The Ambazonia Vice President got more done in his first 38 days in office than any leader before and after Interim President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe or any since the days of Chief Ayamba and Justice Ebong. He took office in the depths of the Great Corruption deep within the Interim Government, signing executive orders to stabilize the Southern Cameroons Revolution boat.

Vice President Dabney Yerima is now the reason Ambazonians focus on the first 38 days. Of course, the Vice President does not have total control over his time in office due to some distractions coming from the disgraced Dr Ikome Sako, Barrister Fru John Nsoh and some Southern Cameroons comedians in the USA.

Vice President Yerima’s 38 days in office has been amazing. But how has his tenure compared with that of the former acting crew?

We looked at the performance of Yerima and his team in many areas of the struggle

Here’s how they stack up:

The IG under the command of VP Yerima secretly moved away from the reach of French Cameroun forces the family of 5 months old Baby Martha, shot at close range 10 times in the head by Cameroon army soldiers.

The reinstated IG coordinated funds to cover cost for emergency Medical assistance for a Southern Cameroonian who was shot in Kumba by the terrorist forces of Paul Biya and left to die. The IG is following on other cases.

Vice President Yerima’s team have coordinated funds and supplied 45 mattresses to our brothers in the Douala New Bell Prison who have been sleeping on bare floor for the past one year.  The IG is going to proceed to other detention centres where it will cater for the needs of our detainees.

The Interim Government’s humanitarian team has coordinated another round of legal, medical and food support chain to our detainees in Yaoundé. While this was not enough for our entire political prison population, the IG looks to scale that up in the days and weeks ahead.

The reinstated IG’s humanitarian assistance has been extended to provide food for prisoners in Douala, Bafoussam, Mbouda,Dshang and the IDPs scattered around the major towns in LRC. Specific attention will be provided to one of our IDPs in the French Cameroun Town of Douala diagnosed with Cancer.

In Nigeria, Vice President Yerima’s men and women have launched a pilot project that will assist our refugees. 20 pregnant women were provided assistance to welcome our new Ambazonian babies unfortunately born as refugees. They at least deserve a dignified birth.

10 other women from our refugee community in Nigeria were part of another pilot project for tailoring skills by the reinstated IG.

Some 20 of our refugee women were part of another pilot project aim at helping them to work at Bakeries.

By Sama Ernest

All Amba Boys are not good guys. They are not all bad boys. Judge for yourself whether their existence is justified or not and take responsibility now and later for your conclusion. I have been on the road most of these past two weeks. I broke from routine to attend to crucial family matters and other professional engagements. Most of my travels have been in Ground Zero. I have been seeing a bit of the pregnancy Ground Zero carries. When shall it be delivered? Find the answer elsewhere. In varied opinions, the Amba Boys are reining love, fear, discord, greed, generosity. They are taking charge of their space. They make their bed. They are lying on it. Some lie on their bed of roses, others on their bed of thorns. I have heard about the bad. I have seen some of the ungood. I have seen some good. Twice, a group blocked road transport through Bali along the Mamfe-Bamenda highway, from Bali to its outskirt villages, heading towards Batibo. For reasons yet to be made clear, they barricaded the road at several locations felling trees, dumping stones and furniture from houses and bars, other objects and divers types of debris; just any form of nuisance that could obstruct traffic. First, May 18-24 and next on June 1.

Friday, May 24, along the Mamfe-Bamenda road:

Our commuter vehicle runs into four groups of Amba Boys at different locations. Our driver who plies the road regularly, recognizes the leader of the group and asks him, “Na here you dey now?” (Is this where you are now?) To which the good-looking young leader of the armed group replies: “You noba hear say some new general don comot for here? Na me be new general for here.” (Haven’t you heard of the new general who has emerged here? It’s me the new general here.) He tells our driver how he survived military gunshots that hit his wrist. “Na only one catch ma foot” (Just one bullet wounded me on my foot.) Next, he counts four of us grownups in the vehicle and levies each of us 2000FCFA. “Wuna fours so, if wuna giih we two-two towin, we fiih take’am buy groundnut.” (If each of you gives us two thousand francs, that would enable us to buy some groundnuts.) Whatever “groundnuts” stand for. But as passengers obediently comply and the collection is in progress, a lieutenant of the “general” mounting guard about 60 metres away, fires a shot for reasons unknown to us and apparently, even to his general. All vehicles lined up for the same exercise take off in apparent fright. The general retreats from our vehicle, hopping a few steps backwards, looking in the direction of the shot as if to ascertain what would have provoked it. Our driver does like the others. He speeds off and returns the cash he had collected from passengers. Elsewhere, other groups did not impose a levy. Some simply asked for “any contribution”. Others asked for nothing, simply inspecting our vehicle to identify any “enemies” among passengers. Prime enemies are state defence and security officers. At a previous Amba checkpoint, one of them looked so intently at my older brother, the driver asked him jokingly, “Why are you looking at him like that? You think he is… (some word I guess suggested military or police).” To which the Amba “officer” replied, “You think he would tell you he is if he was?” But they let us go.

Friday, May 31, Bamenda-Mamfe road:

Rumours have flooded Bamenda that Amba Boys would barricade the Bamenda-Mamfe road again on Saturday, June 1. Reason: the Bali County Amba would be burying their “general” killed the previous Saturday. The circumstances surrounding his death remain obscure, but most claims hold he was not felled by a Government bullet. Varied versions say he was killed in a mutiny within his County unit. On this day, I am travelling that road, headed to Manyemen. On a bend at an uninhabited part of Bali, a bow-legged fellow in the middle of the road, points his Dane gun menacingly at a vehicle just ahead of ours. Ours and the other screech to a sudden halt. Another older-looking man emerging from the remote junction, shouts an order, “Don’t give any money. No one should give any money.” Few of the dozen members of the group have guns. Most of them have hammers and peak axes. Our driver enquires from them about rumours of a lockdown the next day. They all grow wild. Those with guns point them at our vehicles menacingly. The bow-legged man said to our driver, pointing his gun at him, “Why are you asking? Just let me see you along this road tomorrow!” Our driver, raising his hands, pleads for forgiveness. They order us to drive off. After delays from breakdowns, we arrive at Kendem Gendarmerie Brigade checkpoint, about 40 km to Mamfe at about 8.30pm, well after the 6pm curfew hour. We are bound to stay the night there, a flashlight from the unmanned roadside sentinel lighting the place, but no one there to attend to us, as the officers had retreated to their “barracks” for the night. However, at intervals throughout the long night, a torchlight flashes at us from another sentinel behind the barracks. Routine torchlight checks do not come from the Gendarmerie alone, though. We are apparently being watched by both sides. Occasionally, a torchlight flashes from the Bamenda road end of Kendem behind our vehicle. We can guess they are Amba Boys. Neither the Gendarmerie nor the Amba Boys approach us.

Saturday, June 1, Kendem:

At dawn, the Gendarme officers criss-cross their barracks, taking turns to bathe within our view and change into their uniforms in their rooms. At 7 pm, three of them walk towards the checkpoint, one activating his AK47. Paying no attention to us, they walk in bold military steps to the back of a house in the direction they often point during gun battles and routine alerts. He fires three shots. About 30 minutes earlier, shots from unknown persons had been heard from that direction at a distance in the bush. Were they exchanging morning greetings? After the shots, the officers remove their barricades and beckoned on us to approach. We walk towards them in a file, present our ID cards, board our vehicle and drive off headed towards Bachuo-Akagbe, the junction town to Mamfe (right turn) and Kumba (left turn). Along the way, we meet two groups of Amba Boys. The first group simply inspects our vehicle and asks for “anything”. A passenger offers 500 FCFA which our driver drops on the ground (their prescribed way of being given money) and they flag us to drive on. At the next Amba control, one of them notices a cob of maize protruding from a bag on the carriage of our vehicle. He asks for permission to take it. The owner in our vehicle gives her consent. The Amba Boy pulls just that cob of maize from the bag. They all smile and flag us to go.

Sunday, June 2, Mamfe-Kumba road:

In a different vehicle on this new trajectory, we run into an Amba checkpoint of about 15 armed combatants. A passenger we had picked up along the way, alighted at that checkpoint and to our amazement, he was greeted with camaraderie. “Na we officer” (He is our colleague), said one of them. My fellow passengers are bemused. “So dis boy too na Amba?” (So, this guy is also an Amba Boy?), one passenger asks. The astonishment could be understood. The young man in question wore neither of the famous Amba amulets. He wore a rosary with a crucifix. We drive off. A few paces away, possibly less than 300 metres, we drive into a Gendarmerie checkpoint.

Amba Terror?

Several Ambazonia units are in discord over sharing of the spoils of war. Revenue from free-will donations, ransoms, GoFundMe remittances disbursed by Diaspora warlords and levies are tearing some units apart. Occasionally, there are mutinies and inter-Amba gun battles. Sometimes commanders or generals are “neutralized” or disarmed and kept in captivity or overthrown or expelled. Some versions of the Bali County general’s death suggest he was killed because he disciplined some of his greedy lieutenants for indulging in different forms of extortion. At some Amba units, commanders or those in whom they entrust funds for safe keeping have reportedly fled with the said funds, some to the tune of millions. Some of such funds are raised through levies which villagers view as disguised forms of extortion. In one unit, the “ingenious” finance officer has obliged all cash crop farmers to surrender two-thirds of all their yields to the Amba treasury. Not only are some unscrupulous Amba units reaping from suffering masses, they are now executors of justice and “keepers of the seals”. They discipline “defaulting” villagers and have had to flog elderly men and women, especially over land disputes. Sometimes, some villagers acknowledge the wisdom in some of the actions of the Amba law enforcers, but on the whole, such actions have created an atmosphere of fear, left the impression of a reign of terror and made some people wish for protection from elsewhere.

Cameroon has detained hundreds more supporters of opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who is facing treason charges after leading protests and asserting that he won last October’s presidential election. The arrests happened Saturday as security forces disrupted a planned demonstration calling for Kamto’s release. Book seller Germain Kamte was found lying on the ground Monday in the Nlonkak neighborhood of Cameroon’s capital with bruises all over her body.

She told the people who found her that police stopped her and four of her friends, accused them of supporting a planned opposition protest, and then beat them. Kamte said the police beat her and four others severely, saying they were rude because two of the girls pleaded to be allowed to speak with their lawyers. Police kicked them all over their bodies, Kamte said, and used batons to beat them on their heads and under their feet.

Police refuse to respond

Cameroon police refused to respond to Kamte’s accusations, but routinely deny use of excessive force. Territorial administration minister Paul Atanga Nji said the police were deployed to maintain public order. He said the planned protest by supporters of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement party was illegal and its arrested leader, Maurice Kamto, a threat to stability.

“We can no longer tolerate those who undermine the laws of the republic,” Nji said. “He [Kamto] has a hidden agenda to destabilize Cameroon. We will not give him the opportunity.” Kamto’s supporters had promised to defy yet another ban on protests Saturday and demonstrate for his immediate release, along with over 500 arrested and detained supporters. But Cameroon’s security forces disrupted the protest and detained about 200 more opposition supporters, according to the CRM party.

Crackdown condemned

CRM Secretary General Christopher Ndong condemned authorities for deploying troops to crack down and refusing their right to protest. “We have taken the pains to write declaring that we want to protest,” Ndong said. “For more than 300 subdivisional offices (administrative units in Cameroon), systematically the government has rejected it. We now use the constitutional right because it is in the constitution that we have a right to march and protest for things that are going wrong.”

Human rights activist Jean Pierre Bengono says Cameroon should not be using the military to stop protests. Bengono said no normal human being would be happy seeing the military of a country that is supposed to protect its people assemble every morning, ready to arrest those who simply want to express their opinions. He said all organized democracies need the opposition to check political excesses and discuss the well-being of its people.

Disputed election

Kamto declared himself winner of the Oct. 7, 2018, presidential election and accused the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, who has led for 36 years, of stealing his victory. Biya was declared the winner with 71 percent of the vote, far ahead of Kamto’s 14 percent. Police arrested Kamto and his colleagues in January after days of peaceful protests turned violent, with security forces using riot gear to disperse crowds in Yaounde, Douala and Mbouda.

Source: VOA

Prospects for talks between authorities and separatist movements to end escalating violence in Cameroon’s English-speaking region are slim, a senior human rights official said, dismissing assertions by both sides to be open to dialogue.

A separatist insurgency broke out in 2017 following a government crackdown on peaceful protests in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest, which complain of being marginalised by the French-speaking majority.

Prime Minister Joseph Ngute said government would be willing to talk to the rebels, but would not consider demands for secession – a position hard-line separatists said they will not accept.

Eleven movements representing Anglophone Cameroon, including the main armed factions, last month said they were willing to enter mediated discussions with the state.

Almost daily violence from both sides has intensified, forcing thousands of civilians to seek refuge in Cameroon’s French-speaking regions and neighbouring countries.

“There is no desire for dialogue. The abuses are from both sides and civilians are finding themselves in the middle,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, Senior Central Africa Researcher at Human Rights Watch, told reporters in Paris.

“The position of government is an almost complete denial and there is total impunity for violence.”

The oil, cocoa and timber-producing nation was among western Africa’s most settled until a few years ago.

The United Nations estimates since 2017 about 1,800 people have been killed and more than 530,000 displaced with 1.3 million in need. Authorities promised to act over accusations of rights violations by security personnel.

Allegrozzi, refused entry to the country in May because of her research, said it was clear the rebels were too divided to form a platform to negotiate, an element government was using to its advantage.

She estimated the total number of separatist fighters at about 3,000 with evidence they were acquiring more sophisticated weaponry.

The crisis has slipped beneath the international radar given President Paul Biya’s close co-operation with Western states in the fight against Islamist militant group Boko Haram in West and central Africa.

The United States is become increasingly critical of government and the separatist crisis was discussed for the first time at the UN Security Council last month.

Allegrozzi said the Anglophone population was increasingly in tune with independence. “There is a growing support towards the separatists and secession,” she said.

Source: Reuters

Non Recognition of a decision circulating on social media dismissing Seseku Ayuk Tabe as the president of Ambazonia.

Distinguish men and women, we want to acknowledge the support Ambazonian people have been getting from you in this difficult time. A friend in need is really a friend in deed.

We the Ground Zero council of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia based in Ambazonia or Southern Cameroons wish to call your attention on a purported fake release on the dismissal of His Excellency Seseku Ayuk Tabe as the president of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

We want to inform you that, as one of the major stakeholders working day and night in the back scenes on ground, we want to declare the following;

• His Excellency Seseku Ayuk Tabe is the only legitimate president of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.
• We will only accept dialogue in his presence
• We call for his immediate release and and for all those arrested during this crisis.
• We are ready to ask our security units to cease fire immediately if His Excellency Seseku Ayuk Tabe is released and dialogue begins.

The people of the federal republic of Ambazonia remain very jealous to their institutions and independence.

We call on you to press on LRC for an immediate end to the war.

We stand by the international community, our president and other major Ambazonian stake holders for a common political solution to the present situation.

Accept warm greetings from Ground Zero.

Cc:

• UN
• EU
• AU
• ECOWAS
• CEMAC
• US senate
• US Congress
• US under Secretary for African affaires
• Federation of Russia
• China
• Human rights watch
• Local and international press