Skylabase provides software to financial institutions, was forced to relocate some of his operations to The Gambia.

The political crisis that kickstarted the shutdown is still flaring on too, as the central government continued repressing dissent over the perceived marginalization of the English-speaking minority. Last October, Anglophone separatists declared independence for a region they called Ambazonia, leading authorities to kickstart a military crackdown. The fallout from that violent clampdown is now spiraling, leading to a refugee emergency, and escalating tensions with neighboring Nigeria.

Source: Quartz Media

No fewer than 142 Cameroonian are taking refuge in Akwa Ibom State as a result of the crisis rocking the Southern and English-speaking areas of Cameroon, the State Comptroller of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Livingstone Amadi disclosed weekend.

Amadi who made the disclosure during an interview in Uyo said the refugees currently spread across three local government areas of the state. The State Comptroller of NIS, who is barely three months old in the state, said the Cameroonian refugees were being camped in makeshift structures in Oron, Eket and Mkpat Enin Local Government Areas of the State.

According to him, the Akwa Ibom government had assisted with relief materials, stressing that the Cameroonian refugees experience was a national issue to Nigeria given the influx of people from Southern Cameroon.

“You know border states like Cross River, Benue and Taraba, are also affected by the refugees fleeing English-speaking areas of Cameroon into Nigeria.

“The Akwa Ibom state government had sent relief materials to the three different camps to support the refugees there. We have also gotten delegations from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the United Nation High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR),” he added.

Since last year the English-speaking regions of Cameroon had witnessed tensions over alleged discrimination against them by the majority French-speaking population, leading to thousands fleeing the country.

Amadi said within the last three months of his assumption of duty, he had rebranded the state headquarters to make the work environment attractive to both staff and the public.

“We have tiled the passport office, giving facelift to the comptroller’s office; we are tiling the production and enrolment office in the next one week. We are making judicious application of the little funds that we have,” Amadi stated.

The NIS comptroller said he was impressed with the conduct of his officers in the command, emphasising that his officers had exhibited the highest sense decorum in border management.

“The Federal Government is working on modalities for ease of doing business in Nigeria, my officers are very responsible, they cannot brutalise any businessman coming in or going out of Nigeria.

“We are a security agency of government interfacing with the public at all times. My officers had been conducting themselves in an orderly manner depicting the behaviour of trained and disciplined officers,” he maintained.

He said it was unfounded that his men had been extorting money and brutalising travellers along Oron beach in Oron local government area of the state.

Culled from All Africa