Monthly Archives: March 2020

Cameroon’s beef price jumps 3.5% driven by exports to Nigeria

28, March 2020

Cameroon’s beef price jumps 3.5% driven by exports to Nigeria 0

In 2019, food prices have been among the main driving forces behind the rise of the inflation in Cameroon. That year indeed, inflation surged to 2.5%, the highest since 2015.

Among the food products that contributed to the rise was beef, the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) reported. According to NIS,after a drop of 2.1% in 2018 the price of beef in Cameroon increased by 3.5% in 2019. This sharp rise is mainly due to the resumption of beef trades with neighbouring countries (Nigeria in particular), the INS explained.

Indeed, because of the exactions started by Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram in 2013, Cameroon closed its northern borders with Nigeria in 2015. The northern region is the main beef production area in Cameroon.

In 2019, following the relative peace that ensured after fights led by the Cameroonian army against Boko Haram, Cameroon decided to open some of its borders with Nigeria. This is the case of the Amchidé border, officially reopened since May 15, 2019. This town is the hub of trade between Nigeria and Cameroon in the Far North region.

At the same time, several livestock markets, closed for years due to the insecurity created by Boko Haram, were also relaunched. Consequently, exports of Cameroonian beef to Nigeria have been boosted, leading to higher prices on the local market.

 Business in Cameroon

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Banana exports down by over 6,500 tons

28, March 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Banana exports down by over 6,500 tons 0

Banana exports from Cameroon are on the slide. This is a direct fallout of the armed struggle by the Ambazonia people of South West Cameroon who want to secede from Cameroon Republic.

In February 2020, the two banana exporters still active in Cameroon exported 14,965 tons of the products. According to the banana exporters’ association Assobacam, these exports were down by 6,532 tons compared with the 21,497 tons exported during the same period in 2019.

This drop is mainly due to a decrease in the year-over-year exports of Plantations du Haut Penja (PHP), the local subsidiary of French group Compagnie fruitière de Marseille. During the period under review, PHP (leader of the Cameroonian banana market) only exported 13,847 tons against 19,737 tons in February 2019.

State-owned agribusiness unit CDC is still absent from the Cameroonian banana exporters’ registry. The main economic victim of the pro-independent crisis in the Anglophone regions [since 2016] stopped operations since September 2018, because of the insecurity created by separatists on its plantations and factories.

Source: Business in Cameroon

Coronavirus situation in Cameroon

28, March 2020

Coronavirus situation in Cameroon 0

The country’s coronavirus cases officially stand at 91. The situation is concerning as things are spiraling out of control. The government has taken a few good measures, but they are unfortunately ineffective.

The government wants to recruit over 500 health workers to combat the Coronavirus which is spreading at an alarming rate.

Cameroonians are still converging on public places and public transport means cannot really be controlled.

The nature of the country’s economy is also an additional headache. The informal sector is bigger than the formal sector and this implies more people hustle to make ends meet.

They are therefore flouting government Coronavirus rules, as they live from hand to mouth.

Meanwhile, the country’s opposition leader, Prof. Maurice Kamto, is challenging the country’s president, Paul Biya, to address the nation as COVID-19 threatens to ruin the economy and send thousands to an early grave.

Early this week, it was rumored that the country’s president had died since he had not been seen in public ever since the Coronavirus showed up on the country’s shores.

The country’s communications minister, Rene Sadi, held a press conference on Friday wherein he informed the public that the president was alive and healthy.

He added that Mr. Biya was closely monitoring the evolution of the virus in the country, but critics still feel that the government is hiding something and many are calling on Mr. Biya to address the nation.

Also, business will resume tomorrow in the Douala II markets after a shutdown on Friday due to a massive disinfection by City Hall.

Similarly,   a medical team has been dispatched from Yaoundé to screen over 200 passengers in Douala. This is to help check the spread of the insidious virus.

Also, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the government of Cameroon to decongest prisons as a move to check the spread of the virus.

Cameroon’s prisons are noted for their congestion and it is feared that if the virus makes its way to the prisons, the prison population will be rapidly decimated as Cameroon has not got the resources to deal with such a disaster.

By Rita Akana with additional reporting and editing from Dr Joachim Arrey

Paul Biya and the virus: Cameroon’s absentee leader in a crisis

28, March 2020

Paul Biya and the virus: Cameroon’s absentee leader in a crisis 0

French Cameroun’s war on Southern Cameroons is the murkiest stain on Biya’s hard-earned, blood-spattered and blemished reputation. For sure, he will go down in history as a man who inherited a peaceful and progressive nation but conspired to leave it in disarray and divided. It’s impossible for the people of French Cameroun not to feel disillusioned about his leadership. They are facing the worst political and public health emergency to hit them in generations, but are led by a calamity of a leader. Combing through the history of the great continent of Africa, it’s hard to find a political failure that rivals Paul Biya.

If there is a sluggish leader at the head of any organisation, it spells problems but Paul Biya of French Cameroun is a calamity. In the midst of a global pandemic, all heads of states are busy setting structures, policy and building makeshift hospitals to keep their populations safe, the butcher of Mvomeka is in political reclusiveness. Reclusiveness is his natural political habitat and somehow his nation has learned to accept it. There was a remarkable video last night of the Nigerian government building a makeshift hospital in Lagos with hundreds of beds in anticipation of the peak of the coronavirus pandemic over the next few weeks. In French Cameroun, no such preparation is being made. Cameroon Concord News Group understands that the country’s understaffed, ill-equipped and under-resourced health sector has already collapsed after ninety-one people tested positive for the coronavirus. We, of this media outlet consider it criminal that a government could be so negligent about the lives of its citizens. 

The political ineptitude from Yaoundé is loud and obvious with a Prime Minster who is woefully out of his depth leading the government’s lackadaisical efforts. The messages from the government are mixed, confusing and inadequate. The streets of French Cameroun are filled with bike-taxis and hawkers with little or no public health messages. There are little or no state resources available to fight the pandemic as the embezzlement epidemic has crippled the economy. Cameroon Concord News Group considers last week’s decision to shut all borders and ground flights without proper consultations, preparation and professional advice as an attempt by the government to take its begging bowl to the WHO and IMF. Unfortunately, these organisations have wised up to the old man’s tricks.

French Cameroonians are paying the price for their lack of vision and courage which has kept Biya in power for thirty-eight years. Many of his citizens believed erroneously that his lack of compassion was only extended to the Southern Cameroons. They thought his capacity to be unmoved by the loss of others was only confined to Ambazonians but they are about to find out that they were sadly mistaken. They are about to experience this silent killer which will ravage and kill many innocent souls as their government does nothing to prevent or contain its spread. They are at the mercy of this invincible and potent killer due to a lack of preparedness, a culture of underinvestment in public services and a philosophy of exaggerated theft of public funds under the leadership of Paul Biya. All this is about to happen with an absentee head of state, who himself at 87 years of age is petrified of this invincible killer.

Cameroon Concord News Group believes that Mr Biya’s government isn’t taking the threat of this coronavirus seriously and the responsibility lies at the helm. Mr Biya has demonstrated over the years that he is ruthless when dealing with political opponents but the time has come when his compatriots need him to show this trait in dealing with this pandemic. His legacy as a political failure is unblemished but he could at least do it some good if he enacts any policy that saves some lives in his desperate and anxious nation.

Isong Asu, London Bureau Chief, Cameroon Concord News Group

French Prime Minister extends coronavirus lockdown by two weeks until April 15

27, March 2020

French Prime Minister extends coronavirus lockdown by two weeks until April 15 0

French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced on Friday a two-week extension of a nationwide lockdown in an effort to stem a surge in coronavirus cases across France.

The French PM said in a speech that the government had decided to extend the country’s coronavirus lockdown, until April 15.

“After these first 10 days of confinement, it is clear that we are just at the beginning of this epidemic wave. It has submerged eastern France and now it is arriving in the Paris region and northern France,” said Philippe.

For this reason, he said, the confinement period would be extended by two weeks from Tuesday next week, and added that the same rules would apply.

Philippe said that this period would only be extended again if the health situation required it.

The prime minister has warned that the number of cases is expected to rise in the Paris region and northern France, after heavily hitting eastern France.

France has reported nearly 1,700 deaths of people with the virus in hospitals, the fifth-highest number of any country worldwide. The nation’s numbers have continued to mount since the confinement began on March 17.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS, AFP)

Will Biya and his CPDM crime syndicate survive coronavirus?

27, March 2020

Will Biya and his CPDM crime syndicate survive coronavirus? 0

Cash Trapped. Worsening tribal tensions, frightening divisions among Cameroon government army soldiers and domestic discontent. An unending Boko Haram and Southern Cameroons crisis. Huge security challenges in the East Region coming from the breakdown of law and order in the Central African Republic.

To be sure, even before Cameroon announced its first coronavirus case, the CPDM government was struggling under the weight of political and economic problems that are increasingly undermining the integrity of the Francophone dominated regime in Yaoundé.

With the coming of the coronavirus, Cameroon Concord News Group can now reveal that matters have become much, much worse for President Biya and his gang — so much so that the 87 year old shamefully accepted to be quarantined at his palace in Mvomeka’a. That is because, for the French Cameroun ailing leaders: Biya, Niat, Cavaye, coronavirus represents a true game changer in the French Cameroun political story and its very unholy marriage with Southern Cameroons.

The butcher of Yaoundé and his acolytes are presently facing an improbable occurrence that no one in their corrupt circle predicted, but which now has profound and potentially catastrophic consequences. This is what coronavirus is for Biya and his Francophone dominated French Cameroun regime.

The CPDM problems start with the failing health of French Cameroun’s ruling elites. Frankly speaking, the so-called members of the CPDM political bureau or better still the upper echelons of the French Cameroun leadership are overwhelmingly aging and infirm, and there are fears that coronavirus may exact a deadly toll on this cohort.

Cameroon Concord News Group understands the 80 year old National Assembly Speaker, Cavaye Djibril was part of an Air France flight declared to be high risk by the medical authorities of the Yaoundé Nsimalen international airport. Cavaye Yeguie Djibril deliberately confused parliamentary immunity with sanitary immunity by rushing to the national assembly and attended 2 plenary sessions.

Yaoundé has been maintaining a kind of silence of the lamb on the Cavaye Djibril coronavirus issue but information has filtered out that the regime is moving towards the quarantine of the 167 MPs currently in the lower house of parliament as it was revealed Cavaye Djibril had caused significant contamination in the nation’s capital after he came in contact with hundreds of people immediately after he was reelected as speaker.

Last week, Cameroon Intelligence Report Yaoundé city correspondent revealed that coronavirus had afflicted more than two dozen members of the National Assembly and at least nine top figures of the Biya regime. This figure reportedly expanded significantly and prompted President Biya to abandoned government business in Yaoundé and moved to his Mvomeka’a palace immediately after a meeting with the American ambassador.

To date, the coronavirus is yet to claim the lives of any senior official of the Biya Francophone regime but it can certainly be expected in coming days as measures put in place by Chief Dion Ngute, the so-called Prime Minister and Head of Government has greatly helped in exposing French Cameroun’s ruling  elite as incompetent and out of touch. Biya and his men are now in the throes of a profound political, security and health crises with no ability to contain the spread of the virus and only fostering complicity in increasing its true scope to get money from the World Health Organization.

The number of currently reported Cameroonian cases of the disease is likely a gross overestimate. Given the Biya regime’s long history of collecting and misappropriating funds from the World Health Organization, people in the know in Yaoundé and Douala say that the real number of coronavirus cases in Cameroon might actually be orders of a lower than a higher magnitude.

The regime in Yaoundé has done its utmost to increase the extent of the crisis now ravaging the international community. But videos and social-media posts of thousands of Cameroonians enjoying themselves and trading in the streets throughout the country, have painted a very different picture to the European Union and the World Health Organization.

But coronavirus isn’t just a political challenge for President Biya. It’s also a major blow to the notion that he is a demigod. Biya now is even afraid to meet his own Secretary General at the presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and his Minister of Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo. State secrets are now being discussed via a telephone communication network they never trusted.

The movement of people in the Douala and Yaoundé metropolis even after a lockdown was announced and business going on as usual throughout the national territory has very much highlighted the disconnect between the Biya CPDM establishment and the rest of the population. It is evidently clear that Biya is no longer in control of the nation.

Will President Biya and his Francophone Beti Ewondo regime survive the current crisis intact? Like previous ones, it might. But with oil and gas no longer what the West and China needs now, the coronavirus might end up accomplishing what years of pro-democracy actions could not: the collapse of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime in Yaoundé.

To this I put my name

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Messi, Guardiola donate 1 million euros each to coronavirus battle

27, March 2020

Messi, Guardiola donate 1 million euros each to coronavirus battle 0

Barcelona forward Lionel Messi and Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola have each donated One million Euros to fight the coronavirus outbreak in Spain.

Messi donated a total of 1 million Euros to 2 hospitals, one in Barcelona and the other in his own country Argentina. Guardiola’s contribution will go to a campaign being promoted by the Medical College of Barcelona and the Angel Soler Daniel Foundation.

The money will be used to help purchase medical equipment and protective material for the hospital staff involved in treating those admitted to hospital. Spain is one of the worst affected countries in Europe, with nearly 2,700 deaths and almost 40 thousand positive cases.

Source: Presstv

British PM Johnson tests positive for COVID-19

27, March 2020

British PM Johnson tests positive for COVID-19 0

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Friday that he is self-isolating after testing positive for COVID-19.

“Over the last 24 hours I have developed mild symptoms and tested positive for coronavirus,” he said on Twitter, posting a video message.

“I am now self-isolating, but I will continue to lead the government’s response via video-conference as we fight this virus,” he wrote.

“Be in no doubt that I can continue thanks to the wizardry of modern technology to communicate with all my top team to lead the national fightback against coronavirus,” he added in the video message.

A Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement that Johnson, whose partner Carrie Symonds is pregnant, experienced mild symptoms on Thursday and was tested for COVID-19 on the personal advice of England’s chief medical officer.

The test was carried out in No 10 by NHS staff, the spokesperson added.

In his video message, Johnson thanked workers in Britain’s state-run National Health Service (NHS) for their efforts in battling the spread of the virus.

A total of 11,658 coronavirus cases have so far been confirmed in Britain, and 578 deaths.

Earlier this week Prince Charles, the eldest son and heir to Queen Elizabeth II, also tested positive for the virus.

The government confirmed this week that if Johnson was incapacitated, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab would temporarily assume the role of prime minister.

 AFP

Southern Cameroons: President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe revisits 11th February, the Anniversary of a Very Unholy Marriage

27, March 2020

Southern Cameroons: President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe revisits 11th February, the Anniversary of a Very Unholy Marriage 0

In 2017…people from the grassroots decided to stick together to say “enough is enough”. They are asking for their freedom from this modern day slavery in the grip of the government of the Republic of Cameroon. This was triggered by the Teachers’ and Lawyers’ strikes at the close of 2016… As this stalemate continues, popular opinion on the streets of Southern Cameroons is tilting in favour of outright separation.


…A day of joy for one and a moment of pain and regret for the other.

I.

A King and his Queen had a quarrel on their 56th wedding anniversary, on the 11th of February. Below is an excerpt of what ensued:

King: Happy anniversary.

Queen: What is happy about this anniversary?

King: Dress-up, let’s go and celebrate our wedding anniversary.

Queen: You rejoice today because it is day that you discovered milk and honey in your neighbour’s land, got it for free, claimed it and made it yours. This day reminds me all of our biggest error. Henceforth on every 11th February, starting from today, Saturday 11th February 2017, I will join my children, we will dress in black, we will start the day in prayer, we will pray until noon, have lunch and get back to prayer from 2:00pm until 6:00pm. My people and I have declared this “the day of indoor mourning and prayer”. We mourn the death of a romance which never was and we pray to God to get us out of this marriage. I want a divorce. I have already filed for this divorce. Today, my people and I will remain indoors because we do not want to get out of our houses and be beaten, raped, tortured and killed.

King: Shall we go and join the celebrations?

Queen: What is there to celebrate?

King: Why are you dressed in black and holding a prayer book?

Queen: I am dressed in black because I am mourning.

King: Why are you mourning?

Queen: Because you are killing my people. You are raping our girls, maiming and torturing us. Why are you committing these atrocities on our people?

King: The people that are being tortured, killed, raped and maimed are not my people; they are your people. Don’t you see how determined they are to force the school year 2016/2017 to be cancelled by UNESCO? I cannot let that happen under my watch.

Queen: Is that why you got your CRTV to announce over the weekend that schools will reopen on Monday? Look at how you are embarrassing yourself and those of my people that you appointed. Most of them have not done anything for their people for years. They watched your ill-treatment of their brothers and sisters but they accepted it because you have transformed them into house-slaves. God is watching. He will lead us out like He did the people of Israel out of Egypt.

King: But they asked to be treated as such. I wonder why these young ones now refuse to be cajoled to my side. They are resisting every attempt to bribe them, so that they can bring this strike to an end. I need schools to resume. I cannot have an academic year cancelled in this country, especially after winning AFCON 2017.

Queen: Why don’t you release all the students who were arrested in Buea and Bamenda so that the Consortium will come back to the negotiating table? By the way, why did you outlaw the Consortium, days after failed negotiations with them? You turned around and arrested its members, to the point where some are now hiding in a Western embassy in Yaoundé? Do you think that anyone would believe your sincerity when you call for negotiations again?

King: I cannot release all the students because I do not have all of them to release.

Queen: What do you mean by that? Where are my peoples’ children?

King: Some have died.

Queen: We hear that you approved of their murders and that they be buried in mass graves.

King: I did not kill your people. It was done by the police, gendarmes, and soldiers, especially those called BIR. These my forces of repression have been ordered to ensure that schools reopen and that the courts restart, at all cost. I guess some of them would go beyond the call of duty to satisfy me.

Queen: Why have you cut off the Internet to the people living in my land since the 17th of January 2017?

King: So that anything I do there will not be seen by the rest of the world. I will not have these Google-generation children dictate how I run my country.

Queen: If I knew then what I know today, I surely will not have gone into this marriage.

King: Why would you not have gone into this marriage?

Queen: Because over the years, you have changed the marriage from a “monogamy with separate properties” into a “polygamy with all properties belonging to the King”.

King: Well, this is to show that we are all one and indivisible and you have never complained about anything.

Queen: When I complain, you pretend not to hear. When my people ask loudly, you term them extremists. For years I have tried to make this work, pretending that these things are not happening. However, the more I try to make it work, the more you take advantage of me.

King: But why are you complaining now after 56 years?

Queen: Whenever I try to tell you that you are unfair, you come down on me and my people with force. You have taken away our education system, you have imposed the French civil law on my people, replacing our British common law. You have brought your people to rule over my people in our land, and in your language. You now treat us as second class citizens and increasingly we see ourselves as your slaves.

King: When did you notice this?

Queen: Over the years. Each time I watched as you gradually but surely eroded all signs of my peoples’ identity from the face of the earth. You have even placed road signs in our land in your language. The police, gendarme and army speak your language when they are sent to work in my land.

King: Is that why you are grumbling? I have created a commission of bilingualism and multi-culturalism to take care of that.

Queen: You decreed decentralisation in 1996 and not much has happened on that front since.

King: I signed that to please your people and some of my people. I really did not intend to implement it.

Queen: I have been sad and sickened all these 56 years.

King: But you have never complained.

Queen: Whenever my people do, your forces of repression kill our children, rape our girls, torture our people and declare some of them wanted. They have become slaves in their own land. This is killing me but to you it is all a game. You are playing with the future of my people and to you it is only a game. Let’s look at this sector-by-sector:

II.

On Resources

Queen: About 90 percent of the oil of this nation comes from my land but all its revenue are paid into your land. Almost all the workers at the refinery, from those at the gate to the Managing Director, are people from your land. The refinery is on my land but the depots are on your land.

King: This is the life-wire of the nation’s economy, so I have to personally keep an eye on it.

Queen: What about the gold, bauxite, iron ore, coal and granites in my land?

King: I am yet to access these and other resources of the land. When I do, I will naturally manage them as I manage SONARA.

Queen: What about the timber, as you are deforesting our land?

King: The same thing, I am not answerable to anyone in this country.

Queen: What about the agricultural produce that are mostly from my land?

King: Are you seriously asking me to explain this?

Queen: Why have you abandoned the natural waterfall in my land that can produce electric power for the entire West Africa?

King: Because I want you to remain in this marriage. That is also why I carried all the thermal generators away from your region, so that I can decide to switch you off.

Queen: Is that why you have switched off Internet from my region?

King: I do not want the world to see what atrocities I am doing to your people. If your people do not get back subserviently into this union, I will charge them with treason, judge them in a military tribunal and sentence them to death or life imprisonment.

Queen: I want a divorce.

King: You cannot have a divorce. We are one and indivisible and this marriage will remain for ever.

Queen: What is happening to CDC and PAMOL?

King: I am planning to move their HQs to my land.

III.

On Education

Queen: What have you done with the report from the Cameroon Education Forum (CEF) of January 2016? It contained 17 recommendations to address the Anglophone education sub-system.

King: I have kept in where I always keep recommendations that challenge my thinking, like the memorandum presented by the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda in December 2016 – in the trash.

Queen: Why are you sending your people to my land to teach children history, geography, chemistry, physics, etc. in your language?

King: Because you and your people accept it and because your people are not admitted into the teachers’ training schools, so they are not qualified.

Queen: Why don’t you admit them into those schools. My people are about eight million of this country’s 28 million, yet you admit two students out of 132 into the School of Sports, even though the school is situated in my land. Less than 30 of the 250 students in the School of Engineering in my land are my people.

King: Because you and your people accept it.

Queen: Why do the Vice Chancellors of Buea and Bamenda allow forces of repression to enter their universities, rape girls, torture students and even kill some?

King: I appointed them to follow in the footsteps of Dorothy because when a woman decides to be mean, she forgets that every child is born of a woman like her. The forces of repression were invited into each school by the individual VC. In this case, they have to take their responsibility. You should ask them and not even my minister of higher education, talk less of me.

Queen: We hear that your people are bribing newly self-appointed leaders of the teachers’ trade union to call of the strike. Do you realise that it is not working?

King: I now realise that the people are bent on waiting for the leaders of the Consortium before they can listen to anyone, even to me. I tried to appease them with the commission of bilingualism and multi-culturalism but no one seems to be swayed by it. Your people are still bent on their strike and the ghost towns. These ghost towns are making me sick.

IV.

On Law

Queen: Why do you place Magistrates and State Councils trained in the Civil Law in courts in my land to judge my people. Our lawyers and people follow the Common Law system. You should know that the Civil Law is diametrically different from the Common Law in principle.

King: Because the two legal systems are diametrically opposed, I have decided that the entire country will apply the civil law system in all courts.

Queen: So you see nothing wrong in the demands of the lawyers?

King: The OHADA law code has been translated into your language.

Queen: Why did your forces of repression arrest Justice Ayah Paul, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, from his home without a warrant of arrest?

King: Because he is stubborn and I want him and all of you to know that I dictate the law in this country. I am the law in this land.

Queen: Is that why they are taking Barrister Nkongho Bala, Dr. Fontem Neba, Mancho Bibixy and all our freedom fighters to your military tribunal?

King: In this country, I decide which court tries whoever, regardless of what the international human rights laws say.

Queen: Is it true that you allowed the arrest of 90 year old Mola Njoh Litumbe?

King: I am yet to confirm where that old man is, at the moment, but he was trying to reveal the truth of what happened in the beginning.

Queen: And what is wrong in what he did or incorrect in what he said?

King: Now woman! it is either my way or the high way to death.

V.

On Governance

Queen: This our marriage is actually “njomba marriage”. Are you taking advantage of us because this our “come we stay marriage” in which the King refused or neglected to do traditional, civil status or even church blessing is something that was always going to fail?

King: I have always prepared myself for the worst in this relationship.

Queen: When we started you agreed that both our peoples will always be represented in the first two positions in this nation. Today my person is the fourth authority in this country.

King: I understand this lame point of yours but you see, when I took the position of prime minister from the North and gave your people, I had to compensate them with the speaker of the Assembly. By the time I approved the Senate, the Bamelikis were becoming restive and I decided to offer them that one. Things just happened that way!

Queen: While we are in parliament, where is Hon. Wirba Joseph? Rumour has it that you have arrested him. Is it because of the speech that he made at the House of Assembly last year? Are you saying that even with his parliamentary immunity you still arrested him?

King: He is at large. We will arrest him on sight. Do you know that he stubbornly organised a rally in his place on Saturday January 14, 2017?

Queen: When will you ever appoint an ambassador form my land to represent us at the United Nations?

King: Never. Your people will go and dig out our marriage files, if they exist, and expose us.

Queen: What about sending any of my people to represent us in the USA?

King: Never, that country is too big and important.

Queen: To France?

King: I will not. On second thought, I might because when such a person gets to France, s/he will know who my mentor is.

Queen: To Nigeria?

King: Never, too near and could let your people back in, then I might lose Bakassi.

Queen: Since you mentioned it, what have you done to the people of Bakassi, since they joined us from Nigeria?

King: The treatment that is being given to you is the same which we are dishing out to them: Bring them in, get authority over their oil and abandon them.

Queen: Is that fair?

King: The world is not fair. If you want something, you have to fight for it.

Queen: When will you appoint a person from my land as minister of Finance?

King: Never. I give you the director of customs and impose high targets so that he can collect the money, which the minister then makes available to me.

Queen: What about the armed forces?

King: Never. Even the few of your people who I appoint as Generals, in return for some huge service rendered, I am now watching very closely. If any of them is sympathetic with this your peoples’ silly cry, I will lock him up.

Queen: What happened to the Two State Federation that we agreed upon?

King: I am now considering a Ten State Federation, just to please your people because even I acknowledge that there is a problem in this country. Contrary to some of my over-ambitious people, some from your land, I now agree that there is an Anglophone problem.

Queen: What is going to be different now compared to all the other times that you have signed your degrees? Ten State Federation is worse than the situation we found ourselves in 1961. That is why I am now filing for divorce.

VI.

On Transportation and Tourism

Queen: What happened to the Tiko and Bamenda international airports, in my land? What about our airstrips in Besongabang, Bali, Wum, Kumbo and Nkambe?

King: I abandoned them so you won’t fly away.

Queen: What happened to the railways from Kumba to Muyuka to Buea to Tiko to Victoria?

King: The same as above – abandoned.

Queen: What happened to the river ports in Ekondo Titi, Mamfe and Abongshe?

King: Same as above – abandoned.

Queen: Why have you abandoned the natural deep sea port in my land and we are paying millions to dredge a man-made seaport in your land?

King: Because I do not want to develop your region. I am the King. Enough! forget about these complains and let’s celebrate our wedding anniversary on the 11th of February.

Queen: I told you before. Let me say it again, you rejoice today because it is day that you discovered milk and honey in your neighbour’s land, got it for free, claimed it and made it yours. This day reminds me of all of our biggest error. Henceforth on every 11th day of February, starting from today, Saturday February 2017, I will join my children, we will dress in black, we will start the day in prayer, we will pray until noon, have lunch and get back to prayer until 6:00pm. I have declared this “the day of indoor mourning and prayer”. We mourn the death of a romance which never was and we pray to God to get us out of this marriage. I want a divorce. I have already filed for this divorce. Today, me and my people will remain indoors because we do not want to get out of our houses and be beaten, raped, tortured and killed.

VII.

The foregoing speaks to the story of the wealthy region known as Southern Cameroons, sandwiched between Nigeria to the west and the Republic of Cameroun to the east. After World War I, this nation was given to Britain. During the years of independence, it was considered too small and unsustainable to be an independent country, in spite of its institutions that had already been setup (the legislative, executive and judiciary) as early as 1954. On February 11, 1961, in a well choreographed referendum, in which only two options were presented to her people (be independent by joining Nigeria or by joining the Republic of Cameroon), 60 percent of her people voted to join the Republic of Cameroun.

In the last fifty-six years, the people of Southern Cameroons have watched in dismay, shock and horror how their value systems have been eroded, their culture assimilated and their way of life abused. In 2017, their people from the grassroots decided to stick together to say “enough is enough”. They are asking for their freedom from this modern day slavery in the grip of the government of the Republic of Cameroon. This was triggered by the Teachers’ and Lawyers’ strikes at the close of 2016. Negotiations by the striking workers and government failed on Friday January 13th. On Tuesday January 17th, the Consortium through which the government was negotiating was banned and the arrests of its leaders started. On the same day, Internet access was suspended throughout that region of the country and the stalemate persists till this day. As this stalemate continues, popular opinion on the streets of Southern Cameroons is tilting in favour of outright separation. The more arrests and torture of their people, the stronger their resolve to go all the way to achieve what they want. They are vowing to keep up resisting until the government truly realises their plight, releases their leaders and all those arrested in the course of this struggle so far. They are reminded and fortified by the fact that blacks in America boycotted public buses in Montgomery for 381 days to end segregation in public transport. Ironically the road on which the American Embassy is built in the Republic of Cameroon is named “Avenue Rosa Parks”.

VIII.

A Brief History of Southern Cameroons

Southern Cameroons has always had international legal status:

• It had a British Mandate under the League of Nations in 1922;

• It became British Trust Territory under UNO in October 1947;

• It attained self government with an Assembly and a Premier in September 1954;

• The UNO Plebiscite on February 11, 1961 voted 60 percent to 40 percent to gain independence by joining La Republique du Cameroun;

• It gained independence through the United Nations Organisation General Assembly Resolution 1608 (21/04/1961) on the independence and union with La Republique du Cameroun;

• Annexed by Republique du Cameroun on the September 30, 1961;

• The Referendum of 1972 dismantled the Federal character of the form of the state in violation of art 47(1) of the Federal constitution, to the United Republic of Cameroun;

• In 1984, through Law No. 84/01, the United Republic reverted to Republique du Cameroun;

• In 1993, the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) was formed. There are other groups such as the Southern Cameroons Peoples Organisation (SCAPO) that have been seeking the separation of the Southern Cameroons from the Republique du Cameroun;

• Since it is not yet a member of the United Nations, Southern Cameroons cannot report a case for deliberation in the floor of the UN General Assembly. Therefore, they could pass through a third country. SCAPO has sued at the Abuja High Court. The court ruled in favour of the Southern Cameroons;

• In 2003, SCAPO sued La Republique du Cameroun to the African Commission on Peoples and Human Rights at Banjul. The court ruled in favour of the Southern Cameroons and called them “a people with right of self-determination different from the people of La Republique). The ruling recommended dialogue.

Sisiku AyukTabe is the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia

Coronavirus vaccine: Many hurdles remain before global immunization is feasible

27, March 2020

Coronavirus vaccine: Many hurdles remain before global immunization is feasible 0

Even at their most effective – and draconian – containment strategies have only slowed the spread of the respiratory disease Covid-19. With the World Health Organization finally declaring a pandemic, all eyes have turned to the prospect of a vaccine, because only a vaccine can prevent people from getting sick.

About 35 companies and academic institutions are racing to create such a vaccine, at least four of which already have candidates they have been testing on animals. The first of these – produced by Boston-based biotech firm Moderna – will enter human trials imminently.

This unprecedented speed is thanks in large part to early Chinese efforts to sequence the genetic material of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. China shared that sequence in early January, allowing research groups around the world to grow the live virus and study how it invades human cells and makes people sick.

But there is another reason for the head start. Though nobody could have predicted that the next infectious disease to threaten the globe would be caused by a coronavirus – flu is generally considered to pose the greatest pandemic risk – vaccinologists had hedged their bets by working on “prototype” pathogens. “The speed with which we have [produced these candidates] builds very much on the investment in understanding how to develop vaccines for other coronaviruses,” says Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Oslo-based nonprofit the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which is leading efforts to finance and coordinate Covid-19 vaccine development.

Coronaviruses have caused two other recent epidemics – severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in China in 2002-04, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), which started in Saudi Arabia in 2012. In both cases, work began on vaccines that were later shelved when the outbreaks were contained. One company, Maryland-based Novavax, has now repurposed those vaccines for Sars-CoV-2, and says it has several candidates ready to enter human trials this spring. Moderna, meanwhile, built on earlier work on the Mers virus conducted at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.

Sars-CoV-2 shares between 80% and 90% of its genetic material with the virus that caused Sars, hence, its name. Both consist of a strip of ribonucleic acid (RNA) inside a spherical protein capsule that is covered in spikes. The spikes lock on to receptors on the surface of cells lining the human lung – the same type of receptor in both cases – allowing the virus to break into the cell. Once inside, it hijacks the cell’s reproductive machinery to produce more copies of itself, before breaking out of the cell again and killing it in the process.

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All vaccines work according to the same basic principle. They present part or all of the pathogen to the human immune system, usually in the form of an injection and at a low dose, to prompt the system to produce antibodies to the pathogen. Antibodies are a kind of immune memory which, having been elicited once, can be quickly mobilized again if the person is exposed to the virus in its natural form.

Traditionally, immunization has been achieved using live, weakened forms of the virus, or part or whole of the virus once it has been inactivated by heat or chemicals. These methods have drawbacks. The live form can continue to evolve in the host, for example, potentially recapturing some of its virulence and making the recipient sick, while higher or repeat doses of the inactivated virus are required to achieve the necessary degree of protection. Some of the Covid-19 vaccine projects are using these tried-and-tested approaches, but others are using newer technology. One more recent strategy – the one that Novavax is using, for example – constructs a “recombinant” vaccine. This involves extracting the genetic code for the protein spike on the surface of Sars-CoV-2, which is the part of the virus most likely to provoke an immune reaction in humans, and pasting it into the genome of a bacterium or yeast – forcing these microorganisms to churn out large quantities of the protein. Other approaches, even newer, bypass the protein and build vaccines from the genetic instruction itself. This is the case for Moderna and another Boston company, CureVac, both of which are building Covid-19 vaccines out of messenger RNA.

Cepi’s original portfolio of four funded Covid-19 vaccine projects was heavily skewed towards these more innovative technologies, and last week it announced $4.4m (£3.4m) of partnership funding with Novavax and with a University of Oxford vectored vaccine project. “Our experience with vaccine development is that you can’t anticipate where you’re going to stumble,” says Hatchett, meaning that diversity is key. And the stage where any approach is most likely to stumble is clinical or human trials, which, for some of the candidates, are about to get under way.

Clinical trials, an essential precursor to regulatory approval, usually take place in three phases. The first, involving a few dozen healthy volunteers, tests the vaccine for safety, monitoring for adverse effects. The second, involving several hundred people, usually in a part of the world affected by the disease, looks at how effective the vaccine is, and the third does the same in several thousand people. But there’s a high level of attrition as experimental vaccines pass through these phases. “Not all horses that leave the starting gate will finish the race,” says Bruce Gellin, who runs the global immunization program for the Washington DC-based nonprofit, the Sabin Vaccine Institute.

There are good reasons for that. Either the candidates are unsafe, or they’re ineffective, or both. Screening out duds is essential, which is why clinical trials can’t be skipped or hurried. Approval can be accelerated if regulators have approved similar products before. The annual flu vaccine, for example, is the product of a well-honed assembly line in which only one or a few modules have to be updated each year. In contrast, Sars-CoV-2 is a novel pathogen in humans, and many of the technologies being used to build vaccines are relatively untested too. No vaccine made from genetic material – RNA or DNA – has been approved to date, for example. So the Covid-19 vaccine candidates have to be treated as brand new vaccines, and as Gellin says: “While there is a push to do things as fast as possible, it’s really important not to take shortcuts.”

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An illustration of that is a vaccine that was produced in the 1960s against respiratory syncytial virus, a common virus that causes cold-like symptoms in children. In clinical trials, this vaccine was found to aggravate those symptoms in infants who went on to catch the virus. A similar effect was observed in animals given an early experimental Sars vaccine. It was later modified to eliminate that problem but, now that it has been repurposed for Sars-CoV-2, it will need to be put through especially stringent safety testing to rule out the risk of enhanced disease.

It’s for these reasons that taking a vaccine candidate all the way to regulatory approval typically takes a decade or more, and why President Trump sowed confusion when, at a meeting at the White House on 2 March, he pressed for a vaccine to be ready by the US elections in November – an impossible deadline. “Like most vaccinologists, I don’t think this vaccine will be ready before 18 months,” says Annelies Wilder-Smith, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. That’s already extremely fast, and it assumes there will be no hitches.

In the meantime, there is another potential problem. As soon as a vaccine is approved, it’s going to be needed in vast quantities – and many of the organizations in the Covid-19 vaccine race simply don’t have the necessary production capacity. Vaccine development is already a risky affair, in business terms, because so few candidates get anywhere near the clinic. Production facilities tend to be tailored to specific vaccines, and scaling these up when you don’t yet know if your product will succeed is not commercially feasible. Cepi and similar organizations exist to shoulder some of the risk, keeping companies incentivized to develop much-needed vaccines. Cepi plans to invest in developing a Covid-19 vaccine and boosting manufacturing capacity in parallel, and earlier this month it put out a call for $2bn to allow it to do so.

Once a Covid-19 vaccine has been approved, a further set of challenges will present itself. “Getting a vaccine that’s proven to be safe and effective in humans takes one at best about a third of the way to what’s needed for a global immunization program,” says global health expert Johnathan Quick of Duke University in North Carolina, author of The End of Epidemics (2018). “Virus biology and vaccines technology could be the limiting factors, but politics and economics are far more likely to be the barrier to immunization.”

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The problem is making sure the vaccine gets to all those who need it. This is a challenge even within countries where they have worked out guidelines. In the scenario of a flu pandemic, for example, the UK would prioritize vaccinating healthcare and social care workers, along with those considered at highest medical risk – including children and pregnant women – with the overall goal of keeping sickness and death rates as low as possible. But in a pandemic, countries also have to compete with each other for medicines.

Because pandemics tend to hit hardest those countries that have the most fragile and underfunded healthcare systems, there is an inherent imbalance between need and purchasing power when it comes to vaccines. During the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, for example, vaccine supplies were snapped up by nations that could afford them, leaving poorer ones short. But you could also imagine a scenario where, say, India – a major supplier of vaccines to the developing world – not unreasonably decides to use its vaccine production to protect its own 1.3 billion-strong population first, before exporting any.

Outside of pandemics, the WHO brings governments, charitable foundations and vaccine-makers together to agree an equitable global distribution strategy, and organizations like Gavi, the vaccine alliance, have come up with innovative funding mechanisms to raise money on the markets for ensuring supply to poorer countries. But each pandemic is different, and no country is bound by any arrangement the WHO proposes – leaving many unknowns. As Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, points out: “The question is, what will happen in a situation where you’ve got national emergencies going on?”

This is being debated, but it will be a while before we see how it plays out. The pandemic, says Wilder-Smith, “will probably have peaked and declined before a vaccine is available”. A vaccine could still save many lives, especially if the virus becomes endemic or perennially circulating – like flu – and there are further, possibly seasonal, outbreaks. But until then, our best hope is to contain the disease as far as possible. To repeat the sage advice: wash your hands.

Source: Guardian

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