The Speaker of the National Assembly, Cavaye Djibril shocked the nation when he made a complaint recently at the Tokombéré gendarmerie post how some thieves broke into his home and stole huge sums of money.

Cameroon Concord News understands the President of the National Assembly made the matter public on Wednesday, January 11, 2023 and added that the criminals made away with 85 million CFA francs.

The so-called Right Honourable Cavaye Yeguié Djibril, who hails from Tokombéré, Mayo-Sava Division, Far North region has a history of always accusing his relatives of theft and enjoys detaining them at the local gendarmerie station. His younger brother Talba Cavaye who also moonlights as a notable of the chiefdom of Mada is already in police drag-net.

This is not the first time that cash is stolen from Cavaye Yeguié Djibril. In 2015, he dragged his bodyguard, Captain Bouba Simala, to the military court in Yaoundé, for “attempted kidnapping, terrorism and incitement to robbery,” accusing him of stealing 5 million CFA francs.

By Rita Akana

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French abbreviation MSF, welcomed Cameroon’s release of five members of its staff detained for a year on charges of helping separatists. MSF maintains it helps anyone who needs medical care and says it will only resume work in separatist areas with government security guarantees.

The group this week welcomed the military tribunal’s December 29 acquittal of the five workers – four of them Cameroonians and one Indian.

The military arrested two of the staff in December 2021 in Nguti, a southwestern town on the border with Nigeria, while they were transporting a patient with a gunshot wound to a hospital.

The military said the patient was a separatist and the next month arrested two more MSF staff members, accusing them of collaboration.

The French aid group said they abide by medical ethics of helping all in need but could not continue in the area under the threat of arrest.

In May, MSF suspended operations in Cameroon’s southwest.

Despite the dropped charges, MSF’s Operations Manager for Central Africa Sylvain Groulx said they cannot yet resume the needed aid work.

“We are obviously waiting to try to engage with the government so that we may resume our activity and we hope that they [the government] will be willing to sit down and discuss with us because these are lifesaving activities that we had to stop. It is very difficult for ministry of health ambulances to access certain areas. We were able to negotiate our access with all the actors and we were exceptionally allowed to do that, saving many lives,” said Groulx.

Paul Atanga Nji is Cameroon’s minister of territorial administration. While not specifically mentioning MSF, he told state broadcaster CRTV Tuesday that any aid groups helping rebels would be charged in court.

He said they will not allow aid groups that are believed to be separatist accomplices to operate in Cameroon. Nji said Cameroon’s military is working hard to bring order in the restive western regions. He said government hospitals have proven they have all that it takes to save the lives of people who need assistance.

Hospitals in Cameroon’s conflict areas have struggled to maintain services and staff, who say they have been victims of both military and separatists.

Nineteen-year-old University of Buea student Benedict Luma said MSF saved his uncle’s life in 2020.

“My uncle bled excessively when he was shot in the leg. Everyone was afraid he would die because there was no hospital around. Our neighbors advised us to call Doctors Without Borders on the phone, and in less than an hour, their ambulance came to save my uncle’s life,” he said.

Doctors Without Borders has provided medical aid in Cameroon to victims of Boko Haram Islamist militants along the northern border with Nigeria since 1984.

Until last May it also provided surgical care and malaria and COVID-19 treatment in Cameroon’s restive South-West region.

The aid group says it treated more than 1 million patients in Cameroon in 2020 alone.

Cameroon’s English-speaking separatists are fighting to break away from the French-speaking majority that it says treats them as second-class citizens.

Since the conflict broke out in 2017, the UN says more than 3,500 people have been killed and 750,000 displaced.

Source: VOA

There is a general belief that things are getting better in the country’s two English-speaking regions as some calm has returned but it is obvious that it will take time for genuine and sustainable peace to return to the two restless regions.

The new-found peace may still be hiding some dangers and it will not be out of place to see some destruction and killings in many parts of the two English-speaking regions of the country.

In Kumba, a police officer was brought down yesterday by people suspected of being Amba fighters and this incident is a sordid reminder of a past when it was a death sentence to be a uniformed officer in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon.

While confrontations between the military and Southern Cameroonian fighters are rare today, it cannot be said that the war, which has raged for more than five years, is over.

Today, many cars can go to Mamfe, Ekondo-titi and many towns in the two English-speaking regions, but the fear of being caught up in crossfire is still there as the issues which triggered the Southern Cameroons crisis have not yet been addressed.

More killings have also been taking place in the Northwest region. Two soldiers were also sent to an early grave this week and this underscores the fact that until genuine dialogue takes place, Cameroon might never come out of its madness of killings.

If the killings have reduced, it is more because government troops have been ordered not to kill like they used to kill in the past.

Their recklessness with their guns is to blame for the streams of blood which have flowed in the two English-speaking regions of the country.

Actions by Southern Cameroonian fighters were just acts of retaliation whenever the sex-starved, alcohol-inflamed and trigger-happy soldiers went on a killing spree.

The Southern Cameroons crisis which started as a protest by teachers and lawyers in 2016 has sent more than 7,000 Cameroonians to an early grave, with soldiers accounting for 40% of the deaths.

The number of soldiers and civilians living with mental, physical and psychological scars will never be known as the Yaoundé government is not in the business of keeping statistics and when it even tries its hands at that, its old habit of lying always stands in the way, making it hard for any reasonable person to trust its data.

Economically, the conflict has driven the sick economy to the bottom of the abyss. Government corporations like the CDC, PAMOL and others are still struggling and the government is too cash-strapped to engineer any sustainable solutions for these ailing corporations.

The road to economic recovery is tortuous and replete with bumps. The government is desperate and has resorted to tough financial and fiscal measures to refill its empty coffers, measures which are leaving many desperate and poor.

Over the last few weeks, the cost of government services to the citizens has gone up. Fuel prices have gone up and a bottle of gas now costs CFAF 10,000, well beyond the reach of many families.

The rationing of fuel is now a daily occurrence even in the country’s capital, Yaoundé. The Biya government is out of cash and it is using even unorthodox means to sustain itself in power.

It is being rumored that school fees in government universities will soon rise from CFAF 50,000 to CFAF 300,000 and this will be beyond the reach of many desperate and helpless families which view their children’s education as a visa out of grinding poverty.

Cameroon is going through a lot and it is becoming clearer by the day that Biya, the man many thought would take the country to the land of promise, has driven the country into a rabbit hole which will keep generations of Cameroonians in desperation for a long time.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Life could be challenging in rural Cameroon, especially in conflict-hit Southwest, but many people are seeking ways to overcome the challenges and people in Muyuka in the Southwest region are no exception and they are using sand mining to eke out a livelihood.

Sand mining is still a major source of livelihood to many youths in Muyuka, but technology is threatening to render them unemployed and financially poor.

Recently, some youths in Muyuka took to the streets to protest against the use of machines in sand quarries and they are determined to take their fight to the highest office in the land.

Based on expert opinion, technology will surely improve productivity and profits but not for the youths who do not have faith in it and they are not in the mood to welcome such technology.

According to sources in Muyuka, a certain businessman from Buea had introduced the use of machines in the sand quarries, making it possible for just seven people to be employed, thus rendering many youths jobless since the machines are likely to replace human labour.

One of the sources disclosed that, sand quarries employ about ninety five percent of the youths, and that had been their main source of livelihood since the start of the armed conflict.

The use of technology, which is supposed to be an event for jubilation, is causing a nightmare for these youths who prefer digging and extracting sand the traditional way.

Several young men and women turned to sand digging as the only means of survival when the crisis escalated and they are willing to continue doing so in the years to come.

By Cecilia Manjang

The United Nations has released 6 million U.S. dollars in emergency funding to aid thousands of victims of floods and violence in Cameroon, a UN spokesman said on Wednesday.

Undersecretary-General Martin Griffiths, the world organization’s emergency relief coordinator, allocated the Central Emergency Response Fund’s aid to help people in Cameroon’s far north, northwest, and southwest regions, said Stephane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“Last year, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes and abandon their property because of violence or floods,” Dujarric said. “These forced displacements increased protection risks, loss of livelihoods and food insecurity in those impacted areas.”

He said the funds would help provide protection, shelter services, food and nutritional assistance.

“Despite the challenges faced by humanitarian organizations to access remote areas due to violence, impediments to movement and poor road conditions, we, along with our partners remain mobilized to provide aid to the most vulnerable,” the spokesman said.

Humanitarians will need more than 413 million dollars to help 2.4 million people in Cameroon this year, he said.

Source: Xinhaunet

At least three kidnappers have been killed in North region, according to local and security sources.

The kidnappers were killed on Sunday in raids carried out by Cameroon’s elite force, the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), in the Mayo-Rey division of the region, the army said in a brief statement on Monday.

“They were heavily armed. The BIR seized their weapons. The kidnappers are well-known deserters of the army of a neighboring country,” a senior army official who asked not to be named told Xinhua by phone.

The army has stepped up security in the region where ransom kidnapping is said to be gaining ground.

On Monday, the National Gendarmerie said its forces have also arrested three suspected kidnappers in the Demsa locality of the region.

Source: Xinhuanet

The Ambazonia Interim Government has reacted to the death of three Southern Cameroons youths who succumbed to their wounds after they were shot by Francophone army soldiers in Tinta, a locality in the outskirts of Akwaya town in Manyu.

In a statement issued to influence international public opinion, the Southern Cameroons Department of Foreign Affairs stated that the blood of Ambazonian martyrs further cements restoration fighter’s resolve to liberate the Ambazonian homeland.

The Southern Cameroons Department of Foreign Affairs stated that blood shed in defense of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is ensuring the final victory that is worthy of the sacrifices and fortifies the determination of Amba fighters to continue the revolution until liberation.

The statement added that Ambazonia Restoration Forces will not allow the crimes of the French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé to go unanswered.

“Southern Cameroons young men and women will continue to make sacrifices and Amba fighters will continue to deal blows to the French Cameroun enemy and undermine its security apparatus deployed to the Ambazonia homeland until the French Cameroun occupation comes to an end” the Interim Government statement furthered.

By Chi Prudence Asong

A military court in Cameroon has acquitted five workers with French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) a year after they were charged with assisting a suspected separatist rebel, MSF said on Friday.

The ruling was handed down on December 29 but had not been made public, the NGO’s lawyer, Edouard Essono, told AFP.

“All five were given the benefit of the doubt and acquitted,” Essono said.

The incident occurred on December 27, 2021, when two local MSF employees were stopped at a traffic checkpoint in western Cameroon, a mainly English-speaking region where armed separatists have clashed with government security forces for the past six years.

Soldiers discovered in their ambulance a man suffering from a bullet wound who MSF said needed “urgent care”.

The two were arrested and jailed in Buea, capital of the Southwest region, and two other Cameroonian employees were detained later.

The authorities searched for a fifth MSF worker, an Indian national, but he managed to leave the country.

Of the five, two of whom were women, two were released on bail in May 2022, another in November, and the last on December 30.

“MSF has always defended the work of its staff and categorically denied any complicity with armed groups or stakeholders in any violent conflict,” the group said in a statement to AFP.

The NGO halted its operations in Southwest Cameroon in July 2022 and did not say if these would resume after the acquittals.

The government suspended the charity’s work in neighbouring Northwest Cameroon, also majority English-speaking, in late 2020, accusing its medical teams of aiding and abetting armed separatists.

Civilians have been the main victims of the fighting between Anglophone separatists and security forces.

More than 6,000 people have died and more than a million others forced from their homes since 2016, according to the International Crisis Group.

The arrests were the latest of several challenges for MSF in the troubled country.

In February 2022, five MSF aid workers were kidnapped in Cameroon’s Far North region, which is regularly targeted by jihadist insurgents. They were released in March in neighbouring Nigeria.

Source: AFP

Militants, suspected to Black Marine of Biafra Nations League (BNL), have reportedly killed two Cameroonian soldiers.

The members of the militant group on Thursday were reportedly travelling toward Ikang near Nigeria’s borders when members of the Cameroon’s Rapid d’intervention Battalion (BIR) started shooting a short distance away.

According to a source, the militants retaliated by shooting one BIR and killing two BIR.

They returned to the Abana waterfront, where the Cameroon flag was flying, and fired randomly before lowering it and hoisting the Biafran flag around the voting booth.

This was not the first time BNL would attack Cameroon Brigade d’Intervention Rapide, BIR in Bakassi.

In May 2021, they engaged in a fierce gun battle at Isangele, Bakassi Peninsula area.

The gun battle reportedly left some members of the BIR dead.

The BNL Chief Head of Operations, Henry Edet, confirmed the attack in a brief statement saying, “Militant group loyal to BNL and Cameroon forces exchanged fire in Isangele, Bakassi Peninsula.”

He claimed the “Two Cameroon BIR dropped dead during an exchange of gunfire in Bakassi Peninsula.”

Recall that the BNL had recently revealed its plans to completely shut down the Gulf of Guinea, threatening to hoist the Biafran flag.

The group said it would carry out its threat of hoisting the Biafran flags in Bakassi Peninsula to mark the Biafra Day memorial.

Source: Sahara Reporters