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17, February 2023

Cameroon’s Justice System: Amougou Belinga’s fate hangs in the balance ⁰

Interest in the Martinez Zogo murder case will not be dying down anytime soon despite some delays due to lack of evidence against the country’s justice minister, Laurent Esso, linking him to the murder.

After hearing the defendants and examining the reports of the commission of inquiry, the government commissioner this week felt that there was not enough evidence to send Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga and other co-accused to the Yaoundé Maximum Security Prison known as Kondengui.

On Tuesday, February 14, 2023, the Yaoundé military court spent about ten hours to question about thirty people arrested in connection with the kidnapping of the whistleblower and journalist, Martinez Zogo, following his barbaric murder on January 17, 2023.

In order for justice to be served, the country’s president, Paul Biya, set up a commission of inquiry comprising police and gendarme officers which has arrested and interviewed for nearly three weeks, about thirty suspects at the Secretariat of State for Defense (SED).

Transferred to the military court for the first time in the early afternoon of Tuesday, February 14, the defendants were on their way to Kondengui when the government commissioner decided to send them back to the SED.

“We had already made arrangements to receive them at Kondengui (the Yaoundé neighborhood which houses the central and secondary prisons). But we also knew that the military prosecutor could decide to release them or ask that they be returned to the SED for further investigation. He chose the latter option because the reports indicate that there is something missing to place the defendants under arrest. This case is very complicated, with pressure coming from all sides,” commented a source close to the case.

To date, the influential businessman, Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga, CEO of the media group, Anecdote, and alleged mastermind of the murder of Martinez Zogo, is spending his second week in custody at the SED.

On the other hand, some of his close collaborators, including Mr. Boulemou, Melanie Bibanga, Rose Olgane, and Ines Belinga were released on Monday, February 13, 2023 for undisclosed reasons.

Ivana Essomba, the wife of Bruno Bidjang, the General Manager of the Anecdote Group, is also breathing the air of freedom. They all spent four days at the SED.

During their brief stay at the SED, they were interviewed in relation to the Martinez Zogo murder case.

During the various hearings, Colonel Raymond Etoundi Nsoe, head of security and father-in-law of Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga had, according to Equinoxe television, confirmed the statement made against the Vision 4 CEO by Lieutenant Colonel Justin Danwe, the Director of Operations at the Directorate General of External Research (DGRE).

Cameroon Concord News learned that Colonel Raymond Etoundi Nsoe had confessed that the money wired into his account by Amougou Belinga was intended to pay off those who murdered Martinez Zogo.

This testimony underscores that the media mogul played a key role in Mr. Zogo’s murder. But the latter has denied his involvement in this heinous crime since his arrest.

The tragic-comedy is still playing out and the public is growing very impatient with the manner in which the investigation is progressing.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

16, February 2023

COVID-19’s Impact on Young People Risks a Lost Generation ⁰

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive collapse in human capital at critical moments in the life cycle, derailing development for millions of children and young people in low- and middle-income countries, according to the first analysis of global data on young people who were under the age of 25 at the onset of the pandemic.

The new World Bank report, Collapse and Recovery: How COVID-19 Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It, analyzes global data on the pandemic’s impacts on young people at key developmental stages: early childhood (0-5 years), school age (6-14 years), and youth (15-24 years). It found that today’s students could lose up to 10% of their future earnings due to COVID-19-induced education shocks. And the cognitive deficit in today’s toddlers could translate into a 25% decline in earnings when these children are adults.

Human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives—is key to unlocking a child’s potential and enabling countries to achieve a resilient recovery and strong future growth. Yet the pandemic shuttered schools and places of employment and disrupted other key services that protect and promote human capital, such as maternal and child health care and job training.

“The pandemic and school closures threatened to wipe out decades of progress in building human capital. Targeted policies to reverse the losses in foundational learning, health, and skills are critical to avoid jeopardizing the development of multiple generations,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass. “Countries need to chart a new course for greater human capital investments to help citizens become more resilient to the overlapping threats of health shocks, conflict, slow growth and climate change and also lay a solid foundation for faster, more inclusive growth.”

Due to the pandemic, preschool-age children in multiple countries have lost more than 34% of learning in early language and literacy and more than 29% of learning in math, compared to pre-pandemic cohorts. In many countries, even after schools had reopened, preschool enrollment had not recovered by the end of 2021; it was down by more than 10 percentage points in multiple countries. Children also faced greater food insecurity during the pandemic.

Among school-age children, on average, for every 30 days of school closures, students lost about 32 days of learning. This is because school closures and ineffective remote learning measures caused students to miss out on learning and also forget what they had already learned. In low- and middle-income countries, nearly 1 billion children missed out on at least a full year of in-person schooling due to school closures, and more than 700 million missed one and a half years. As a result, learning poverty—already 57% before the pandemic—has increased further in these countries, with an estimated 70% of 10-year-olds unable to understand a basic written text.

COVID-19 dealt a heavy blow to youth employment. Forty million people who would have had a job in the absence of the pandemic did not have one at the end of 2021, worsening youth unemployment trends. Youth earnings contracted by 15% in 2020 and 12% in 2021. New entrants with lower education will have 13% less earnings during their first decade in the labor market. Evidence from Brazil, Ethiopia, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and Vietnam showed that 25% of all young people were neither in education, employment nor training in 2021.

The window for addressing setbacks in human capital accumulation is small, as gaps in early stages of the life cycle tend to widen over time. Without urgent action, the pandemic also threatens to deepen poverty and inequality. This report highlights evidence-based policy options to recover from current losses and forestall future ones. It also provides an approach to help countries prioritize among different crisis recovery policy options.

In the short term, for young children, countries should support targeted campaigns for vaccinations and nutritional supplementation; increase access to pre-primary education; and expand coverage of cash transfers for vulnerable families. For school-age children, governments need to keep schools open and increase instructional time; assess learning and match instruction to students’ learning levels; and streamline the curriculum to focus on foundational learning. For youth, support for adapted training, job intermediation, entrepreneurship programs, and new workforce-oriented initiatives are crucial.

In the longer term, countries need to build agile, resilient, and adaptive health, education, and social protection systems that can better prepare for and respond to current and future shocks.

“People under the age of 25 today—that is, those most affected by the erosion of human capital—will make up more than 90% of the prime-age workforce in 2050,” said Norbert Schady, Chief Economist for Human Development at the World Bank, and a lead author of the report. “Reversing the pandemic’s impact on them and investing in their future should be a top priority for governments. Otherwise, these cohorts will represent not just a lost generation but rather multiple lost generations.”

The World Bank Group is working closely with governments to protect and invest in people as they cope with and recover from the pandemic. The World Bank’s pandemic response financing reached $72.8 billion between April 2020 and June 2022, including $37.6 billion and $35.1 billion in IBRD and IDA commitments, respectively. During the same period, its financing in human development reached $47.5 billion, supporting 300 projects in low- and middle-income countries.

16, February 2023

Incurable Ebola-like virus spreads to Cameroon after killing several people in Equatorial Guinea ⁰

New cases of a deadly hemorrhagic fever have been detected in Cameroon, after a deadly outbreak was declared in neighbouring Equatorial Guinea.

Cameroonian authorities detected two suspected cases of Marburg disease in Olamze, a border commune, the public health delegate for the region, Robert Mathurin Bidjang, said on Tuesday.

Equatorial Guinea officially declared its first outbreak of Marburg, an illness similar to Ebola, on Monday. It quarantined more than 200 people and restricted movement last week in its Kie-Ntem province, where the fever was first detected.

The Marburg virus causes a highly infectious disease that can have a fatality rate of up to 88 per cent, according to the WHO. There are no approved vaccines or antiviral treatments to treat it.

The small Central African country has so far reported nine deaths as well as 16 suspected cases of the disease which causes fever, fatigue and blood-stained vomit and diarrhoea, according to the WHO.

The World Health Organisation said earlier it was increasing its epidemiological surveillance in Equatorial Guinea and re-deploying COVID-19 teams to the area.

“Surveillance in the field has been intensified,” said George Ameh, WHO’s country representative in Equatorial Guinea.

“Contact tracing, as you know, is a cornerstone of the response. We have […] redeployed the COVID-19 teams that were there for contact tracing and quickly retrofitted them to really help us out.”

“We’re working on a 30-day response plan where we should be able to quantify what are the exact measures and quantify what are the exact needs,” Ameh said.

Neighbouring Cameroon had restricted movement along the border to avoid contagion.

“On the 13 of February, we had two suspected cases. These are two 16-year-old children, a boy and a girl, who have no previous travel history to the affected areas in Equatorial Guinea,” Bidjang said at a meeting in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde.

Forty-two people who came into contact with the two children have been identified and contact tracing was ongoing, he added.

Source: Reuters

16, February 2023

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Ngarbuh Victims Await Trial Three Years After Massacre ⁰

Three years ago, we uncovered a gruesome massacre in Cameroon’s northwest region. Government forces and armed ethnic Fulani killed at least 21 civilians in Ngarbuh village, including 13 children and one pregnant woman. One survivor, who witnessed the killing of his entire family, including seven children, told us: “I saw the military shooting my family members one by one as they attempted to escape. They shot our mother first. Then, they shot the children, whose bodies all fell on her.”

The Ngarbuh killings were one of the Cameroonian security forces’ worst atrocities since late 2016 when the crisis erupted in the country’s Anglophone regions, where armed separatists are seeking independence for the country’s minority Anglophone population.

The government initially denied that its security forces were responsible and embarked on a smear campaign against human rights organizations and media that exposed the massacre. But following international pressure, President Paul Biya established a commission of inquiry on March 1, 2020. The government then admitted its security forces bear some responsibility and announced the arrest of at least two soldiers and a gendarme in June 2020.

The Ngarbuh trial opened on December 17, 2020, before a military court in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. When the trial was announced, it was a welcome step and was seen as a test case that could break the perpetual cycles of impunity in Cameroon.

But since then, there has been little progress. The trial, meant to restart last November, is now slated to resume February 16, just two days after the 3rd anniversary of the massacre. The continued slow pace raises real concerns about whether the military justice system can deliver justice, and if so, when? Additionally, the location of the trial in Yaoundé, 450 kilometers from Ngarbuh, means there will be limited to no access and participation for victims’ families and potential witnesses.

The Ngarbuh massacre was not an isolated event in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions. Since February 14, 2020, numerous civilians have been killed by both government forces and separatists. While other blatant killings have generated inquiries, the only constant over the years has been the lack of accountability for the growing number of human rights abuses committed by both sides.

The resumption of the trial this week offers another opportunity to demonstrate that the military system can deliver accountability and send a signal to would-be violators that these types of crimes are taken seriously. If it doesn’t, the message to the victims’ families will be that the military has little interest in justice.

Culled from Human Rights Watch

16, February 2023

CPDM Crime Syndicate: Motazé prepares end of IMF-led program ⁰

Cameroon’s Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motazé, is pushing for a plan to anticipate the impact of the end of the IMF-led program. On February 10, 2023, as the new managers of the Autonomous Amortization Fund (CAA) and the National Deposit and Consignment Fund (CDEC) were being installed, the official invited them to find solutions to compensate for the reduction in budget support that will accompany the end of the IMF program.

“(I’m) not sure right now that if the current program, which is scheduled to end in 2024, ends, another one will be negotiated,” the Minister said. “Cameroon will not be indefinitely under programs, we should remember that to manage is to foresee, and it is therefore up to all of us, and to you too, to find resources to replace these budgetary supports, so that Cameroon continues to move forward, and that the financing of our development continues. I am counting on you,” he added.

As a reminder, the 3-year IMF-led program was concluded on July 29, 2021, with the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) and the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangements. Under this program, Cameroon will obtain a total of CFA770 billion in aid, according to the Minister of Finance. CFA380 billion will be provided by the IMF, while the rest should come from donors such as the World Bank, the AfDB, the European Union, and France.

Source: Business in Cameroon

16, February 2023

Mamfe District Hospital: Tales of agony ⁰

It is almost one year since the Manyu District hospital was burned down to ashes. The Mamfe District Hospital was the best in the Division and it did, indeed, stand the population in good stead for more than four decades.

No one could have suspected that such a health facility could be razed, but the war which has pitted Cameroon’s English-speaking minority against the country’s government has brought out the worst in human beings.

The devil seem to have found work for many idle hands in the two English-speaking regions of the country and the anger and frustration triggered by years of marginalization and lack of opportunities have made destruction and wickedness fashionable in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions.

The burning of the Mamfe District Hospital in 2022 is one of those tragedies of war which many will never be forgotten. Since the burning of the hospital, it has not been easy for the population of Mamfe town, indeed, the entire Division which depended on the hospital for its health-care needs.

The population is desperate and though the government had moved critical services to the preventive health facility in Mamfe town, the population is still suffering and holds that the services offered leave much to be desired.

The staffs of the health facility, for their part, are finding it challenging to meet up with the public’s health demands. Due to this unfortunate situation, the death rate in the town has gone up by at least 30% with women and children being the hardest hit.

The Mamfe preventive health-care facility was never designed to deal with intensive care and delivery cases. It has never been endowed with the capacity to deal with heart problems, asthma, kidney failure and other critical illnesses but following the burning of the district hospital, this poorly equipped preventive health facility is now charged with the duty of handling very challenging situations though it is bereft of the proper equipment.

According to a medical officer at the health facility who elected anonymity, preventive medicine and curative medicine are different and tasking the preventive health-care facility with such a challenging task without the proper tools and equipment is one tough job which may result in many deaths.

The health official further explained that with the recent influx of IDPs from neighbouring Akwaya Sub-division where multiple inter-ethnic wars are playing out, the health situation in the Manyu Divisional headquarters has gotten worse.

The IDPs are not only flooding the town, they are also flooding the lone preventive health facility in the town as many of them come with diseases like miseales, scabbies, smallpox, typhoid and other diseases which are hard to handle by the medical staff.

The increasing population is also a source of stress for staff who are required to work without equipment. Their unfriendly working conditions have been compounded by an acute shortage of well-trained government paid staff and a lack of much-needed medications.

Speaking to the only medical doctor at the health facility, our correspondent in Mamfe learned that the challenges waiting to be addressed include a lack of proper medical infrastructure, the absence of a modern intensive care unit, the non-existence of a neo-natal unit and a Tuberclosis (TB) unit. A shortage of wards and maternity beds is robbing the health workers at the facility of a good night’s sleep.

The medical expert also advised that the makeshift health facility was in a dire need of delivery beds, stethoscopes, emergency vans, ambulances, laboratory equipment, x-ray machines, electrocardiograms and essential medications like anagelsics and antibiotics.

The government had promised to take appropriate measures to ensure residents of Mamfe got the care they needed but it is yet to match actions with words.

Manyu citizens in the USA, UK and Canada have been raising funds and they are looking forward to the government creating the appropriate environment for the money raised to be wired to the appropriate quarters for the rebuilding of the destroyed hospital.

It is in this context that Manyu Toronto, Canada, will be organizing a massive fundraiser in the summer to acquire modern equipment for the hospital. Manyu Toronto will be pleased to receive assistance from well-wishers across the globe.

By Dr Joachim Arrey with correspondent reports from Mamfe

16, February 2023

Buea: Ekona women protest and demand for the release of their children ⁰

Women in Ekona, a town in Muyuka sub-division of the South-west Region, mobilized themselves and protested at the Legion office in Buea, on February 15, 2023.

An unspecified number of women from Ekona, carrying peace plants, gathered in front of the legion office in Buea and requested for the release of their children who were arrested in Ekona on Sunday, February 12, 2023.

According to sources in Ekona, the youths were in a football field as there was an ongoing football match, when the military stormed the area and carried out a mass arrest. The following day, February 13, more arrests were made by the military.

Talking to another protester, she said that, the military made it a norm to arrest their sons and brothers for no reason and termed them separatist fighters.

After spending hours in front of the legion office and putting movement of vehicles on hold, the women decided to leave after they were told that their sons would be released and sent back home.

Residents of Ekona, especially young men have witnessed several assaults from both the military and the separatist fighters, since the start of the ongoing crisis and are yet to recover from the damages caused by the conflict.

By Cecilia Manjang

15, February 2023

Journalist Martinez Zogo Affair: Laurent Esso faces life in jail ⁰

Justice Minister Laurent Esso, who had led several concocted high-profile CPDM government investigations into corruption, is now en route to jail for life for participating in the murder of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Laurent Esso has been in the business of killing for decades and he is expected to be auditioned by state prosecutors at the Yaoundé Military Court following a decision by the 90-year-old President Biya.

Esso has been in the Biya government ever since the 90-year-old dictator came to power in 1982 and has led many high-profile investigations and crackdowns including a probe into the famous Albatross affair.

Recently, investigators admitted that Laurent Esso has a special relationship with business tycoon Amougou Belinga and that he reportedly participated in the killing of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Ahead of Amougou Belinga’s arrest in the nation’s capital Yaoundé, investigators also established that Laurent Esso had also been part of the criminal gang of the Francophone mafia boss and shared a telephone conversation with Belinga minutes before journalist Martinez Zogo was murdered.

Justice Minister Laurent Esso is also being accused of covering several cases of murder brought against Amougou Belinga.

The influence of Esso, who is yet to receive his summon within the ruling CPDM party has been described by top Biya aides as a cancer that should to be eliminated.

On Tuesday, Amougou Belinga and his gang were ferried in very old National Gendarmerie Toyota pickups to the Yaoundé Military Court in a move described by many political commentators in Yaoundé as the end of the preliminary investigation into the journalist Martinez Zogo affair.

Like Laurent Esso, they all have been accused of being part of the clique that killed journalist Martinez Zogo.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

15, February 2023

Yaoundé: President Biya will die next year ⁰

Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, will surely be dying next year based on what he said on June 9, 2004, following an announcement that he had died in 2004.

Many Cameroonians have been looking forward to Mr. Biya’s death but they may have to wait for one year again as Mr. Biya is not in a rush to leave this planet.

On Monday, Mr. Biya celebrated his 90th birthday and he is in good shape. If anybody is expecting the 90-year-old Biya to die this year, then he might be hoping against hope.

Biya has repeatedly defended his record in the past and says that the government has made strides to return peace to the minority English-speaking regions where separatists are trying to form their own state.

He touts his Vision 2035 plan as a blueprint to boost development over the next 12 years.

Biya was born in Mvomeka’a, a village in the southern equatorial forest, in 1933, the year prohibition ended in the United States and Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in Germany.

After studying in Paris, he returned to Cameroon in 1962 as a top civil servant and quickly rose to become the Prime Minister in 1975. He was hand-picked as successor after the country’s first post-independence president Ahmadou Ahidjdo decided to resign suddenly in November 1982.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

14, February 2023

Journalist Martinez Zogo Affair: Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga going, going, gone! ⁰

Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga the main suspect in the murder of whistleblower journalist Martinez Zogo, his hit man lieutenant colonel Justin Danwe and twenty other persons who have been in custody for more than a week at the Secretariat of State for Defense were on Tuesday transported in two security vehicles like common criminals and presented before judges at the Yaoundé Military Court located at the Ngoa Ekelle district in the nation’s capital.

Amougou Belinga and his gang were ferried in very old National Gendarmerie Toyota pickups in a move described by many political commentators in Yaoundé as the end of the preliminary investigation into the journalist Martinez Zogo affair.

Cameroon Concord News Group understands that the custody in SED was extended three times in compliance with the law. This week, it became mandatory to remove the suspects from SED.

Commenting on the happenings in Yaoundé, Cameroon Concord News Nelly Epupa opined that it is now up to the Military Court to issue new detention warrants for Amougou Belinga and his killer squad or to extend their stay in SED pending further investigation.

By Rita Akana with additional editing from Nelly Epupa