Monthly Archives: May 2019

16, May 2019

Vietnamese and Cameroonian authorities attempt to resolve Nexttel crisis ⁰

Vietnamese and Cameroonian authorities have begun talks to resolve the managerial crisis at Nexttel, the brand name of Viettel Cameroon, ITweb reported. It is a joint venture by Viettel Global Investment Joint Stock Company, a subsidiary of Vietnamese military telecoms company Viettel, and local shareholder Bestcam. The crisis stems from disagreements in the management of the company by the Vietnamese and Cameroonian stakeholders.

Vietnamese shareholders have denied allegations by their Cameroonian counterparts that they had flouted Cameroonian business laws, including the OHADA law. El Hadji Baba Danpullo, chair at Bestcam, has accused the general manager of Viettel Cameroon “of running Nexttel like his private business”. He said the Vietnamese were recruiting their counterparts at the expense of unemployed Cameroonians.

The dispute also concerns issues such as signatures for financial transactions, engagement of foreign partners, purchase of telecoms hardware, and transfers of technology, amongst other things. The Nexttel crisis has resulted in several litigations in local courts between conflicting parties and has pitted Viettel Global against Bestcam. They owned 70 percent and 30 percent stakes respectively at the onset of Viettel Cameroon in 2014.

The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam, special envoy of the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Quoc Cuong, has held talks with the Prime Minister of Cameroon, Joseph Dion Ngute in Yaounde. The main focus of their audience lasting over 80 minutes was to seek a lasting solution to the Nexttel crisis, involving parties of both countries.

Source: Telecompaper

16, May 2019

Cameroon crisis reaches alarming levels ⁰

The security situation in Cameroon is spiraling out of control as the country faces attacks by the Boko Haram, deadly conflicts in English-speaking regions and a surge of refugees from neighbouring countries.

Some 4,3 million people – a sixth of the population- need humanitarian assistance across the Central African country.

This is a 30 percent increase from last year. More than half of the victims are children.

Dozens of schools have been destroyed with pupils and teachers kidnapped. Hospitals have been attacked too while doctors abducted to unknown destinations.

While over the years Cameroon has been experiencing attacks by the Boko Haram and an influx of refugees from troubled neighbouring countries such as the Central African Republic (CAR) and Nigeria, protests by English-speaking regions over alleged marginalisation by the government dominated by French speakers are tearing the country apart.

The crisis in the North-West and South-West regions have turned violent, with protesters and state security personnel killed.

“The level of the crisis today is more alarming than ever,” lamented Mark Lowcock, United Nations’ (UN’s) senior envoy in Cameroon.

He was addressing the Security Council, the UN’s supreme organ.

Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, expressed shock at the scale and brutality of the crisis.

“If we do not act today, lives will be lost. The future of a generation of Cameroonians hangs in the balance,” Egeland grieved.

UN and NGOs require about $300 million (R4,3 billion) to address the crisis but only $38 million (R545 million) has been so far received.

– CAJ News

16, May 2019

Norwegian Refugee Council statement to the UN on Cameroon ⁰

Mr. President, UN Security Council members,

I wish to thank the Security Council for this opportunity to speak about the massive human suffering I witnessed when I visited Cameroon three weeks ago.

I traveled to both the South-West province of Cameroon and the Far North. In the former, I met with communities fleeing armed conflict. In the latter, I spoke with refugees and internally displaced families fleeing Boko Haram violence.

Cameroon has been a generous host to refugees, including from the Central African Republic and Nigeria. We appreciate the cooperation of the authorities in providing sanctuary to people in great need.

Mr. President,

When brutal fighting displaces hundreds of thousands of civilians, it usually sets international alarm bells ringing. But, the shocking unmet needs of tens of thousands of people fleeing violence in South-West and North-West Cameroon has resulted in no systematic mediation efforts, no large relief programme, little media interest and too little pressure on the parties to stop attacking civilians.

The collective silence surrounding the atrocities is as shocking as the untold stories are heart-breaking. That is why this session is so important.

A group of displaced and disillusioned women I met told me that they felt abandoned by the international community, as well as by the conflict parties.

They asked me, where is international solidarity? Where are the African organisations, the donor nations? Where is Europe? This conflict has roots in generations of interference from European powers.

When I visited the provincial capital Buea, I met with families from the hundreds of villages that have been burned. They affirmed that tens of thousands of people are still hiding in the bushes, and that new attacks are taking place every week.

Children have been denied their right to education for years because of the political conflicts between grown adults. Most schools have been closed, and the Ministry of Education affirms that at least 780,000 children are out of school. We risk losing a generation to illiteracy.

I was also shocked by the scale and brutality of the crisis. Even hospitals have been attacked, and health workers fear for their lives.

The absence of a humanitarian response commensurate to the hundreds of thousands of people in great and unmet need is striking. We are too few humanitarian actors on the ground, and we are gravely underfunded.

My colleagues in the Norwegian Refugee Council and other relief organisations in Cameroon tell me they can reach people in need in the South-West and North-West despite the insecurity.

Parties to the conflict said they are ready to support access to all areas of great need. This includes the South-West Governor who I spoke with in Buea, and armed opposition groups with whom we are in contact. Our immediate priority is access and assistance to people hiding in the bushes, who as of today receive no assistance or protection. They fear they cannot return to their torched villages, nor do they feel that it is safe for them to go to the urban centres.

These families are terrorized beyond belief.

Similarly in the Far North, civilians feel abandoned. The humanitarian response is severely underfunded and underreported. The displaced children I met in the capital town, Maroua, and surrounding areas, had hoped one day to return to their ancestral lands from where they fled Boko Haram violence. But insecurity still plagues these areas.

The only thing that has changed for these communities is that their suffering and the violence raged against them has disappeared from our TV screens, hearts and minds.

In my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, I have too often seen how the lack of early intervention results in smaller conflicts becoming horrific and endless wars. There is still time to avoid the conflict in the South-West and North-West from escalating further, with untold suffering as a consequence. Equally, there is time to give hope and durable solutions to displaced families in the Far North, and to the Central African refugees that Cameroon hosts.

Mr. President, UN Security Council members,

Our conclusions are the following:

The UN, the Secretariat, this Security Council, and all the agencies and programmes of this great family of organisations, need to do better in what we have all pledged; act to ensure conflict prevention, conflict resolution and bridge building before it is too late.

The crisis in the English-speaking part of Cameroon is one of the world’s most neglected. The lack of information and international political attention has allowed the situation to deteriorate from peaceful demonstrations to the atrocities committed by both sides. We need more independent information and reporting from the crisis. And more than anything we need to protect and assist defenseless civilians.

We urgently need national and international conflict resolution resources to help stop the violence and start UN talks about the many grievances that exist. Mediation or facilitation of peace talks should be done by local, national or international actors that have the trust of both the government and non-state armed groups.
Organisations and countries with influence over the conflict parties must make it clear that the attacks on civilians, on their homes and villages, and their schools and their hospitals, are crimes under international law that cannot be allowed to continue.

The deep and acute protection crisis might also be alleviated by a greater presence by international organisations. The UN Country Team should be given the financial and human resources needed to put protection at the centre of its response.

A first step to break the vicious cycle could be a concerted international effort to reopen and provide protection for schools and schoolchildren. Today, the political and strategic conflict among politicians and armed men has paralyzed education for young people. It must be possible to de-politize education. The grown adults must at agree on finding a way for children to return to school, as the mothers I met pleaded for.

To do this, both parties must show willingness to make compromises on the issues that so early became contentious in this conflict. UN and humanitarian partners also need to strengthen their efforts to pave the way for an effective education response.

We need to ramp up the humanitarian response. As the Emergency Relief Coordinator noted, many of the 1.3 million people who need humanitarian support have received no assistance. A massive funding injection is needed to save lives.

We need to extend the scope of the humanitarian response beyond city centres and into rural areas in South-West and North-West region. The total funding for Cameroon must be increased; money cannot just be shifted from other regions towards the crisis in the South-West and North-West.

If we do not act today, lives will be lost. The future of a generation of Cameroonians hangs in the balance.

Thank you.

16, May 2019

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Government Objects to Another Security Council Meeting ⁰

According to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) Cameroon has objected to another UN Security Council meeting on the worsening humanitarian crisis in the country.

The meeting is supposed to take critical decisions that are expected to change the course of events in the two English-speaking regions of the country.

The government’s objection is retarding the deployment of UN humanitarian staff in the country’s two English-speaking regions where a simple protest has turned into a full blown insurgency that has resulted in the death of thousands of Southern Cameroonians.

It should be pointed out that the Yaounde government has been frustrating the UN and has even barred human rights organizations from entering the country.

Last year, the International Crisis Group was banned from the country while staff of Human Rights Watch were turned back at the Douala International Airport.

The government has been indicted by human rights groups for gross human rights violations, especially as it has resorted to a scorch earth policy that has created huge hordes of refugees who are seeking safety in Nigeria, Equitorial Guinea and Gabon and over half a million internally displaced persons.

Over the last two years, army soldiers have been killing innocent citizens, raping women and burning down villages and towns in the firm belief that Southern Cameroonians can be intimidated into submission.

The current rebellion has significantly affected the country, with state-owned corporations such as CDC, PAMOL and others being put out of business.

The country’s lone oil refinery, located in the southwest region, is under threat as separatist fighters threaten to disrupt oil product in the region.

The economy of the two English-speaking regions has been brought to its knees and kidnappings, mostly carried out by government sponsored militia, have become a lucrative business in the regions.

Meanwhile, the country’s Prime Minister, Dion Ngute, has been visiting the two English-speaking regions to sell a peace plan designed by the government with the objective of ending a rebellion that has had the full support of the Southern Cameroons Diaspora.

With over 4 million Southern Cameroonians living a broad, the Yaounde government has been given a run for its money and the Diaspora is determined to break up the country so as to end the exploitation of the two English-speaking regions by the Yaounde government.

The government’s peace plan does not seem to attract any recognition and sympathy. Southern Cameroonians are determined to fight to the last person standing and the government’s exclusion of separatists from any dialogue on the crisis is a death sentence on the peace plan Mr. Dion Ngute is selling.

Southern Cameroonians are aware of the product the Prime Minister is selling, but they are not buying it, as it is tainted with trickery, deception and dishonesty.

The Prime Minister’s visit was made to coincide with the UN Security Council meeting held on May 13, 2019 in New York to demonstrate that the government was doing its best to restore peace in the country.

While the Prime Minister is seeking to mobilize the population to support his peace plan, soldiers and government militia are still killing women, children and youths, making it hard for peace to return to the troubled regions.

However, if the Dion Peace Plan has to gain traction, the Prime Minister must seek to reach out to the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora that is using its vast resources to create a violent nightmare for the government.

The Yaounde government stands to gain if it works with the Southern Southern Cameroonian Diapora in a win-win partnership.

The Diaspora constitutes a fundamental component of the country’s population. Ignoring it or seeking to exclude it from any dialogue will be the government’s greatest undoing.

The Dion Peace Plan is doomed to failure as Southern Cameroonians do not trust the Yaounde government that is known to speak from both sides of its mouth.

The world has to step in to ensure Cameroon does not implode. A chaotic Cameroon is bad news to its neighbors, as pointed out by Equatorial Guinea on Monday during the UN Security Council session that urged the government to embrace the notion of inclusive dialogue that holds more hope than war.

By Linda Embi, Kingley Betek and Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai.

15, May 2019

Affirming the constitutionality and legality of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe led Interim Gov’t ⁰

Where Do Leaders Derive Their Powers & Authority From?
Power is derived from a higher authority. For Monarchs it is derived from God; for Elected Leaders & Officials it is either derived from the people by direct universal suffrage or by indirect universal suffrage through a Constituent Assembly (mostly referred to as an electoral college).

The aim of this write up is to clarify to all Ambazonians the legality and constitutionality of the President Sissuku Julius Ayuk Tabe led Interim Government (IG).

The Ambazonia Federal Constitution
At the 4th Conclave of November 2017, the Conclave representatives who where surely constituted, agreed in the Conclave Resolutions to submit the Constitution to Ambazonians for approval.

While the Constitution was pending approval from the Ambazonian people, the governing structures consisted of the following;

1) The Restoration Council:
This body was to act as a legislative body to exercise oversight on the IG. However this body has never been fully and duely constituted, therefore rendering it’s functionality and decisions null and void. In Constitutional Law the lack of due process invalidates and renders a decision null and void.

It is for this reason that the recent communique issued on 14th May by the Chairman of the Restoration Council Comrade Elvis Kometa, accusing President Sissuku Julius Ayuk Tabe of attempting to destabilise the IG, is null and void.

The Restoration Council has acted ultra vires as not being properly constituted renders all decisions and resolutions emanating from it null and void.

2) The Ambazonia Constitution:
The Ambazonia Constitution as deliberated upon at the 4th Conclave is still pending approval from the people of Ambazonia as stipulated in the Conclave Resolutions, therefore no power or authority can be derived from it. In his 17 months in office, Former Acting President, Sako Ikome Samuel failed in his duties and responsibilities either by omission or commission to ensure the Constitution was approved by the Ambazonian people.

The Unconstituted Restoration Council, in 17 months also failed in its duties to hold Former Acting President Sako Ikome Samuel to ensure the approval of the most fundamental law and document of the nation which is the Constitution.

An Unconstituted Restoration Council & An Unenforceable Constitution
Going by Revolutionary precedent, and with an Unconstituted Restoration Council & an unenforceable Constitution what therefore is the Constitutional and Legally binding authority?

3) The Constituent Assembly of The 4th Conclave:
With the Resoration Council having failed to Constitutionally and Legally constitute it’s self therefore rendering all its decisions null and void.
With the Former Acting President, Samuel Ikome Sako having failed to submitt the Constitution for approval by the Ambazonia people, leaving the Constitution unenforceable.

The Resolutions of the 4th Conclave are therefore the only Constitutional & Legally binding documents which the President derives his powers from until such time when;

1) The Restoration Council is properly & duely constituted.

2) The Constitution is approved by the Ambazonian people.

That said, President Sissuku Julius Ayuk Tabe acted within the law, as Resolution Number 13 of 1st November 2017 created the Interim Government of The Federal Republic of Ambazonia and elected Sissuku Julius Ayuk Tabe as President.

Also Resolution Number 14 of 1st November 2017 authorised President Sissuku Julius Ayuk Tabe to constitute a cabinet, which he Constitutionally did on 24th November 2017.

It is therefore from Resolution Number 14 above which President Sissuku Julius Ayuk Tabe issued his Press Statement on 02nd May 2019 recalling Former Acting President Sako Ikome Samuel from his duties as Acting President.

Summary
Following Constitutionality, Legality and Revolutionary Precedent, President Sissuku Julius Ayuk Tabe
has acted within Revolutionary Laws. He is therefore the Legitimate President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and all his appointed cabinet; including Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Sako Ikome Samuel.

Ambazonians must therefore not be deceived by any group of people calling themselves a Restoration Council or Acting President as both are Unconstitutional and Illegitimate.

The Ambazonia Restoration Forces have already recognised the Constitutional and Legitimate President Sissuku Julius Ayuk Tabe and have clearly stated in their press statement of 03rd May 2019, they will uphold Constitutionality and Legality.

By Oswald Tebit

15, May 2019

Boko Haram burn homes, church in French Cameroun village ⁰

Armed men thought to be members of jihadist group Boko Haram burnt dozens of homes, shops and a church in an attack on the north Cameroon town of Goshi over the weekend, security sources and witnesses said Monday.

One assailant was killed, they said. A group of about 100 men arrived in the town Saturday night, when most people were asleep, an inhabitant of Goshi told AFP. The gang set alight 60 houses and 11 shops, as well as a church, according to local authorities. Boko Haram’s decade-long uprising to establish a hardline Islamic state in Nigeria’s northeast, which has killed more than 27,000 people and left 1.8 million homeless, has spilled into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

On April 19, Boko Haram fighters torched a village elsewhere in Cameroon’s Far North Region, killing 11 civilians in their sleep.

Source: AFP

15, May 2019

Southern Cameroons War: Kuwait urges parties concerned to abide by int’l humanitarian law ⁰

Kuwait has urged all parties in Cameroon to abide by international humanitarian law and international human rights law, to deal with any obstacles through dialogue, to exercise a sense of responsibility and constructive cooperation and to show goodwill in order to avoid any future repercussions affecting the security and stability of the region.

This came in a speech by Kuwait’s second secretary, Abdullah Ahmad Al-Sharah, at the Security Council session in the Arria formula on the humanitarian situation in Cameroon.

“The convening of this meeting in light of the escalating challenges facing the international arena, which threatens international peace and security, has become more complex than in the past, which requires the United Nations to use all its instruments to deal with crisis especially in its initial stages through dialogue and peaceful process,” he added.

He regretted emergence of humanitarian situation in the Central African region as a result of the high numbers of people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, the increase in the number of refugees and the spread of epidemics such as cholera, Ebola and other diseases.

“The humanitarian situation in Cameroon is extremely difficult as nearly 4.3 million people are in need for humanitarian assistance, which represents an increase of 30 percent compared to last year, as well as the displacement of nearly 800,000 displaced people,” he said.

He pointed to the presence of many refugees from neighboring countries, which amounted to 380,000 refugees according to the UN reports, an increase of 82% compared to last year, given the challenges facing the region in general and Cameroon in particular, especially from the security challenge that warns of a humanitarian disaster unless it is dealt with urgently and develop solutions to address them.

Al-Sharah expressed Kuwait’s belief in preventive diplomacy, dialogue and mediation as important tools to avoid conflicts and to reduce human suffering and to avoid many losses, material and human damages.

“We share the Secretary-General’s deep concern over the deterioration of the security and humanitarian situation in the north-western and south-western regions of Cameroon and call on the Cameroonian government, in cooperation with regional and international organizations, to do more to address and improve the humanitarian situation in the interests of the Cameroonian people,” he said.

Source: menafn.com

15, May 2019

Southern Cameroons crisis risks spiralling out of control ⁰

The crisis in Cameroon is worsening and threatens to spiral out of control, the UN aid chief warned Monday during a first informal meeting of the Security Council on the conflict.

At least 4.3 million people are in need of aid — a 30 percent increase from last year in what Mark Lowcock described as an “under-reported” crisis in the central African country.

Cameroon is wracked by a conflict between separatists and government forces in its English-speaking west, combined with an influx of refugees from the Central African Republic and Nigeria.

“Both the humanitarian and the security situation continue to deteriorate and run the risk of spiraling out of control,” Lowcock, the under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the council.

“The level of the crisis today is more alarming than ever.”

More than 560,000 people have been driven from their homes since 2017 including 32,000 who have fled to Nigeria. The violence from the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria has spilled over to Cameroon.

The United States, joined by Germany, Britain and the Dominican Republic, organized the meeting on Cameroon, but African countries made clear they were skeptical of the new focus.

Equatorial Guinea’s Ambassador Anatolio Ndong Mba, speaking on behalf of the three African countries on the council, warned that the humanitarian crisis should not be “politicized”.

The crisis is not a threat to international peace and “the situation should therefore be tackled by the government of Cameroon with genuine support from the international community,” said Mba.

China and Russia also warned against UN meddling in Cameroon’s affairs.

– Neglected crisis –

Rights groups have accused the United Nations of ignoring the conflict in Cameroon, where separatists in English-speaking regions are pushing for independence from the majority French-speaking country.

The government has responded with a crackdown, deploying thousands of soldiers.

More than 200 members of the security forces and at least 500 civilians have been killed, according to figures from the International Crisis Group, a think-tank.

Cameroon’s Ambassador Michel Tommo Monthe defended his government’s handling of the conflict, saying Yaounde was “facing secessionism, facing terrorism” but was “on its feet, standing tall.”

Cameroon’s Prime Minster Joseph Dion Ngute traveled to the anglophone region last week, offering dialogue but making clear that independence was not an option.

Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former UN aid chief, said the crisis in the English-speaking part of Cameroon was “one of the world’s most neglected”.

“The lack of information and international political attention has allowed the situation to deteriorate from peaceful demonstrations to the atrocities committed by both sides,” he told the council.

Egeland called for scaling up diplomatic efforts to prevent the violence from worsening and a “massive injection” of funds to support relief work.

Source: AFP

15, May 2019

4.3 million in Southern Cameroons need aid ⁰

The U.N. humanitarian chief says Cameroon is facing worsening violence and conflict and the number of people needing humanitarian assistance has increased 30 percent from last year to 4.3 million people.

Mark Lowcock told an informal Security Council meeting Monday that this means one in six Cameroonians need aid — more than half of them children. He said the biggest challenge is lack of funding. English-speaking separatists in the Northwest and Southwest regions allege years of marginalization by the government of largely French-speaking Cameroon.

Hundreds have been killed as fighters from a number of armed groups battle government forces and attempt to economically paralyze the regions. The United States organized the informal meeting over objections from the council’s three African members and strong opposition from the Cameroonian government.

Source: AP

15, May 2019

Ambazonia Vice President addresses nation and pledges support for Ground Zero ⁰

Fellow Ambazonians, Comrades, and soldiers of the Revolution,

I stand before you today humbled and honored for the privilege to serve the Ambazonian People in my capacity as the Vice President. This privilege is not the property of a select elitist few. It is open to every Ambazonian willing to make the ultimate sacrifice that would lead to the Restoration of our Independence. So long as we stand for the truth, and have the firm conviction that God is on our side in our pursuit of this noble venture, no force under the heavens shall be strong enough to stop our collective efforts and joint sacrifices to get to Buea, and from the mountaintops echo the song :WE ARE FREE AT LAST!. WE ARE FREE ATLAST!

Fellow Ambazonians and esteemed comrades, this is not a time for long sweet-sounding speeches. BUT,…….

When we see the gory images and the lifeless bodies of our young men dumped on the streets and bushes,

When we hear the heartbreaking testimonies from our mothers and sisters who have been the victims of rape,

When we see hungry innocent children sleeping alongside their parents in forests and deprived from the joys of growing up naturally as we did, and deprived of an education,

When we hear about the reckless burning of villages and the destruction of our communities,

When we learn about the increasing number of our people who have fled their homes, and forced to live as Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees in foreign lands,

When we hear about these and other acts of barbaric inhumanity visited upon our people by the soldiers of La Republique du Cameroun,

We can’t just sit in the comfort of our homes, far away from all these sufferings and do nothing about it.

We must rally our human and material resources together as one great community toaddress this emergency. If we do not set aside our differences and take urgent measures to counter the evil that has befallen us, then we are doomed. This is not a time for speeches. This is a time for action.The future of our children and that of generations to come depends on the actions we must take moving forward. Today more than ever our very existence is under serious threats.

Despite our differences, we all agree that the urgency for us to act now grows bigger with each passing day.And we must take advantage of the opportunities now available to counter the one big problem facing us as a people. This is the time for each one of us to prove by our actions that we are Putting Ambazonia First.

Let me take this moment to address our young brothers and sisters and children of school going age. From the bottom of my heart, I want you to know that I am personally saddened by the acts of terrorism and all the horrors that you have been subjected to and are witnesses of on a daily basis. You have watched helplessly as the licensed thugs from the French Cameroun Military set fire on your homes, killed your loved ones, maimed others and looted your communities. You live in constant fear because of the insecurity now reigning in your neighborhoods. The mere presence of these men and women in uniform scares you to the extent that you no longer feel safe to go to your churches and to the hospitals. Even your Education, which is the key necessary to prepare you for a place in the society has been negatively affected by this senseless war that Mr. Biya imposed upon us.

Let me make this very clear to you and the international community: We are not fighting for a Free but uneducated Ambazonia. We want our children to go to school. We want our displaced citizens to return home to their communities. We want our future leaders to get the tools today that they will use to build a Prosperous, Egalitarian Ambazonia where there is Justice and the Rule of Law. We want to build a society where hard work is rewarded and where there is transparency in the managing of public offices. We want to provide you with schools and the resources that will orient every student towards a specific career path and produce the best results for the future of our nation. We want you to go to school, there is no doubt about that.

I understand the frustrations you feel because your parents have chosen to keep you home and alive instead of sending you to into the deathtraps called classrooms.

Trust me, this has been a very difficult decision for your parents to make. We want our children back in the Classrooms where they belong. We understand the great feelings of loss you experience everyday you spend out of school, seeking safety in the forests with your parents.

Yes, we want you back in school. But it is sad to note that the same schools which used to be safe havens for you to study at eight hours a day have now been transformed into military barracks by the Cameroun Military. It is the same classrooms that the Cameroun Military is using as its staging grounds to train and unleash terror into our communities.

I want to pay a special tribute to our Restoration Forces and Patriots who have continued to resist the destructive French Cameroun Military and defend our neighborhoods from their rapacious activities. Because of your valiant actions we have come this far in our Restoration quest, and you have renewed our hope that with just a little support, you shall soon push out the enemy and liberate our homeland. To our fallen heroes, I want to assure your families that you shall be well remembered for your sacrifices. May you rest in glory in our memories. We shall continue the fight from where you stopped and free the land for which you sacrificed your lives for.

I salute you all for your selfless service especially as none of us can ever measure or repay the sacrifices you are making for the homeland. No one is paying you for the job you have volunteered to do at the risk of your lives. I want to assure you that with effect from today, my number one commitment shall be to enable you get access to the best resources available to defend our communities responsibly. You must always remember that the communities you protect are your first line of defense against the enemy. Therefore, you have a great responsibility and the honorable duty to protect them. The Ambazonian Restoration Forces shall not descend into the same gutters of thuggery like the Cameroun military has done. I enjoin you to treat every civilian with honor and respect. Remember that you and the Civilian populations are all victims of the French Cameroun Military Genocide Machinery.

Till date, over there are over 4.5 million of our people who have been severely affected as a result of this crisis. Your homes and entire villages in over 250 locations have been razed to the ground by the French Cameroun Army. Evidence of your sufferings can be seen in places like Lipenja-Barombi, KwaKwa, Bafut, Mbot, Muyenge, Azih, Ashong, Meluf, Njikwa, Tombel, Djottin, Tadu, Wum. This military has only one mission: Kill our people and chase away the survivors from our ancestral lands.

My dear brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers and all of those in the bushes. It pains our hearts to accept the reality that just yesterday you were all Free to go about your business and families in total peace. But today you have abandoned everything and become refugees not by your own choice but as a result of this terror that Mr. Biya and his government have unleashed across our towns and villages.

My thoughts go out to all of you in the different refugee camps in refugee camps inAkwa-Ibom, Cross River, Benue and Taraba state, the Ogoga Refugee Campand other locations all over in Nigeria. I want to assure you that we shall do everything to coordinate with our partners to resolve the food crisis you are facing. We shall not relent our efforts to get you the help you need.

I want to commend the courage of our leaders in jail for your true demonstration of patriotism and love for Ambazonia. I extend warmest greetings of encouragement to the thousands of Prisoners of Conscience who are being illegally detained in unknown jails. Stay strong. We shall not abandon.

My Fellow Southern Cameroons,

In the backdrop of the scenario painted above, I want us to remember that I am stepping up to my new responsibility at a very critical juncture of our Revolution. I am taking up leadershipat a time when our boat is sailing through rocky waters, very high tides and unfriendly waves. With the indiscriminate killings of our people, the divisions amongst us, the scandals and dishonesty plaguing the Revolution, we must agree we are going through very tough times indeed.

While I do not intend to make any excuses of these previous shortcomings, I summon the courage in all of us. Together we shall weather this storm by eradicating that virus of dishonesty from our midst.

Dishonesty has no respect for the sacrifices our people have made to ensure that we have a place called home. At this critical time of our separation from our captors, we part ways with habits picked up from Colonial Cameroun. We promised our people a change for the better, not change of dishonest players. Dishonesty threatens the very foundational idea of the vision of Ambazonia where hard work is rewarded, merit is appreciated, and transparency is embraced. Dishonesty from leadership threatens trust from the people and reduces productivity.

If leadership is not honest and accountable, we shall never have a flourishing Ambazonia when we get to Buea. In fulfilling this promise to our people, we must demonstrate honesty in all our actions.

Following the events of the last 12 months, you have made requests and demands of things you want to see a change in. From the hundreds of messages and phone calls we have listened to all your requests, keep them coming. Here are some of the things we will start working on right away.

We will ensure we create stronger institutions that are independent, with checks and balances putting the people and Ambazonia first:

We will ensure that accountability is a watchword starting with leadership. To get the best out of your leaders they must report regularly to our institutions of government and must be held accountable to get the very best revolutionary service out of them at all times:

You requested a process in leadership, we shall start by putting the constitution for review in the public domain so that the final constitution becomes a product of your dreams and aspirations:

It is our hope that together we will build strong democratic institutions that no one man is above it. President Sisiku often says, no one man is bigger than this revolution. Some of you may say “We are in a revolution and who cares about stronger institutions?”, to me, that is a false narrative we must not entertain. We must put Ambazonia first.

One other major task before us is the case involving the alleged mismanagement of your meagre resources: My team and I shall follow up on what went wrong and how can we correct it. We shall getback what we can into the Revolutionary mill. However, we shall try not to be distracted by this from our main goals.

The finance department is a key pillar stone in our struggle, and we cannot stay aloof while our people suffer in want.We must be honest with the struggle and then with ourselves. It is a new dawn and its Ambazonia first.

I understand the enormity of the task and understand that we cannot achieve all of this in a day, a week or a month. This is all work in progress, and we must begin from somewhere. At this stage, it is collective work and we all must play our part in getting it right this time for our people.

Dear people, we must plan and have goals. Failing to plan is planning to fail, it does not matter the circumstances we face.

To this effect, I will be consulting with various comrades in the next few days to fine-tune the strategy that would lead us into the next phase of the revolution. I believe that collectively we can win this fight and achieve the one common goal that we all share. I cannot promise you a timeline by which we would arrive Buea but I can tell you this with 100 percent certainty : If we put our differences aside and set our eyes on the prize we would get there sooner than you can imagine.

We must set our differences aside and focus our strengths because together we are stronger. It does not matter the group you belong to. What matters is if you believe in our creed, the creed that “We the Ambazonians pledge our loyalty, the belief that one day we shall all live in plenty meeting our needs and our children shall be like the stars above”.

Fellow, Ambalanders, the time has come to cut the umbilical cord of disunity and work as countrymen and women whose ONLY allegiance is to the white and blue stripes enshrined by the 13 golden stars. That time is now, and I want you all to join me and make it real.

If there is one area, we need to make more efforts in that should be DIPLOMACY. Diplomacy is a tool in our toolbox that has not been used to our advantage. It works hand in hand self-defense. A major part of our diplomacy has ended on social media. This sort of ignorance sets us thousands of steps back. Henceforth, we shall no longer neglect the place of Diplomacy in our Revolution. We shall engage our diplomatic machinery and ensure that it is on a need to know basis.

We are always ready to dialogue and negotiations as we have always done. The other party French Cameroun isn’t ready for dialogue. French Cameroun thinks they have engaged dialogue by sending their Prime Minister with Peace Plants into our towns and cities. Brandishing a peace plant is not a condition for dialogue, it is sheer demonstration of their hypocrisy and an insult to our suffering people.

We saw PM Dion Ngute walking through our streets with the same peace plants that our people held on the 22nd of September 2017 and were massacred from helicopter gunships.

How can MrNgute be talking of peace in Bamenda while his soldiers are burning homes in the village of Mah and killing civilians in surrounding towns.?

This is my message to PM Dion Ngute: If you want us to take you seriously, thenlet your Government withdraw its troops from our towns and villages, Let your government apologizing for the crimes it has committed against our citizens and let your government release our Leaders and every prisoners of conscience now in your jails.

Moving forward, I call upon our communications team and online activists to go out there, get to work and challenge the dangers of a single story.

A single story about who we are and what we are has been erroneously sold to the international community by the enemy. We must take advantage of the technology at our disposal and start telling the world our TRUE STORY. The online activist must not measure their results by Facebook likes or views but by the response they get from the international community as a result of their proactive and informative activism.

On matters of self-defense, there is no one who doubts the urgency to step up the game. I want to commend the efforts of those who have been engaged in this area. Your efforts are well noted and commendable, but there is an urgent need to step it up.

To get something you never had one must be prepared do something they have never done. We must cross new frontiers and face the storm because our very existence depends on it. That is why in the coming days, I would be reaching out to all the different actors in the domain of self-defense, so that we can sit down and talk about putting Ambazonia first as one people, with one vision.

We must put an end to the second-class citizenship they stamped upon our faces like the mark of the wild beat:

Within 6 decades of subjugation, and relentless oppression,

They called us Biafrans:

They called us Anglo fools:

They called us enemies in the house:

They call us dogs:

They called us cockroaches:

They call us the 2 cubes of sugar in a basin of water:

These insults also have got to STOP. And only we can put an end to them.

Yesterday the United Nations Security Council had its first meeting on the Humanitarian Crisis connected to our struggle for the restoration of our independence.

My team and I followed the whole meeting and we noticed that none of the other countries there present called us any derogatory names.

However, I was dismayedthat the La Republique ambassador to the UN continued to address us as terrorists and all sorts of names forgetting that we are now fighting a war which the French neo-colonial regime in la Republique du Cameroun declared on us.

The lessons learnt are not new: We need to do more to bring to light the seriousness of our problems. We need to speak for ourselves at the center stage. It would be disastrous to let others speak for us. It must not be me; it could be someone from the SCNC, AGC, or SCYL. No matter who does the speaking, We must put Ambazonia First.

We are where we are today becausea new generation of activists led by Teachers, lawyers, Farmers and bike riders have taken our problem to a new level.

They were joint by Students, apprentices young and old at home who came together as one man and said: enough is enough. They went out with peace plants and chants of peaceful protest.

We owe deep gratitude to those who laid the foundation for all of this to happen the way we see it today. I am thinking of our veteran movements of the AAC 1, AAC 2, CAM, SCARM, SCNC, SCYL, SCAPO, and most recently the Consortium.

I equally acknowledge the work done by individuals and the newly formed pressure groups. Your work is as equally as important, and it is time for us all to help tie the same bundle together for our people. This is about the people in our communities and we must make sure it remains about them and their aspirations to express their rights to self-determination as enshrined in international law.

And while we have lost thousands of innocent souls at the mercy of the occupying forces of the Cameroon republic, we know that those innocent souls are looking up to us to vindicate their memories. We owe it to them, to their families hiding in the forests, living in the streets in different communities as IDPs, our sisters and brothers who are refugees and our diaspora community on exile.

My fellow comrades,

There is no one who is ignorant about what is before us. The international community now understands that we are determined to reach the mountain top. We know those amongst us who have fabricated their own truth to believe, in but do not despair, we shall overcome someday.

Some still hope that we shall be part of French Cameroun one day. The time shall come for us to negotiate our terms of separation. But those negotiations shall only happen in the presence of international third-party mediators and in the presence of all our leaders from jail and on neutral territory.

We shall never sit down to negotiate when we still have our comrades in the jail cells of la Republique du Cameroun or with their military roaming our communities making it impossible for our people’s lives to return to normalcy.

Dear comrades, my team and I, submit ourselves to be your servants and ask you to uphold your revolutionary responsibilities that require you to help us reach our destination.

Above all you have demanded results and we shall do our best to deliver. The struggle is all about you and less about me, we are all in this together. We are putting Ambazonia First. It is total Independence or Resistance forever.

Short Live the Struggle,

God bless you,

God bless Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia