The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima has said that the ongoing conflict in the impoverished Federal Republic of Ambazonia will finish immediately when the French Cameroun dictator puts an end to Yaoundé’s aggressive military campaign against British Southern Cameroonians.

“The aggressor and its French ally besiege British Southern Cameroons, attack, invade and occupy our homeland for over 59 years and they are now telling us to stop fighting,” Comrade Dabney Yerima observed during Tuesday’s Ambazonia Interim Government cabinet meeting.

Yerima addressed the French Cameroun regime, saying, “You French Cameroun tyrants stop your aggression against your Southern Cameroons neighbors for the two countries to live in peace.”

Vice President Dabney Yerima also said Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces did not initiate the war in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and demanded that the Biya French Cameroun CEMAC backed coalition should withdraw its forces in order for peace to prevail in Africa’s newest nation.

La Republique du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia really need help but there is no help on the way. When the core is rotten, the body polity will slowly crumble. The two Cameroons have been dragged into a mess and even those who are supposed to check such excesses now look the other way because of Brexit.

The mess is all over the place and since almost everybody including French President Emmanuel Macron, the Commonwealth and Francophonie diplomats have tasted the benefits of corruption, very few people get shocked when Francophone army soldiers kill innocent Southern Cameroonians.

The two Cameroons have been caught between a rock and a hard place. La Republique du Cameroun is run by a bareface crime syndicate that is hellbent on ruining the entire CEMAC region.

Though members of the CPDM crime syndicate are almost dying, they are not repentant and are determined to take the two nations down with them. As long as Biya and his CPDM gang are in power in Yaoundé, corruption – that which blights the lives of the vulnerable and enriches members of the crime syndicate – will continue to take root and make British Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun unattractive to genuine and sustainable foreign investments.

By Isong Asu in London

A combination of deadly attacks by non-state armed groups in the Far North region and growing violence in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions continue to trigger massive but underreported displacement in Cameroon.

Most displacement associated with conflict in Cameroon has historically occurred in the Far North, the poorest region of the country and the one that suffers the most from the Boko Haram insurgency. In 2020, however, seven in ten internally displaced people (IDPs) in Cameroon were forced to flee because of violence in the English-speaking regions.

“Since 2017, UN agencies have been warning of a tragedy in the making in Northwest and Southwest regions,” says IDMC director Alexandra Bilak. “Reports of thousands of new displacements since the beginning of the year and school attacks that have left children dead show that this is now a reality.”

Non-state armed groups fighting to secede from the rest of the country have been targeting schools and teachers they say are sponsored by the central government in French-speaking Yaoundé. Entire families are being forced to flee repeatedly to avoid kidnappings and harassment.

“Many IDPs look for a safe haven in Cameroon’s largest cities. But there they face a new set of challenges in accessing services and employment and often end up displaced again as a result of disasters,” explains Alexandra Bilak. In August 2020, the worst coastal flooding in decades rendered nearly 5,000 people homeless in Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital. Last year, floods also swept through the semi-arid Far North region, where they forced people already displaced from conflict areas to move again.

The total number of new displacements in Cameroon nearly doubled in 2020, compared to 2019. Over one million people are now internally displaced. The country also hosts around 435,000 refugees from Nigeria and the Central African Republic. If displacement continues at this rate and goes unreported, humanitarians will not be able to evaluate people’s needs and deliver effective assistance. “Without evidence, you cannot prevent, respond, or find lasting solutions to this neglected crisis”, warns Alexandra Bilak.

Source: Internal displacement

Two Cameroonian soldiers deployed to Nigeria were killed late yesterday in a Boko Haram attack in northeastern Borno state, two Nigerian military sources said today.

The insurgents, on foot and in several trucks fitted with machine guns, attacked Nigerian soldiers outside the town of Wulgo as well as Cameroonian soldiers deployed from across the border to assist.

“Two CDF (Cameroonian Defence Force) soldiers were killed in the 40-minute gunfight with the Boko Haram terrorists,” a Nigerian military source said.

“Another three CDF soldiers and a Nigerian soldier were injured in the fight,” said the military officer, in an account confirmed by a second Nigerian military source.

An armoured vehicle belonging to the Nigerian army and two Boko Haram trucks were destroyed in the fight while “several” jihadists were “neutralised”, the second military officer said.

The jihadists launched the attack from the nearby Wulgo forest, a known Boko Haram hideout.

Boko Haram and its splinter group ISWAP, the Islamic State West Africa Province, have killed 36,000 people in northeast Nigeria and displaced around two million from their homes since 2009, according to the United Nations.

Earlier this month, ISWAP claimed in a statement that it used two vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, killing and wounding 30 soldiers near Wulgo, a claim that AFP could not independently verify.

Nigeria’s jihadist violence has spread to neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger, prompting a regional military coalition to fight the insurgents.

Source: AFP

The former managing director of the Cameroon Radio and Television Corporation (CRTV), Professor Gervais Mendo Ze, has thanked the head of state, Paul Biya, for helping him lose the excess weight that had become a millstone around his neck.

In a video statement issued on Monday, the ailing professor could been seen demonstrating how grateful he is to the man he served for decades though he was thrown in jail for many years.

A professor of linguistics, Mendo Ze knows how to be sarcastic and understands that sometimes non-verbal communication could be more effective than verbal communication.

The learned Professor wants the world to see how he has been reduced to a bag of bones and helpless. That is why he has released a short video which shows how helpless he has become because of a system that has no regard for human life.

In the video, Mendo Ze is being spoon-fed by a good Samaritan, an image which underscores that a picture is worth more than a thousand words.

But Mendo Ze is not alone in this mess he helped to create. Many others are suffering like him and it is clear that they might never be free.

Inoni Ephraim, a former prime minister, was also reduced to a bag of bones because he was suspected of engaging in corrupt practices while he was the Deputy Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic.

He is today receiving medical attention in France and he has been warned not to open his large mouth else he will be brought back to the Yaounde maximum security facility.

Others like Abah Abah, a former minister of finance; Marafa Amidou Yaya, a former minister of territorial administration and master election rigger; Mebe Ngoh, a former minister of defense and presumed heir to the throne; and Amadou Vamoulke, a former CRTV managing director, are all slowly dying in the Yaounde Maximum Security Facility.

But Cameroonians are not worried about this bunch of hungry individuals who helped to prop a very bad system that is today consuming them and their families.

Under the guise of fighting corruption, the country’s president and those who surround him are doing their best to settle scores and to intimidate those who might one day think of exposing the system or even dreaming of taking over from the ailing president who has ruled the country for 38 years with no good results to show for his long stay in power.

Mendo Ze’s fate is simply a reminder to those who think of becoming senior officials in a system that functions like the Sicilian Mafia.

The only effective rules in the system are those which are unwritten and those rules are dictated by the ailing president.

Cameroon is a dangerous place; a rich country that has been reduced to a bastion of poverty by a president who only thinks of himself.

By the time Biya dies, his government will be considered the worst in the world and the damage Pinochet wreak on his people will be reduced to a dress rehearsal because Biya would have outperformed Pinochet.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai