A family member of Cameroon’s former prime minister has just said that Ephraim Inoni, a former prime minister under Paul Biya is still alive but was fast to add that he was critically ill.

The source which elected anonymity added that the entire family was concerned for his life

He blamed the situation on administrative delays which made it hard for him to be evacuated in time.

He stressed that the government of Cameroon had been very slow at giving Chief Inoni the authorisation which could have enabled him to seek quality health care abroad.

“If our brother’s health has deteriorated very fast, it is because the government has been slow at issuing the right documents. Chief Inoni does not deserve the poor treating he is being given by the regime he faithfully served,” he said.

“Though his life hangs by a thread, we are still happy that he is still alive. We know that Chief Inoni is a good man. His involvement in the airplane affair was just because he was the assistant secretary general at the Presidency at the time of the purchase of the airplane,” he regretted.

“We are waiting for more information and we will inform the media as the details filter out,” he concluded.

By Dr Joachim Arrey

A senior Southern Cameroons Interim Government official says the Ambazonia Restoration Forces will begin to strike targets deep inside French Cameroun soon if the Yaoundé regime continues with the massive deployment of troops in both the Northern and Southern Zones.

The Interim Government official who sued for anonymity also hinted that Vice President Dabney Yerima’s stance has pushed French Cameroun colonial administrators to live in a state of extreme terror, panic and caution to an extent that some of its so-called Divisional Officers appointed to the Federal Republic of Ambazonia have refused to take up duties and are all hiding in Douala and Yaoundé.

Our source further noted that Ambazonia Restoration Forces response to any French Cameroun military campaign will no longer be limited within Southern Cameroons but rather deep inside French Cameroun.  Vice President Dabney Yerima has warned the Biya Francophone regime of a surprise blow in retaliation for the regime’s recent incursion into the Bafut Palace.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that the Interim Government will start using money raised from the Amba Bonds Project to mobilize equipment, weapons and personnel to confront the French Cameroun enemy.

Speaking recently in Holland, Comrade Dabney Yerima said Ambazonia Restoration Forces will let the French Cameroun soldiers taste the bitterness, and they will regret their deeds and aggressions soon and very soon. 

By Chi Prudence Asong

At least 42 people were killed after their houses were swept away Tuesday in a landslide caused by torrential rain in the western Cameroon city of Bafoussam, state media reported, showing images of rescuers desperately sifting through rubble for survivors.

“Searches are ongoing. We fear there are further deaths,” a senior local official told AFP on condition of anonymity as nightfall neared.

A total of 42 bodies were taken to the hospital in the city, according to an official statement read on Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV).

Media reports had earlier spoken of about 30 dead, with the radio reporting that four pregnant women were among the victims.

Pictures of the tragedy in Bafouassam posted on social media showed ramshackle houses having crumbled into the ochre-coloured terrain and men clad in hard hats digging away at piles of mud in the search for survivors.

“The houses that collapsed were built on the side of a hill in a risk zone,” said the local official in the West Region, of which Bafoussam is the capital, some 300 kilometres (185 miles) northwest of the capital Yaounde.

He said the landslide was caused by torrential rains that have fallen in the country over the past few days as well as the wider region, with neighbouring Central African Republic and Nigeria also seriously hit.

Cameroon President Paul Biya offered his condolences to families of the victims in a message broadcast on CRTV.

Landslides are quite exceptional in the area although further south they are less rare in the rainy season, notably in the English-speaking southwest.

It was in the southwestern coastal resort town of Limbe that five people died in a landslide following flooding in July last year.

Neighbouring Central African Republic, already mired in a brutal civil war, is reeling from 10 days of torrential rain which have plunged swathes of the country underwater, creating a new emergency in one of the world’s poorest nations.

Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless after the CAR’s largest river, the Oubangui, burst its banks at the height of the country’s worst floods in decades which have left parts of the capital Bangui submerged, prompting authorities to warn of the risk of cholera.

Several agrarian states in another Cameroon neighbour, Nigeria, have also been hit by flooding. A torrential downpour Monday allowed dozens of inmates to escape from prison in the central state of Kogi.

(AFP)

Cameroon on Monday deployed rescue workers and its military to search the wreckage of houses hit by a landslide that killed at least 34 people overnight in the western village of Bamoungoum, near the regional capital Bafoussam.

The landslide hit after torrential downpours flooded the area. Many houses have been destroyed, and the death toll has risen from 13 to at least 34 dead, said the governor of Cameroon’s west region, Awa Fonka Augustine.

“We also have at least a dozen people with severe wounds,” said Augustine. “The death toll may be higher because the incident occurred in the night and you know that there are many children in this neighborhood who were sleeping at the time.”

It is also feared that at least two pregnant women were killed. Pierre Kemvhe, 51, said his pregnant wife was still missing.

“My wife was expecting a baby and was very tired when she went to sleep while I was still in my shop last night,” he said. “I have not seen her.”

Cameroon minister of decentralization George Elanga Obam handed out money to survivors and encouraged the rescue workers.

“President Paul Biya asked me to give urgent financial assistance to those who have lost all of their belongings and are hungry without food and water. We shall examine their needs and see what to do as early as possible.”

It is estimated that at least 120 people live in the neighborhood that was swept by the floods and landslide.

Source: AP

Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima has said that the continues detention of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides including more than one thousand Southern Cameroonians in French Cameroun jails is an act of incessant provocation that will not go unanswered.

Comrade Dabney Yerima who blatantly refused to comment on the recent happenings in Buea told Cameroon Concord News Group that Southern Cameroonians should concentrate on the struggle and observed that the campaign of arrests and killing of innocent Ambazonian citizens continues unabated and that no dramatic progress has been made in this regard despite efforts by the United States embassy in Yaoundé.

The exiled leader furthered that French Cameroun killing campaign in Southern Cameroons cannot be understood or accepted.  He also pointed out that Southern Cameroonians currently being held at prisons and detention centers in French Cameroun are exposed to various forms of torture and cruel methods of interrogation.

Dabney Yerima appealed to Southern Cameroonians in the diaspora to make great efforts, either through contacts with their host countries such as those residing in the European Union and the United States to secure the release of Ambazonia inmates languishing in French Cameroun detention centers.

The executive head of the political wing of the Southern Cameroons resistance stressed that the Interim Government was closely monitoring the cases of Southern Cameroons prisoners being held in French Cameroun.

By Chi Prudence Asong