Cameroonian students and school staff who were kidnapped on Saturday have been freed, the Bishop of Kumbo has told the BBC. A total of 176 people, mostly students, were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen at Saint Augustin’s College in Kumbo, in the North West region of Cameroon.

They were released on Sunday after negotiations. It is the largest school kidnapping in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions since separatist unrest began in 2017.

Human Rights Watch has accused rebel groups of being behind the kidnapping but they have not yet commented. They have said previous abductions were staged by the government to damage their reputation.

The gunmen entered the campus of Saint Augustine’s College Nso on Saturday morning and seized 170 students, two security guards, a teacher and three of his children, the Diocesan Director of Communications said in a statement.

Rev Elvis Nsaikila added that the authorities of the boarding school had requested parents and guardians to take their children back home as soon as possible as “the school has closed down”. The Bishop of Kumbo, Georges Nkuo, confirmed to BBC Afrique that the church officials had negotiated the release of the hostages on the condition that the school would shut.

“If the army had intervened, there would have been deaths,” he said. Saturday’s school attack was not the first in the restive Anglophone North West region.

A similar incident took place in November last year in the regional headquarter, Bamenda, where more than 80 people, including the principal, a teacher, a driver and 79 students, were kidnapped from the Presbyterian Secondary School Nkwen.

The abduction of the school children and staff marked an escalation of the two-year long crisis that has gripped the two English-speaking North West and South West regions.

Militias who want to create an independent state called Ambazonia, began to emerge in 2017 after security forces responded violently to protests calling for English to be used in classrooms and courtrooms in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions. The country is dominated by its French-speaking majority.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank estimates that around 10 armed separatist groups exist, gaining control of a “significant proportion of rural areas and main roads” in the North-West and South-West regions.

BBC

Cameroon army Thursday dismissed as “fake” claims from armed separatists that they have killed an army general in an ambush in Southwest, one of the two troubled English-speaking regions of the country.

“Information relating to the death of General Bouba is circulating at this moment. While finding this joke of very bad taste, I beg you to consider this information as fake,” Colonel Didier Badjeck, spokesman of the Cameroon army said in a statement.

Separatists claimed that the army general was killed when they ambushed his convoy on Feb. 8 but the government “has been hiding the information.”

The armed separatist forces want the two regions, North West and South West to secede from the majority French-speaking nation and form a new nation called “Ambazonia.” Clashes started in November 2017 and about 430,000 people have been displaced internally according to United Nations.

Xinhuanet

The Roman Catholic Church has shut down one of its biggest boarding schools in Kumbo in the restive Northwest Cameroon after unidentified gunmen briefly kidnapped students and employees.

The gunmen stormed the campus of Saint Augustine’s College, Nso on Saturday and seized 170 students, two security guards, a teacher and three of his children, Fr Elvis Nsaikila, the Diocesan Director of Communications, said.

“The abductees were released in the afternoon of Sunday and conveyed back to the college campus in the evening,” Fr Nsaikila said, without disclosing who was behind the kidnap and whether the school paid any ransoms to the abductors.

However, the Sun newspaper reported that “only petrol money” was given to the kidnappers.

Parents and guardians

Fr Nsaikila said authorities of the boarding school had requested parents and guardians to take their children back home as soon as possible as “the school has closed down”.

The Kumbo school attack, just two days after a 10-day lockdown imposed on the region by separatist activists, was not the first in the restive English Northwest region. A similar incident took place in November last year in the regional headquarter, Bamenda, where more than 80 people, including the principal, a teacher, a driver and 79 students, were kidnapped from the Presbyterian Secondary School, Nkwen by suspected secessionists.

Saturday’s abduction marked an escalation of the over two-year long crisis that has gripped the two English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions.

Internally displaced

The crisis in the anglophone Cameroon started as an industrial strike by lawyers and teachers in 2016, but snowballed into an internal armed conflict in 2017 when separatists joined in and symbolically declared the independence of the state of Ambazonia. No country has recognised the self-declared state.

Though the majority of teachers’ unions called off their strike in February 2017, separatist activists have continued to pressure the local population to keep their children out of school, promising “to deal with” those seen in the institutions.

According to the latest Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), over 444,000 people have fled their homes and were currently internally displaced in the regions due to the violence.

In addition to the internally displaced, over 32,600 others have fled across the border and were registered as refugees in neighbouring Nigeria with many of them exposed to varied dangers, including risk of food insecurity, the report adds.

The East African

What a way to start the week in Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia – settling down to watch one of the major events of the Southern Cameroons revolution that affects your donations to the Interim Government.

In his presentation, the Secretary for Economy and Finance will make public the Interim government’s spending for the war in Southern Cameroons.

Here is an essential guide to readers of the Cameroon Concord News and Cameroon Intelligence Report.

When is the Secretary’s Statement?

It is on Monday, 18 of February, at about 8 pm Amba Time on SCBC

Five things to watch for in Secretary Tabenyang Brado’s Statement

The presentation will be base on a rebuttal of the spurious and slanderous statements towards his integrity.

Focus will be on the Treasury, Bank accounts/ payment platforms signatories and access,

Financial Reports, Internal Audit, My Trip to Buea, Ethics Commission, Accountability/Transparency,

SCBC saga/payments,

APNC involvement and why President Sissiku Julius Ayuk Tabe spoke from jail

Who is Ambazonia Secretary for Economy and Finance?

Arguably, the third most powerful person in the Southern Cameroons government, behind  Communications Secretary, Chris Anu and Acting President Ikome Sako. He was appointed as Secretary for Economy and Finance by President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe

Is this the only Economy and Finance presentation that matters?

No. Many issues regarding the state of the Southern Cameroons revolution, as well as support for the county-by-county initiative.  Expect more on those in the coming weeks.

What are the big talking points?

The Tabenyang Brado presentation comes hot on the heels of a major crisis deep within the Interim Government during which Communications Secretary Chris Anu announced he was stepping down from his cabinet portfolio.

The Secretary for Economy and Finance needs to raise extra money somehow and tomorrow provides him that opportunity.

The Ambazonian Interim Government has committed to funding Ground Zero operations via the county-by-county initiative and the IG intends to help weaker counties.  Ministers have indicated it will be funded by the Southern Cameroons Diaspora, so all eyes are on the Secretary for Economy and Finance for a solution.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in London

Four people were killed in a road accident Saturday in southwestern Cameroon, according to local authorities.

Witnesses said the accident happened when a private car collided head-on with a motorcycle and another vehicle.

“The driver was driving very fast and apparently lost track. His car collided with a motorcycle and another oncoming vehicle. The motorcyclist, two passengers and the driver of the private car died on the spot,” Gilles Mulang who witnessed the accident told Xinhua.

Other injured passengers were immediately rushed to hospital to receive medical attention, according to officials.

On Friday, Cameroon’s Minister of Transport Jean Ernest Massena Ngalle Bibehe made public a list of 13 travel companies that violated Highway Code in 2018 and warned that they would be sanctioned if they didn’t “improve on quality.”

Last year, Cameroon’s Ministry of Transport estimated that at least 1,200 people died in road accidents each year in the country.

Xinhuanet

The U.S. Embassy in partnership with El-Zoe Foundation and the Government of Cameroon has organized a football clinic for youth in Banyo, from February 8 to 11, 2019.

The program included presentations and discussions on topical issues such as tolerance, fair-play, teamwork, and the importance of education.

Participants were also equipped with skills to avoid kidnapping and make positive life choices.

The second part of the program consisted of a three-day football tournament for ninety boys and girls aged 10 to 15. In addition to the knowledge and skills acquired, each participant went back home with a school kit.

Ghananews

More than 100 students and teachers of a private college in the Northern Zone were reportedly kidnapped on Saturday by an armed gang identified by our senior intelligence reporter in Bamenda as members of the Ambazonia Defense Force, ADF of Cho Ayaba.

Speaking to Cameroon Concord News earlier today, a school official hinted that only eleven students and three teachers had been kidnapped, but further investigations have revealed that more than 100 students and teachers have so far disappeared.

“We now know after further investigations that more than 100 students and teachers were kidnapped. The teachers are not many but the majority of those kidnapped are girls. In fact, all the students and teachers who were on campus have been kidnapped,” Rev. Oliver Shey, a senior administrator of the school told Chinese media organization, Xinhuanet

“We do not know where they are. We are still waiting for the kidnappers to call. We hope that they will be released this night,” he added.

Cameroon government authorities said troops loyal to the regime in Yaounde are still tracing the whereabouts of the kidnapped students and teachers. The government and Ambazonia Restoration Forces have been engaged in a blame-game of rampant kidnappings in Southern Cameroons.

The government regularly accuses the Southern Cameroons Interim Government of the abductions; however, fingers are now pointing to the so-called ADF gangs staged the kidnappings for money and to prove to the Southern Cameroons Diaspora that they are in control of the Ambazonian territory.

The Southern Cameroons Communications Secretary, Hon. Chris Anu has been quoted as saying that Ambazonia Restoration Forces are there to defend the people and to fight for “independence” of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

By Sama Ernest in Bamenda

Nearly 200 Cameroonians who were members of Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadist group have returned home and surrendered to the authorities after breaking with the organisation, the government said Thursday, reported AFP.

A total of 187 former jihadists from the district of Mayo-Sava, in Cameroon’s Far North province, gave themselves up, many of them returning from Nigeria on foot, provincial governor Midjiyawa Bakari said.

After surrendering to the authorities in the towns of Kolofata and Meme, they were enrolled in a programme to reintegrate them into society, he said.

They were taken on Wednesday to a base of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MMF), an anti-Boko Haram force combining soldiers from Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria, he said.

“They don’t represent any danger or any risk — quite the opposite, everything will be put in place for them to resocialise, learn the spirit of patriotism and public duty,” Bakari said.

About a thousand former jihadists, including children under 15, had already joined the reinsertion programme.

After being assessed to establish that they have definitively broken with Boko Haram, ex-fighters are taken to Mowoure, also in the Far North, where they are given farmland with which to earn a living.

Boko Haram’s nearly 10-year insurgency is epicentred in northeast Nigeria, but spilled over into Niger and Cameroon as well as the Far North province. It has left more than 27,000 people dead and about 1.8 million others homeless.

AFP