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31, December 2018

Malta rescues 180 refugees as weather deteriorates ⁰

Malta has pulled 180 refugees to safety from two boats in distress, while 49 more were stuck in limbo at sea as the weather worsened in the Mediterranean.

An army patrol boat picked up 28 refugees from a dinghy some 71 nautical miles southwest of Malta before plucking another 152 people from a wooden boat to the south.

The rescues followed the recovery by Malta Sunday of 69 refugees on a wooden boat which had run into trouble.

Meanwhile, the UN’s refugee agency said time was “running out” for 49 people rescued by NGO boats but denied a safe port in Europe, some of whom have been stranded at sea for over a week.

The NGOs — the German Sea-Eye and Dutch Sea-Watch — called for “an immediate solution for those being held hostage by European States, who are denying them a safe port.”

“With the weather conditions forecast to worsen this evening, a solution must be found by the end of 2018 in order to prevent placing people’s heath at further risk,” they said in a joint statement.

The German-flagged Professor Albrecht Penck ship has 17 refugees from West Africa on board who were rescued on Saturday in international waters off Libya.

At the same time, the Dutch-flagged Sea-Watch 3 has 32 refugees rescued on December 22و including three young children, three unaccompanied adolescents and four women from Nigeria, Libya and Ivory Coast.

While Italy, Malta, Spain and the Netherlands have refused to accept the Sea-Watch 3 refugees, several German cities have offered to take them in.

On Saturdayو a government spokesman said Germany would only accept some of the refugees if other European countries also agreed to do so.

Last week, a newborn baby and his mother were helicoptered from a boat to Malta.

“The negotiations over which country takes them in must happen only once those rescued are brought safety to land,” UNHCR special envoy Vincent Cochetel said.

More than 1,300 refugees have died trying to reach Italy or Malta via the central Mediterranean since the beginning of the year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The Italian interior ministry said Monday that the number of 2018 arrivals in Italy was down over 80 percent compared with 2017 at just 23,370.

The biggest number came from Tunisia, followed by Eritrea, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

In mid-2017, departures from Libya dropped after a controversial deal between Italy and the war-torn North African country.

A campaign against the NGO rescue organizations peaked in June this year with far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini’s “closed-ports” policy aimed at ending all rescue operations, including military ones.

(Source: AFP)

31, December 2018

SOBA UK Appoints Danbro as its Accountants and deploys an innovative Cloud-based Accounting System ⁰

Fellow Sobans,

On 22nd September 2018, the General Assembly of SOBA UK met at St George’s Park, Burton Upon Trent under the theme “Together we Succeed” and committed to modernising its financial systems. SOBA UK is pleased to announce the successful appointment of the UK Accounting firm Danbro as SOBA UK’s Accountants.

Danbro Accounting will provide accounting services, supply and manage a cloud-based accounting system for SOBA UK. The financial data migration phase to the new cloud-based accounting system was recently completed. The Executive Treasurer and Financial Secretaries have been getting to grips with this fantastic new proprietary tool and are excited about the prospects of providing robust financial reporting to our members.

Why is this important to SOBA UK?

Members commitment – Members voted to modernise our financial systems and reporting.
Automatic reporting – Automatic reports (P&L, Balance sheet, Transactions by Categories etc) can be produced directly from the cloud-based system.
Increased activity – SOBA UK’s financial activities have increased greatly over recent years and there is a need for a proprietary solution for easy and instant reporting.
Securing data – SOBA UK’s financial data and analyses will be held securely on the system for future members. There is no more use of Excel Workbooks located on private computers.
Improved productivity – This will free up time for the executive team to spend on core association activities and engaging with members.
Greater accountability – There will be more accountability through independent reviews of SOBA UK accounts by Danbro.

What will the UK accounting firm Danbro do for SOBA UK?

Supply and manage the cloud-based system.
Provide annual accounts for our members.
Deal with correspondence from HMRC and other agencies.
Act as the corporate secretary for SOBA UK as would be required.

SOBA UK is excited about this great new development in the association, with the management team looking forward to working with Danbro to provide greater financial insights to both members and other agencies.

Best wishes for 2019.

Kind regards,

Mr John Bawak General Secretary, SOBA UK On behalf of SOBA UK Members

Counter Signed by Mr Ayuk Akoh-Arrey, FIA President, SOBA UK

Counter Signed by Mr Bime Lafon Vice President, SOBA UK

31, December 2018

Southern Cameroons Crisis: A review ⁰

The Southern Cameroons crisis that started in October 2016 following a strike by teachers and lawyers calling for better working conditions and the protection of the Southern Cameroons educational and social culture will continue in 2019 as the country’s authorities are in no mood to seek peaceful and long-term solutions.

In its third year, the crisis has already consumed more than 5,000 lives, including some 2,000 army soldiers sent to the region with clear instructions to shoot and kill. Despite honest and frantic calls by the international community for a peaceful resolution, the country’s president, Paul Biya, also known as the “monarch” has continued with unwavering determination with his reckless and dangerous military campaign.

Today, the region is awash with weapons and the crimes against humanity are simply mind-boggling. Government forces have been killing young Southern Cameroonian males, many of whom have nothing to do with the insurgency that is playing out in the region. The real fighters are in the jungles of Southern Cameroons, but since army soldiers cannot go to the jungles, they have been killing innocent civilians to prove to their Yaoundé bosses that they are mopping up the region.

Their brutality has not only been against young healthy males, but also against the old and disabled who cannot escape to the bushes where most of the population is hiding. In so many villages in the region, many old and disabled residents have been burnt to ashes, as the government’s collective punitive expedition has no limits.

This approach to solving problems adopted by the government predicated upon intimidation is only radicalizing more young Southern Cameroonians who understand that their best bet is to join the insurgents who are doing a great job at giving army soldiers a run for their money.

It should, however, be mentioned that the insurgents are not any saints by any standards. Besides defending themselves and protecting the population, they too have been committing gross human rights violations, sometimes even killing people they suspect of collaborating with the Yaounde government. This approach is sowing fear among the population and it is causing many critics to question the rationale behind the insurgency if its objective is to strike fear in the same people the insurgents claim they must protect.

With law and order completely down, the rule of the gun is prevailing in the region. Even army soldiers are using the occasion to make fast cash. They have been arresting young Southern Cameroonians and threatening to take them to Yaounde or even kill them if their parents do not pay for their release. The soldiers have been asking for huge sums of money and this is upsetting to the local population which holds that the insurgents are totally right to challenge the establishment whose hallmark is corruption.

But some fake insurgents (fake Amba boys) are also making hay while the sun shines. With guns within everybody’s reach, some young men have constituted themselves into groups and they are kidnapping civilians to acquire money. Their main targets are Southern Cameroonians living abroad who are in the region to either bury their loved ones or to spend the holidays with their families.

The fake “Amba boys” are sometimes a creation of the Territorial Administration Minister, Paul Atanga Nji, who is using them to infiltrate the real insurgents. But not all of his undercover agents are honest. Many have turned out to be rogue elements and they have been wreaking havoc on the local population and this is causing a lot of indignation among the population.

Some of these rogue elements have been arrested by the real insurgents known by the population as “Amba boys” and they have had to confess, but in a world ruled by impunity, many of these rogue elements get killed as their crimes have gone well beyond money.

They sometimes betray the real insurgents and after an operation by government forces which usually results in the killing of many real fighters, there is usually a round of revenge and even relatives of the rogue elements sometimes get targeted by the real fighters. This is the messy situation that the war declared by Biya and implemented by the Defense Minister, Joseph Beti Assomo, and Territorial Administration Minister, Paul Atanga Nji, has created in the region.

Besides human life that has been destroyed by the warring factions, the country’s economy has also taking a punch to the liver. The Southern Cameroons crisis has really been a true nightmare to this once-upon-a-time oasis of peace. It has indeed been a millstone around the neck of the government which has used all the resources available to it to quell the insurgency, but to no avail. Government authorities are still very worried although they have been putting on a brave face, especially as the fighting is robbing the country of much-needed financial resources and stability.

Their fear was all the more justified when the Confederation of African Football (CAF) withdrew the hosting rights of the African Nations Cup in 2019 from the country due to insecurity and corruption. Southern Cameroonian fighters had clearly expressed their determination to disrupt the event and they were quick to advise CAF of their decision and this had a huge impact on the withdrawal of the hosting rights from Cameroon which had many crises to manage at the same time.

Cameroon’s political authorities are still living in fear. They fear that Southern Cameroonians might walk away from the union that was hastily stitched together in 1961 between West Cameroon and East Cameroon. Southern Cameroonians have continued to hold that the union was predicated upon lies right from the beginning and for there to be peace, the country must be split. Walking away from that ‘political marriage’ implies Southern Cameroonians will be taking with them about 60% of the country’s wealth and this is no good news for the Yaoundé government that is already cash-strapped. It has indeed been bled by two years of fighting and there is no end in sight.

Southern Cameroons is blessed with many resources, including oil, gas, diamond and timber. Its rich sub-soil has brought lots of economic benefits to the country. For almost 50 years, the Rio Del Rey estuary has been the source of more than 90% and at times 100% of all of the country’s hydrocarbons, specifically oil.

The region’s waters are also home to large fish stocks. Its forest is home to unimaginable fauna and flora and it is not in error that the world also knows the country because of the Korup National Park which straddles Manyu and Indian Divisions. This region is also known for its fertile volcanic soil and this explains why agriculture is one of the many activities that have been yielding huge foreign earnings to the country. Many of the country’s neighbors have their food supply from this region.

While the country has been raking in millions of dollars from the region’s oil, the residents of the region have been tied up in degrading poverty. The country’s lone refinery (SONARA) is located in Southern Cameroons, precisely in the Southwest port city of Limbe formerly known as Victoria, but the natives of the region have been reduced to sorry spectators of events in their own region.

From every indication, the Southern Cameroons crisis is an outcome of this injustice. More than 90% of the refinery staff are Francophones and to add insults to injury, staff of the refinery have their own neighborhoods that are well designed and very clean. Besides, petroleum products are more expensive in the region than in any other region of the country.

This economic apartheid that has been around since 1977 when oil was discovered in Ndian Division is one of the many reasons why Southern Cameroonians hold that a clear break with Francophone Cameroon will be the ideal solution and they are willing to sacrifice their lives so that future generations will not have to deal with the same issues. This same mentality will surely continue in 2019 and Cameroon will continue to be in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

The Southern Cameroons crisis has hit the Yaoundé government like a ton of bricks. The country’s economy is suffering. Its Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) seem to be out of service. State corporations located in Southern Cameroons are already feeling the heat. Pamol, a palm oil production corporation located in Lobe, a small town in Ndian Division, finally shut its doors in 2018 as the fighting between Southern Cameroonian fighters and army soldiers took a turn for the worse. This revenue stream has stopped flowing and Yaoundé is really ill-at-ease.

Pamol’s closure was indeed bad news for the government. More than three thousand Pamol workers are still unemployed and living in permanent fear, as the fighting between the warring factions rages on. Schools and courts in the region have been closed for more than two years and it is increasingly obvious that the Yaoundé government has lost control of certain parts of the two English-speaking regions.

But it is not only Pamol’s closure that caused the government nightmares. The Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), one of the country’s major employers, also went through a rough patch. 2018 was indeed a bad period for this national corporation and this situation might not improve in 2019. Some of the corporation’s factories had closed shop, while the fighters deliberately set some of its infrastructure ablaze as part of their economic sabotage campaign. Malende, a small town located some 6 km from Muyuka, witnessed huge unemployment rates. The corporation’s rubber factory was set ablaze in 2018 by some unidentified men and this hit CDC like a ton of bricks.

In other plantations, many workers have simply deserted. The fighting is disrupting economic activities in those plantations and many workers hold that it is better to quit than be caught up between the devil and the deep blue sea. The fighting, coupled with the derisory salaries the corporation pays to its workers, made CDC unattractive and this actually eroded the government’s tax base.

Similarly, 2018 was a nightmare to government coffers. Government revenue took a nosedive, as the national oil refinery located in the Southwest region also faced some major challenges. While falling global oil prices were spreading pain and suffering among oil exporters, the declining oil output and constant attempts by Southern Cameroonian fighters to bring down the country’s lone oil refinery left the government in a huge messy economic quandary.

In 2019, Cameroon will continue to be in the spotlight for the wrong reason. The country’s president, Paul Biya, will soon be addressing the nation. He will continue to talk tough regarding the crisis and this does not augur well for the country and its economy which is in the throes of a severe crisis.

The government is yet to understand that this conflict will not be going away anytime soon and that no military action will sweep the frustrations and anger of the people away. The people’s determination to go the distance is there and it will only continue to morph as the government changes its military tactics. The more people the government kills in the region, the more insurgents it will create and the more money the Diaspora will mobilize to continue to make the region ungovernable.

The government must understand that cleaning up the mess it has created in the region will be a long haul. Southern Cameroonians are determined to walk away, and they are in no mood to talk with the Biya regime which is noted for speaking from both sides of its mouth. They have clearly stated that Biya is the problem and that if he continues to be in power, then there are no chances for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. This message will be clearly articulated in the end-of-year speech to be delivered by the Interim Government’s president, Sako Ikome, who will be addressing Southern Cameroonians from Washington, D.C. on December 31, 2018.

The ball is in the government’s court. It knows that it cannot kill Southern Cameroons through military action. Southern Cameroons is an idea and not just a location. While different factions of the fighters have recently been at each other’s throat, the government must understand that its brutality will only go a long way in uniting these disagreeing brothers. The Yaoundé government stands to gain if it sounds a note of peace and unity and Mr. Biya’s speech to the nation today is a huge opportunity which should not be missed.

By Kingsley Betek in Yaoundé and contributions from correspondents in London, UK, and Toronto, Canada

31, December 2018

President Assad ‘has decisively won’ war in Syria ⁰

Leading British daily the Guardian says 2018 has ended on a note of triumph for the Syrian government amid the US decision to withdraw troops and a race among Arab states to restore ties with Damascus.

US President Donald Trump has announced a rapid troop withdrawal from Syria. The Guardian said the decision has “ended any potential threat originating from an indefinite American presence inside Syria’s borders.”

Last week, the UAE reopened its embassy in Damascus, which it had closed in 2011. Bahrain followed suit and other countries, including Kuwait, are expected to re-establish ties in the coming year. And the Arab League is reportedly poised to re-admit Syria, seven years after expelling it.

According to the Guardian, these developments come five months after the Syrian army made arguably its most consequential gain against terrorists since the foreign-backed war erupted, when it took control of Dara’a in the southwest.

Dara’a, the birthplace of foreign-backed sedition, had been the last stronghold of militants. Its return to the government fold removed any viable threat against the state, either politically or militarily, near the capital.

“Taken together, the military and diplomatic developments over the past six months leave no room for doubt: Assad has decisively won the conflict,” the Guardian wrote.

After the surrender of militants in the south, two regions had remained outside the government’s control and both were under the protection of foreign powers, namely Turkey in the north and the US in the east.

The two NATO countries had arrangements with Russia about operating in those zones to avoid confrontation, which meant that any further military advances had to be approved by Moscow.

Damascus and its allies saw these areas as sanctuaries for hostile forces that could become entrenched, and whose mandate could change to fighting the state.

“Trump’s sudden decision has ended that problem,” the Guardian said. The Syrian government “no longer faces the threat of an indefinite American presence in eastern Syria,” the paper said.

Last week, residents of Manbij appealed to the Assad government to retake the city near the Turkish border after the US withdrawal and by Friday Syria’s military had arrived at the frontline in the predominantly Arab town west of the Euphrates river.

Under the US protection, YPG militants used to control the city but Turkey is concerned about continued dominance of the Kurdish group near its borders.

Turkish officials have frequently stated that they would welcome a government takeover of YPG-controlled areas if that involved removing the militants from those areas. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey would have “no business in Manbij if the YPG terrorists leave”.

On the diplomatic front, the UAE proposed normalizing ties with Damascus in 2016, but that plan was snubbed by the Trump administration. According to the Guardian, senior Emirati officials began to refloat the idea of restoring ties with Assad earlier this year, encouraging its Saudi and Bahraini allies to do the same.

“The nature of this conflict, then, has changed drastically, with influential Arab countries now using their diplomatic capital to enable the regime to restore control over Syria,” the paper said.

“Countries that once funded the opposition fighting against Assad are working hard to strengthen him in the hope that he becomes less reliant on their rivals,” it added.

Jordan has already reopened its borders with Syria, meaning that Damascus now has trade ties with all its neighbors except Turkey.

“Trump’s withdrawal has ended any potential threat originating from an indefinite American presence inside Syria’s borders. It has also effectively killed off any political challenge to Assad through the political process in Geneva – once an objective of the US presence in the country,” the Guardian wrote.

“Restoration of ties with Arab neighbors will consolidate the military gains made over the past six months,” it added.

According to the Guardian, since the government took over Aleppo in late 2016, few have questioned Assad’s recovery, but until recently many still doubted his ability to re-emerge as a regional player with normalized relations with other countries.

“The past year now suggests that he has a real chance of doing just that. There will be many people in the region – and beyond – willing to help,” the paper said.

Source: Presstv

31, December 2018

AFCON 2019 Security Issue: Another Own Goal By CAF ⁰

Egypt and South Africa are the only countries that met Confederation of African Football’s December 14, 2018 deadline to show interest in hosting the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) in 2019. The decision on who wins the hosting rights is expected to come up on January 9, 2019. This is going to be barely six months to the event in June. The decision to host arose when Cameroon was stripped of the hosting rights after it was originally awarded in 2014. CAF had claimed that Cameroon’s unpreparedness and the insecurity arising from the Boko haram insurgency and the Anglophone separatists group were reasons it denied the country from hosting AFCON 2019. I think CAF’s decision is unfair.

Taking the contentious issue of security for instance, what measure of insecurity is enough to withdraw the hosting rights from a candidate that had been awarded and how close to the tournament can this decision be made? Bigger events like the Summer Olympics in Munich 1972 and Atlanta 1996 are remembered for massacres of Jews and bomb blast during the respective games, yet they weren’t considered unsafe to host future events. Even AFCON 2010 staged in Angola witnessed a terrorist attack on the Togo national team bus while on its way to the competition by a Cabinda separatist group similar to the Bamenda separatist group in Cameroon. Then, Togo pulled out against CAF’s insistence. If CAF could demand Togo to partake in an event that they feared for their lives and encouraged other nations to stay behind, why use insecurity as an excuse to strip Cameroon of the event?

However, which African nation is safe? Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon are battling Boko Haram insurgents. Libya remains without a central government after Gaddafi. Kenya and Somalia are battling Al-Shabaab. West Africa is battling ISIS. Central African Republic is still on fire. The Congo wars have never really ceased. The same goes to Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Separatist groups abound in Angola, Cameroon, Morocco and South Sudan just to mention a few. Elections spark violence in African nations, so triggering the insecurity clause will mean AFCONs will be taking place outside the continent. I didn’t even mention Ebola. In fact, sports governing bodies often refuse to move tournaments from previously rostered venues over security or political issues to make a statement that sport is a unifying tool that transcends unhealthy differences.

Enter Cameroon’s unpreparedness. When Cameroon was granted AFCON 2019, the event was a 16-team event to be played in the traditional months of January-February. All of a sudden CAF’s new leadership felt that Africa’s football showpiece be expanded to 24 teams and moved to June-July to align with the European football offseason. Nothing is wrong with expanding AFCON, but why the immediacy considering that qualifiers had already begun for a 16-team event? That is akin to changing the rules of the match in the middle of the match. This same argument and suspicion goes to FIFA’s plan of expanding the 2022 World Cup to 48 after awarding Qatar on a 32-team platform. So Cameroon is now made to change plans. More matches, more hotels, more stadia, more ground workers and they will now have to consider the rains. Yes, the rains.

Because Europe is increasingly becoming the hub of football, more and more tier one players gravitate there to ply their trade. This means that for AFCON to showcase its finest, participating nations have to call up Europe-based professionals. For this reason, there is usually an exodus of African players during the midseason to participate in AFCON. This irritates European club sides because they are made to do without their best legs during the weeks of the competition and worse if the players return with injuries. This has made CAF tinker with the scheduling of AFCON over time. Older ones can recall it used to be in March-April before it stabilised at January-February which I believe is the best compromise. Besides being in the African dry season, it also corresponds with when most European leagues take a brief winter break.

However, these European football oligarchs have cornered CAF into an unforced foul of moving AFCON to the European summer. Did CAF consider that AFCON will now have to muscle TV time with the oldest international football competition Copa America (South America’s Nations’ Cup)? Did they also ponder that the June-July date clashes with FIFA Confederations Cup, a competition for continental champions? Does it mean the African champions would have just few weeks or days to prepare for that event? With preseason friendlies becoming progressively essential and the expanding International Champions Cup, the problem of clubs releasing players for AFCON will not go away just like that. African players will be doing all to secure their shirts and transfers will be on at that time.

June-July is the peak of the rainy season in sub-Saharan Africa. Compelling prospecting AFCON hosts to build roofed arenas to avoid shifting matches due to rains is practically impossible for African countries. Besides, football festivals like AFCON are not narrowed to the field of play. There are several other out-of-field events and drizzles will dampen the excitement of the event. Except CAF is saying AFCONs will only be hosted in North Africa and Southern Africa which is apartheid.

Boca Juniors and River Plate just played the finals of Copa Libertadores (South America’s Champions league) in November while Son Heung-min will be leaving Tottenham Hotspur for three weeks in January like other Asian footballers to captain South Korea in the 2019 Asian Cup. So what is the big deal about aligning with the European calendar? What is most important is that there is orderliness in schedules. Actually, the angst expressed by European clubs when there is a flight of African players in January publicizes AFCON.

Asking Cameroon to now host the 2021 edition does not break the ice on the farrago of chaos created. Will Cote d’Ivoire that was initially handed 2021 and Guinea 2023 now prepare for 2023 and 2025? Shouldn’t Egypt or South Africa be given right of first refusal after losing the 2019 bid?

Aligning with European football calendar is not what Africa needs, it is aligning with European football character. Africa can’t continue to run football with a national team bias, it is club football that is the soul of the game. Creating parallel AFCON for home-based players or the obsolete staging of the event every other year has only left African football behind. A quadrennial AFCON like other continents in my opinion will be a better deal. This will not only give prospective hosts more time to prepare but also reduce the number of low-ranked teams that drop out in the middle of the qualifiers. Also the duplicated African Nations Championship (biennial nations’ cup for home-based players) should be dropped so that CAF and its affiliates can invest in local leagues which are the tributaries that supply national teams. This way the best of Africa will be in the continent and would not continue to be tossed to and fro by Europe.

Culled from ThisDay

30, December 2018

Chris Anu is Cameroon Concord Person of the Year ⁰

Today, Cameroon Concord News and Cameroon Intelligence Report are pleased to announce the winner of this year’s Cameroon Concord Person of the Year. He is the Communication Secretary of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Chris Anu.

The winner was overwhelmingly elected by thousands of participants from among a list of four individuals comprising Paul Biya of neighbouring French Cameroun, Cardinal Christian Tumi, Barrister Agbor Balla Nkongho and Chris Anu, the Communication Secretary of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. The participants in their thousands overwhelmingly voted Communication Secretary Chris Anu as the Cameroon Concord Person of the Year. Most of the participants explained their choice and vote in messages sent to the head office of Cameroon Concord News Group.

Cameroon Concord News Group is please to share with its readership world-wide, the critical characteristics which the respondents have consistently identified as the qualities of leadership that impelled them to vote for Communication Secretary Chris Anu. The respondents held the candidates to the highest standards of stable universal leadership in conflict management. Focused, consistent and inspirational leadership were also critical attributes considered.

Most of the voters stated that Communication Secretary Chris Anu, is humble, passionate, steady, deliberate, probable, sincere and confident in his stewardship to his people. His dedication to the defense of his people is unwavering, undivided, and unassailable. He is a respectable, knowledgeable and effective communicator. He is a respectable voice and strong symbol of the Ambazonian war of self- defense and liberation.

Cameroon Concord News Group has critically examined the performance of Communication Secretary Chris Anu. Prior to his appointment by His Excellency President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, Chris Anu was a successful communication expert, news media owner and practitioner; in addition to many successful respectable professional pursuits. He did not embrace the struggle for gain or for sentimental reasons. He did so out of conviction.

The genocidal war which arch criminal enemy Paul Biya the demented neo-colonial President of French Cameroun declared against armless peace-loving people of Ambazonia, is fought in several battlegrounds; at home and elsewhere world-wide. A critical background is the Federal Republic of Nigeria from where the President of the Interim Government of Ambazonia, nine members of the Interim Government and hundreds of Ambazonian refugees were abducted and handed over to the terrorist regime of French Cameroun. The deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ambazonian refugees from their ancestral homes are residing under dire conditions in Nigeria. Thousands of Ambazonian civilian settlements have been systemically torched and their subsistence economy pillaged and destroyed. The visit by Chris Anu to Nigeria after the abduction of His Excellency Sisiku Ayuk Tabe brought international spotlight to the plight of these Ambazonian victims. In this regard, he is an unchallenged fearless general leading from the front in the Ambazonia war of liberation against internal and external enemies of Ambazonia.

He is a fearless crusader for the liberation of Ambazonia. In critical moments in this struggle, he confronted the enemies of Ambazonia single handed. He so doing, he saved the train of freedom from being derailed. When the President of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia His Excellency Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and nine members of the Interim Government were abducted in a joint terrorist operation carried out by operatives of the Nigerian Directorate of State Security commandeered by Babagana Muganu and led by Duara Lawal and the Presidential Special Operations Unit of French Cameroun forces, Chris Anu, promptly moved to Nigeria and organized international press conferences that pressurized the execution squad to spare the lives of our leaders. The French Cameroun Special Operation Unit has been consistently used to eliminate real and perceived enemies or former allies to protect the devilish world of the crime syndicate in power. This is the unit that was deployed to abduct and assassinate the Bishop of Bafia in French Cameroun.

Thanks to Chris Anu, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Nigeria issued a press statement stating that the abductees were legally in Nigeria under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, thus protected under the United Nations Convention for the Protection of Refugees (1951). This press release provides unimpeachable evidence of the UN responsibility for the safety of the leaders of Ambazonia and others similarly placed. The inability of the UN to secure their release and sanction Nigeria and French Cameroun for the abductions, the same criminal methods employed by Boko Haram they profess to be fighting with international support and assistance, makes the UN complicit by default in the criminal conduct outlawed by international law.

The energetic condemnation of the criminal conduct of Nigeria and French Cameroun, at the Nigeria seat of power, alarmed and embarrassed the Federal Government of Nigeria and the corrupt political cartel within the immediate political environment of President Buhari. Buhari equivocated on the release or rendition of the Ambazonia leader, members of his government and several citizens to French Cameroun. The amount of money offered to Buhari enabled him to rekindle his dwindling chances of seeking a second mandate in the forth- coming elections against the backdrop of stiff opposition within his own APC party from party leaders who wanted to hold him to his promise to serve only one term was too enticing for him to ignore. President Buhari opted for the money but denied going along with the execution within the territory of Nigeria of the abducted leaders.

The force of the well-publicized pressure put on by Chris Anu forced Babagana Mugano the National Security Adviser to President Mohammadu Buhari and the corrupt ethnic power cartel surrounding the Buhari Presidency to make a rare public statement admitting to perpetrating the crime. French Cameroun through Boko Haram abduction- for -ramson go-between Isa Tchiroma Bakary was similarly pressured to call a press conference to confirm the rendition of the leaders to French Cameroun.

The theft of part of the money intended to corrupt the Buhari ethnic political cartel, had serious consequences for the handlers of the corrupt deal. Paul Biya was constrained to remove and conceal in his immediate proximity, his longtime mystical devil worshipping soul mate Martin Belinga Eboutou for misappropriating a sizeable part of the booty putting him in conflict with Buhari. Buhari on his part scapegoated his director of the State Security Service, Duara Lawal for stealing part of the money among a plethora of scandals, corrupt deals, and criminal acts which Buhari sanctioned but needed to sacrifice this zealous executioner to whitewash his tainted credentials.

The forced shameful public admission of criminality by Nigeria and French Cameroun saved the lives of our leaders and with it the Ambazonian revolution. While Chris Anu waged this battle from the Nigeria front, time seemed to stand still for many within the struggle who claimed to be frontline leaders with several decades experience in the battle for the liberation of Ambazonia. Many of them failed to confront the combined assault of French Cameroun and Nigeria united to crush the Ambazonia revolution through the abduction and the rendition of our God given leader His Excellency Sisiku Ayuk Tabe at a critical moment in our young nation’s history.

Many did not realize the lethal effect and symbolic impact of the abduction, assassination or rendition of the only leader who has gone down in history for mobilizing millions of Ambazonians on September 22, 2017 to come out with peace plants to call for the restoration of the independence of Ambazonia and declaring it on October 1, 2017. The corrupt deal was intended to destroy this symbol of the Ambazonia statehood and the spirit of the revolution.

Chris Anu denied the enemies their moment of glory and rendered the continued holding in captivity of the President of the Interim Government of Ambazonia, members of the Interim Government and hundreds of thousands of Ambazonian citizens by French Cameroun in complicity with the endemic corrupt cartel within the immediate power cycle of President Buhari, poison chalices that will with time determine their own fates. Thanks to Chris Anu, the Ambazonia liberation, the President and members of the Interim Government will outlive the Biya and Buhari presidencies and the corrupt power cartels sustaining them.

Communication Secretary Chris Anu has come under constant attacks by some opportunists, profiteers and power mongers who hoped to gain from the abduction of the President and members of the Interim Government to make fortunes out of the liberation war and the ferocious genocidal enterprise preplanned by French Cameroun and supported by the Buhari presidential god fathers of political Islam and their French Cameroun co-conspirators. They fault Chris Anu for pre-empting their adventure by going to Nigeria when it was considered unsafe by many people and confronting the united resolve of the enemy and their co-conspirators to eviscerate and destroy the Ambazonia revolution and the symbol of its independence from within and outside of Ambazonia. They have not and may never forgive him. Rather than succumb to their pedestrian tactics, Chris Anu has remained steadfast and focused on serving the Interim Government and the people of Ambazonia with undivided loyalty. For this and more, he merits the Cameroon Concord Man of the Year award.

He is respected by his peers world-wide. He is an articulate counter-point to enemy propaganda. He is a strategist and an admirable public face of the liberation struggle.

Early in this struggle, Communication Secretary Chris Anu articulately and promotionally, defined the guiding principles of Ambazonia self-defense war. He cautioned Ambazonia soldiers to be disciplined and to protect civilians. A majority of Ambazonian soldiers have prosecuted the war humanely and protected Ambazonia civilians from the genocide and the rape of our girls and women by French Cameroun terrorist forces.

Unlike some Ambazonia leaders, Chris Anu does not believe in self-engineered or pedantic publicity. It has become a common fixture of the Ambazonia liberation struggle for some supposed leaders to make lengthy political addresses which are high on self-inflated rhetoric without any reasonable record of field achievements to support. True revolutionary leaders do not make political speeches. They are engaged in shock and awe discreet guerrilla warfare to surprise, isolate, incapacitate and destroy the enemy. Chris Anu is not one of these armchair leaders.

He has succeeded in helping the Interim Government to hold together a very complex web of hundreds of thousands of Ambazonians worldwide who are working behind the scenes to help move towards victory to Buea a reality. He has demonstrated through this quality that he knows the quality human resources that Ambazonia has and the sensitivity of securing critical information that allows them to participate fully in the armed liberation struggle without putting their identities out for neophytes, disrespectful power seekers and profiteers to destroy. He knows so well that there are millions of Ambazonians in Ground Zero and in the Diaspora who strongly support the Interim Government and strongly want the Interim Government to stay focused on GZ actions, the protection of our civilian population, care for our refugees and a discreet sustained diplomatic effort to secure our total liberation and hold Paul Biya, his terrorist forces, and his entire genocidal crime syndicate network to account.

His handling of the Batibo situation and distancing the Interim Government from the crimes committed by the Cho Ayaba gang was enormously satisfying to the people of Southern Cameroons. The actions of these men including Ntumfoyn Boh Herbert were going to cause more harm to the revolution. The Reboot Conference Ambazonians have all become a turncoat of our struggle.

Cameroon Concord News Group congratulates Communication Secretary; the Honourable Chris Anu for the well-merited recognition accorded him by an overwhelming majority of participants. Cameroon Concord News Group thanks all those took part in this poll and wishes all our readers’ world -wide, a very merry Christmas and a rewarding prosperous new year. With Cameroon Concord News Group’s man of the year, Communication Secretary Anu and the demonstrable resolve of all Ambazonians, 2019 will bring more successes to the liberation struggle. Cameroon Concord News Group strongly calls on all Ambazonians, friends of Ambazonia, and the International Community to support the Ambazonia liberation quest more robustly.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman/Editor-in-Chief

30, December 2018

Biya Regime Suspending Pay for 25,000 ‘Ghost Workers’ ⁰

Cameroon says it is suspending the payment of wages to 25,000 civil servants who it says may have died or left the country, but payments to whom continue to defraud the state.

Cameroon Finance Minister Louis Paul Motaze says after a census of employees taken in April, the government realized it was losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year to people claiming salaries as state workers.

Motaze says some had died but their deaths went unreported. Others had abandoned their posts, or were drawing double salaries with the help of fellow workers.

He says authorities have started removing such workers from the state’s payroll.

“An average of 310,000 people were concerned and after this census, we did not see more than 25,000. That means we are going to suspend them.”

Motaze did not say how much money the government will save by eliminating the fictitious state workers.

Minister of the Civil Service Joseph Le says this year’s census of state workers was very efficient because police tracked down some 8,000 workers who were living in Europe and America.

“You cannot continue paying a salary to somebody who does not exist. There are some who never work here in the country. They stay abroad and when it (the census) started, many Cameroonians came from abroad just to sign their presence here and [went] back. This should stop.”

The government says some of the illegal workers previously lived in the country’s restive English-speaking regions, where fighting between government forces and separatists has killed nearly a thousand people.

This is not Cameroon’s first purge of so-called “ghost workers.” The country said in 2015 it was cleaning its payroll of 10,000 dead or fictitious employees, who cost the treasury some $12 million every month.

However, lawyer Akere Muna, founder of the Cameroon chapter of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, says corruption is widespread in Cameroon and targeting “ghost workers” will not entirely solve the problem.

‘Cameroonian civil servants do not live from their salaries. They live from a system where they have put toll gates everywhere. You cannot get people who are thieves to look over thieves.”

Muna said whistleblowing is the key to fighting graft, but that many people are afraid to come forward as they feel it is too dangerous or ineffective.

Source: VOA

30, December 2018

Presidential election starts in Congo-Kinshasa ⁰

People have started voting in the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, amid delays and reported disorganization.

On Sunday, polling staffers were setting up voting machines in stations minutes before opening.

Reuters cited a witness in the eastern city of Goma as seeing residents casting their vote, but another polling station in the city was still closed 90 minutes after polls opened at 06:00 a.m. local time (04:00 GMT).

President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power since his father’s assassination in 2001, is not standing for re-election and will step down after the vote.

Kabila’s party, the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), has designated former Interior Minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, 58, as its presidential candidate.

As well as Ramazani, the front-runners are Felix Tshisekedi, 55, of the mainstream opposition Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), and Martin Fayulu, 62, a little-known lawmaker and former oil executive, who has made a late surge after being named the joint candidate for several opposition parties.

This combo image shows Felix Tshisekedi (L), the leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party, and Emmanuel Ramazani Sh

A total of 21 candidates are running in the presidential race.

United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Friday urged rival candidates to participate in a peaceful competition.

Guterres urged citizens to “seize this historic opportunity to participate in the consolidation of the country’s democratic institutions.”

The call for a peaceful vote came a few days after clashes between the supporters of rival candidates left at least one person dead and over 80 injured.

DR Congo is one of Africa’s most volatile countries and has never known a peaceful transition of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.

In the past 22 years, two massive wars have shaken the country, claiming many lives and sucking in armies from around Southern and Central Africa.

Lower-level conflicts are burning in the center and east of the country, which analysts say could easily flare into fully-fledged wars.

Source: Presstv

30, December 2018

“Whether we accept it or not, Ambazonian leaders are in the Diaspora” ⁰

Those who are backing Cardinal Tumi’s initiative and condemning restoration advocates are making a mistake. When in 2016, the government sat down with the Consortium to negotiate but turned around and arrested the same people they were negotiating with them the previous night, would anyone in their right mind trust such a government?

Holding the so-called AGC in the Republic of Cameroon or in Ambazonia, any frontline leader who venture to attend such a so-called conference is abandoning freedom to jail. If Cardinal and his spiritual leaders were serious and want those advocating for restoration of Southern Cameroon independence, they would arrange in a neutral country.

Cardinal Tumi knows very well that he himself is afraid to say what is in his heart of heart. Someone will ask me if I am God to know the mind of the Cardinal, I would say I am not God but those spiritual leaders are talking with fear. Has anyone of them ever mentioned that the views of the majority of Southern Cameroonians that we get our independence from the Republic of Cameoon?

All they have been talking is federation and discentralisation. The so-called ten regions is already discentralization. We tried federation but it failed. Let the spiritual leaders take the meeting out of Cameroon. It may be their passports have been confiscated. If they are serious, the AGC should be held outside Cameroon. It is only then attendees will be frank. Whether we accept it or not, Ambazonian leaders are in the Diaspora. That’s the simple fact. God bless.

30, December 2018

Southern Cameroons: Acting President to address the nation after IG bans on ADF, AMF ⁰

The Ambazonian Acting President Dr Ikome Sako will be addressing the nation tomorrow at exactly 8 pm Southern Cameroons time. This information was made public by Communications Secretary, Hon. Chris Anu. The Southern Cameroons Interim Government did not provide any further details of the anticipated political discourse on the state of the Ambazonian revolution.

However, people in the know have opined that Acting President Sako’s December 31^st message will focus on the decision taken by the Interim Government to ban the ADF, AMF and SOCADEF. We understand the activities of some traitors of the Southern Cameroons revolution including a certain Cho Ayaba and his collaborators have been shameful, disgusting and disgraceful and the people on ground zero are tired of them.

By these measures, the Ambazonian Interim Government has saved the Southern Cameroons restoration forces from being branded terrorist organizations as the Biya Francophone government has been lobbying. The execution of many Ground Zero forces by members of the Cho Ayaba ADF gang and the extortion by the Ayaba and Akwanga forces including from missionaries and sealing the Church in Muyenge are serious excesses the international community has expressed concerns about.

The Interim Government has preempted sanctions by the US which could have crippled the revolution. Our Buea city reporter who contributed to this report noted that banning these traitors is the most responsible action.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai