The Chairman and Editor-In-Chief of the Cameroon Concord News Group has said that an uneasy calm  now prevails in Southern Cameroons but French speaking Cameroonians are living in an unprecedented fear as Biya regime approaches its end.

The Right Hon. Soter Agbaw-Ebai, a Cameroonian Journalist told Cameroon Concord News London Bureau that for the time being, things are quiet in Southern Cameroons.

This calm, according to Agbaw-Ebai, comes as a result of the fact that there is a disconnect between the diaspora and Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero.  

“There is so much fear among French speaking Cameroonians today! The Biya regime is now a thing of the past,” Agbaw-Ebai told Cameroon Concord News London Bureau.

Agbaw-Ebai said that Southern Cameroonians are still steadfast in face of Yaounde’s aggression with ghost town operations.

He added that with the killing of some 3000 Cameroon government army soldiers, the Francophone dominated army seems to have retreated in its violence against the people of Southern Cameroons.        

According to Soter Agbaw-Ebai, Cameroon as a nation is living a different reality today.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Two journalists in northern Cameroon are calling for government protection after witnesses say a mayor publicly threatened to kill them for investigating corruption in road construction contracts. The Cameroon Journalists Trade Union has condemned the threat, which came after the killings in January of two reporters who were outspoken on corruption.

The journalists say Sali Babani, the mayor of Maroua, a city near the northern border with Chad and Nigeria publicly threatened several times this month to kill reporters there.

The Cameroon Journalists Trade Union in a statement April 8 said the mayor threatened freelance reporter Ousman Alh Boubakari for asking about accountability on development projects.

Boubakari had accused the mayor on Facebook of abandoning some road construction projects in Maroua.

Mahamat Hamidou said that during a public ceremony at Kakatare last week, he heard Babani threatened to punish or kill journalists for reporting that some public projects have been abandoned. Hamidou said Cameroon’s government should investigate why the mayor threatened to kill journalists instead of explaining why the road projects have not been completed as the Maroua Council promised.

The journalists’ union said the mayor also threatened to kill Douala-based Channel 2 International’s correspondent, Aminou Alioum.

Alioum and Boubakari said they received several anonymous calls threatening violence if they do not stop critical reports against the mayor.

Alioum told VOA that Boubakari received death threats from Babani for reporting that some roads in Maroua and construction work on the Kakatare junction in the same city have been abandoned. Alioum also said the mayor threatened him for taking pictures of the abandoned projects. He said the death threats from Babani add to other threats and intimidation reporters along Cameroon’s northern border with Chad and Nigeria regularly get from Boko Haram militants.

Babani refused to respond to VOA’s questions on the threats, which journalists also took to the police.

The spokesperson for Cameroon’s police would not comment on the threats, but told VOA it was their duty to protect all citizens.

Alioum and Boubakari said the threats will not stop them from carrying out their work as reporters but joined the journalists’ union in calling for the government to ensure their safety.

Cameroon’s government has not yet commented on the journalists’ plea for protection.

Babani’s threats of violence against the media come less than two months after two journalists were killed in Cameroon.

The mutilated remains of Martinez Zogo, a popular radio announcer and journalist, were found January 22 in Yaoundé.

Police arrested 20 people in connection with the killing, including senior police intelligence officers and a well-known media mogul, Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga.

On his radio program, Zogo had accused Belinga and several government ministers of planning to kill him for his reporting on their alleged corrupt deals.

Radio presenter Jean-Jacques Ola Bebe was also found shot dead on February 2 outside his home in the capital.

Like Zogo, Bebe was an outspoken critic of government corruption.

Source: VOA

Villagers in southern Cameroon are complaining about the destruction of farmland by wild elephants in areas bordering Gabon and Equatorial Guinea and are calling on authorities to help.

Villagers say elephants have chased people away and made it impossible for farmers on both sides of the border to plant this season’s crops. Officials blame farmers for occupying the elephants’ habitat, provoking human-wildlife conflict.

Officials on Cameroon’s southern border with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea say scores of villagers came out in market squares at Vema and Nkol-Efoulan on Thursday, protesting the destruction of several hundred hectares of their farmland by elephants.

The villagers say the stray elephants chase civilians and make it impossible for farmers to plant on either side of the border with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea since the planting season started six weeks ago.

Speaking to VOA via a messaging app, Justin Enam Ntem, the traditional ruler of Nkol-Efoulan village, said locals are angry and hungry because they can no longer go to their farms since the elephants positioned themselves about 500 meters south of the village from the border with Gabon this week. He said seven of the several hundred hectares of plantain, banana and cassava plantations belonging to his family have been destroyed by the stray elephants.

Ntem said it was difficult for villagers, who are scared and escaping from their homes and farms, to know the number of elephants that are destroying their crops.

The villagers say no civilian has died in an elephant attack but warn that hunger will loom if the government does not step in to force the animals back to their natural habitats.

The Cameroonian government says there are more than 220 forest elephants in the nearly 700,000-hectare Campo Ma’an National Park located near the border area with the other two countries.

The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and the National Parks of Gabon report that Gabon harbors about 95,000 forest elephants. Equatorial Guinea says it has about 900 elephants.

The three countries say elephants have been destroying plantations on both sides of their common border within the past six months. Cameroon says at least eight of its border villages and several hundred plantations, especially in Vema and Nkol-Efoulan villages, have reported regular attacks.

The elephants are leaving their habitat because of a lack of food and water due to climate change and the occupation of their living environment by civilians, according to Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife.

Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea say many plantations opened by the governments and civilians reduce the elephant habitat.

Kenneth Angu Angu, a forest program coordinator with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said central African nations should work together to stop conflicts between humans and elephants.

“We need the governments of the countries to sit together and reinforce cross-border projects so that they can contain these elephants not to encroach in communities and in agricultural land,” said Angu, who spoke to VOA by phone from Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. “But if it is the communities that are encroaching, we start asking the questions: why are they doing so? Is it that their lands are no more fertile? Is it because there is poverty? So, this is where you would have livelihood activities to enable the communities to remain in their respective lands,” he added.

He said human-wildlife conflict remains a major conservation concern in elephant range countries.

Despite the attacks, Cameroonian wildlife groups have been urging civilians not to kill the animals, which are classified as endangered.

Source: VOA

Southern Cameroons exiled leader Dabney Yerima has said that very harsh and crushing punishment from all Ambazonia self defense groups awaits troops still loyal to the occupying regime in Yaoundé over its barbaric violence in Southern Cameroons.

Dabney Yerima made the remark during a conversation with Cameroon Concord News on Monday.

Yerima observed that in the last six years, the French Cameroun regime has turned into an unrestrained and increasingly criminal killing machine by violating all international laws.

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government called on all Southern Cameroonians across the world to stay united in support of their valiant and resistant brothers and sisters in Ground Zero.

“The regime in La Republique du Cameroun knows that, based on the strength of the Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards, a harsh and crushing punishment awaits them in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia” Yerima concluded.

By Isong Asu in London

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government has vehemently condemned crimes committed by Francophone army soldiers against the people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, saying Southern Cameroonians will soon witness the collapse of the consortium of CPDM crime syndicate in French Cameroun.

Dabney Yerima, the exiled Southern Cameroons leader made the remarks in a Tuesday statement issued to condemn the Yaoundé regime’s recent acts of provocation and attacks in Fako and Mezam.

“By trying to counter our Kontry Sunday policy, the corrupt regime in French Cameroun is now showing signs of fear and frustration that result from the increasing power of our resistance,” the Dabney Yerima statement said.

It added, “These acts of sabotage in Mile 16 Buea recently represents Yaounde’s calculated plan  aimed at deceiving and diverting French Cameroun public opinion … and covering up inefficiency and corruption of the criminal politicians and officials of this regime who sponsored the killing of one theirs Martinez Zogo.”

“Southern Cameroonians will soon witness the collapse of the flimsy power of this shaky regime” noted the statement.

The statement also called on Southern Cameroonian thinkers, elites and all influential people in the diaspora to continue to support the liberation struggle.

By Chi Prudence Asong with files from Nelly Epupa

Armed Amba fighters have stormed Mile 16 in Buea today Monday, according to the Francophone dominated police force and local residents, the latest violence to hit Southern Cameroons.

Many Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces raided Mile 16 district, Cameroon Concord News cited the sources as saying on Monday.

The Amba fighters fired guns in the air, attacked the Mile 16 Motor Park and pursued others who fled to escape the assaults.

Cameroon Concord News correspondent said seven cars were burnt and added that policemen were deployed in the area following the attacks.

Local residents said Amba fighters attacked the occupants of the cars because they did not respect the ghost town order.

The Mile 16 district has been repeatedly raided by Ambazonia fighters.

The Southern Cameroons conflict has killed thousands and forced at least two million to flee their homes, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in Cameroon.

 Most of the burnt cars were used for public transport between Buea and Limbe or Buea and Douala, in the Littoral Region.

According to our information the Amba fighters disappeared into thin air after the attack, which left at least three people seriously injured among those in the burnt-out cars.

Since the outbreak of the crisis in Southern Cameroons, separatist fighters have so far imposed ghost town known as “Kontry Sunday” every Monday. This order has been scrupulously respected in some towns in the South West and North West Regions, notwithstanding the fact that, to encourage the population to go about their business, the authorities have deployed defense and security forces in sensitive areas.

By Rita Akana

Lejeune Mbella, the foreign minister of Cameroon, said on Friday that starting on April 30, all applications for entrance visas to Cameroon must be submitted online.

The minister said that applications will be processed “exclusively” online using the website www.evisacam.cm, after which the applicant would be given an online authorisation for a visa.

Mbella said in a statement earlier on Thursday night that the applicant may next proceed to either a diplomatic mission or a border checkpoint to actually get the visa.

For applicants who live in remote locations or who are not serviced by diplomatic missions, Mbella said that “an online visa authorization, together with a QR code, shall round out the phase.”

The process will be finished within 72 hours of the pre-enrollment date, or within 24 hours for expedited visa applications, according to the ministry.

“The e-visa system is part of an effort to make the nation a more attractive destination, while also addressing some of the concerns of the nationals in diaspora and aligning our consular system with the highest international standard,” the government of Cameroon said.

Source: Chronicle.ng

Ottawa will have to show a little more patience before attempting to initiate talks again about the Southern Cameroon Crisis. Its assistant deputy minister for global affairs, Peter MacDougall, was expected in Cameroon at the end of March, but Yaoundé ended up cancelling at the last minute, reports Africa Intelligence.

All known peace initiatives including those led by the United Nations, the Catholic Church and regional and international governments – have either stalled or failed.

That has included the “Swiss process”, a behind-the-scenes move by the Geneva-based NGO Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue to host a series of “pre-talks” — capacity-building sessions with separatist leaders. It ran aground in 2019 after the Cameroon government rejected the approach.

Secret bilateral negotiations, led primarily by the office of Prime Minister Joseph Ngute and a group of imprisoned separatist leaders known as the “Nera 10” , also stumbled after two exploratory rounds – the result of infighting among secessionists and a perceived lack of will within the government to make the necessary political concessions.

That lack of control over fighters has encouraged a sense of lawlessness, which has undermined the appeal of the separatist cause.

In some cases, tired of the war – and what is often the high-handedness of the armed men in the bush – communities have demanded that secessionist fighters leave their villages, or have attacked separatist camps. That does not necessarily mean a vote of confidence in the government; rather, it’s likely a sign of frustration over the disruption caused by the conflict.

Yet, the perception of the fighters is that they are local champions, risking their lives for a legitimate cause.

Edited by Nelly Epupa