Lawmakers from Cameroon’s leading opposition party have threatened to boycott the entire remaining session of Parliament this year in protest over executive inaction on the armed conflict in Western Cameroon.

The Social Democratic Front representatives sat out the re-opening of the country’s two houses of parliament – the National Assembly and the senate – on Tuesday, November 12.

It will be the third and final session of the legislative year during which Parliament will scrutinise proposals on government spending for 2020 before dissolving for legislative elections in February.

They accused President Paul Biya of “throwing into the waste paper” recommendations of September’s Major National Dialogue on resolving the conflict in the two English-speaking regions of the country.

“Nothing has happened to make us feel that some action is being taken (to resolve the conflict), SDF Parliament Group leader in the National Assembly Paul Nji Tumasang said after the Tuesday boycott.

Mr Tumasang said the members reserved the right to boycott the entire session if measures are not taken to end the violence that has claimed more than 3,000 lives.

Source: The East African

Cameroon’s main opposition party Social Democratic Front (SDF) said on Tuesday it will not take part in the legislative and municipal elections scheduled next year, arguing that insecurity in the English-speaking regions does not favour credible elections.

Denis Nkemlemo, SDF’s national secretary for communication told reporters the decision was reached “after deep reflection” by top officials of the party.

“The security situation in the Southwest and Northwest regions is such that elections cannot take place there because the war is ragging on,” Nkemlemo said, adding that organizing elections when one part of the country is “tearing apart” will only facilitate the split of the country.

The SDF that enjoys widespread support in English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest has reiterated that it will only consider to partake in the elections if “concrete and durable” solutions to the conflict have been effected.

On Sunday, President Paul Biya decreed that elections for members of National Assembly and municipal councillors will take place on February 9, 2020. Separatists have vowed to disrupt the elections in the Anglophone regions.

Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji on Monday stressed that “all necessary security measures” shall be taken to ensure that the elections take place peacefully.

Source: Xinhuanet

Legislative and municipal elections will hold in Anglophone regions of Cameroon despite growing threats from armed separatists, officials of the Elections Cameroon (Elecam) said on Monday.

Chairperson of Elecam Enow Abrams Egbe said the eagerness demonstrated during the registration process in the troubled regions was a clear sign that “people in the regions are ready to take part in the elections”.

“We are convinced that elections will take place in the regions. Elections Cameroon will put in place all measures to ensure the elections are hitch-free. Elections should unit and not divide the country,” Egbe said.

“We are working in collaboration with the security forces, so together we believe we will overcome the challenges,” he added.

He was speaking in the capital Yaounde during a meeting convened by Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji to evaluate the readiness of the country to organize the elections.

On Sunday, President Paul Biya decreed that elections for members of National Assembly and municipal councillors will take place on February 9, 2020.

Separatists fighting for the independence of minority English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest have vowed to disrupt the elections in the regions.

Nji stressed during the meeting that “all necessary security measures” have to be taken to ensure that the elections take place peacefully.

Source: Xinhuanet

Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, has finally let the cat out of the bag in the French Capital where he has declared that the best Southern Cameroonians can get is a Special Status which, in his mind, does not imply that he is splitting the country.

Mr. Biya told delegates attending the second edition of the Paris Peace Forum on Tuesday, November 12, 2019, that given the cultural and historical differences between Anglophones and Francophones, Southern Cameroons would be granted a Special Status as stipulated in the country’s constitution.

The 86-year-old dictator said that the two English-speaking regions would be granted special status which falls short of the expectations of federalists at a live TV program coordinated by Mo Ibrahim, a telecommunications billionaire who awards prizes on good governance to African leaders who leave power voluntarily and have made their countries better than they met them.

Journalists and other observers of Cameroon’s political landscape have been seeking to know what was in the cards for Southern Cameroonians since Mr. Biya’s so-called Major Nation Dialogue which was held in the nation’s capital, Yaounde..

Mr. Biya, who has been shuffling himself along in France like a stalling car, is clearly showing signs of senile decay and this calls his a ability to govern the Central African country into question.

For more than three years, the country has been caught up in a downward political and economic spiral following protests by Southern Cameroonian teachers and lawyers.

Their grievances have included marginalization and unequal distribution of the country’s natural resources and the chaos has robbed the government of much-needed resources to undertake many development projects.

Lawyers and teachers initially called for a federal system, but when the government responded with a heavy hand, things got out of control, giving separatists a platform to spread their gospel of separation.

The crisis has dealt a severe blow to the country’s economy. Ghost town operations and threats from the separatists have resulted in the failure of several state-owned corporations.

For many decades, the country’s unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high and crippling taxes have taken the wind out of the sails of many small businesses.

While Biya and his men hold that they are offering Southern Cameroonians a good deal, many observers hold that anything short of a federal system might not douse the fire in many minds in the two English-speaking regions of the country.

By Joachim Arrey

Cameroon will hold its legislative and municipal elections on February 9, 2020, according to a presidential decree announced on Sunday.

The last legislative polls was held in 2013 for five-year terms.

President Paul Biya who was re-elected in 2018 has twice postponed the elections.

The 2018 presidential election stoked a political crisis in this Central African nation, where Biya has ruled for 37 years.

Opposition leader Maurice Kamto was imprisoned along with some of his supporters for denouncing electoral fraud through marches.

Since his release in October, Kamto’s attempts to hold public meetings have not been approved by authorities.

His Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon has said the party had requested certain preconditions be met, like a revision of the electoral code.

The main opposition party in Parliament , the Social Democratic Front failed to comment on its participation in the 2020 legislative polls when reached by AFP.

AFP

In February the U.S. president cut off his country’s military aid to the central African country of Cameroon because of its appalling human rights record.

Sometimes Donald Trump gets it right. In February the U.S. president cut off his country’s military aid to the central African country of Cameroon because of its appalling human rights record. Last Friday he acted again, dropping Cameroon from a pact that promotes trade between sub-Saharan African countries and the U.S.

Cameroon’s main claim to fame until recently was its ruler, Paul Biya, the oldest and longest-ruling dictator in the world (86 years old and in power for the past 42 years).

Biya wasn’t all that bad, apart from the usual corruption and the occasional political murder, until Cameroon’s downtrodden English-speakers started protesting seriously about two years ago in the majority French-speaking country.

The anglophones have been pushed into a corner because they don’t fit the mould. A century ago hardly anybody in the region spoke either English or French, but the vagaries of colonial policy put some of the locals into the British empire and some into the French – and then independence brought some of them back together again.

Only one-fifths of the 25 million Cameroonians live in the anglophone region, but that region is right up against the border with Nigeria, where around 190 million people use English as their lingua franca.

That shouldn’t have been a problem if Cameroon had respected the rights of its English-speakers, but having giant Nigeria right next-door made the country’s francophone ruling elite uneasy. Predictably, but very stupidly, Biya and his cronies saw separate institutions for the anglophones as a potential cause for division and started eliminating them.

They unilaterally changed the country’s federal structure into a unitary one, ending anglo self-government. They replaced English-speaking judges and English common law with francophone judges and French law. Government jobs automatically went to “loyal” francophones even in anglophone areas.

Every step they took to erase the differences between anglos and francos only deepened the divisions between them.

Finally the anglophones began publicly protesting – and when their representatives were all jailed, more radical protesters began demanding independence for the anglophone region, which they dubbed Ambazonia. They got arrested too, and the next wave of protesters turned to violence.

The original blame for the breakdown rests almost entirely with the Biya regime, but the rebels are catching up quickly in the stupidity stakes. It has become a classic guerrilla war, in the worst sense of the word, and it could blight the lives of an entire generation.

What makes it even more bizarre is that it’s not even about genuine ethnic, religious or linguistic differences. Cameroon has enough of those: many different tribes, Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, and around 250 different languages, some spoken by only a few thousand people. This war is about which foreign language people speak.

It is a mercifully rare problem in Africa, because while most African states contain many languages, they have kept the borders that the colonialists imposed. Everybody living inside those borders has therefore inherited the same colonial language, usually French, English or Portuguese, and uses it to communicate with fellow-citizens whose native language is different.

It’s an arbitrary solution with its roots in tyrannical oppression by foreigners, but there’s no other way that large numbers of Africans could share a modern state together. Most of the linguistic groups are too small. And Cameroon shows what is all too likely to happen – human beings being what they are – if that situation does not prevail.

Culled from The Province

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government Dabney Yerima says the Biya Francophone regime is resorting to North West/South West divide in British Southern Cameroons in order to continue to marginalize Ambazonians and stifle the resistance while advancing French Cameroun’s political and economic agenda in the territory.

Vice President Dabney Yerima noted on Monday in Holland that the Southern Cameroons battle for independence is at a dangerous juncture, and there are real threats that Ambazonians must face coming from some dissident Southern Cameroons groups created by the French Cameroun government.

Comrade Dabney Yerima revealed that the French Cameroun occupying regime in Yaoundé is pouring fuel on the North West/South West divide fire using some disgruntled Southern Cameroonians who served previously in the Interim Government as part of efforts to obliterate the Ambazonian quest for independence.

The exiled Southern Cameroons leader opined that Swiss French Cameroun lobbyists are also at work deceiving the international community about the so-called Geneva initiative. The high-ranking Southern Cameroons official warned the Biya French Cameroun regime against escalating the conflict, saying Yaoundé will face the consequences sooner or later.

Dabney Yerima also condemned attempts by some pro Yaoundé Southern Cameroonians calling for an end to the resistance noting that the Special Status announced after the Major National Dialogue was an insult to the people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Vice President Dabney Yerima went on to say that Ambazonia think tanks are being formed in Europe, the US and in the Republic of South Africa including Ground Zero in order to deal with every problem impeding the implementation of the revolution plan, emphasizing that there are certain Ambazonia forces seeking to prolong division among Southern Cameroonians.

Elsewhere in his Monday speech, the Southern Cameroons Vice President highlighted that the French Cameroun army was currently being assisted by some Ambazonia internal agents. Yerima said the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has agreed to general demand to end divisions.

Dabney Yerima concluded that Southern Cameroons Interim Government will no longer accept the persistence of the humanitarian crisis in Ground Zero, neighboring Nigeria and at the Mexican border with the USA and will also not be patient any longer with the international community.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima has stressed the need for the United States and the European Union to begin consultations on war-ravaged Southern Cameroons and its displaced people in Nigeria and Mexico including in French Cameroun territory.

Vice President Dabney Yerima made the remarks in a recent meeting with his top aides in which the Amba Bonds Project featured prominently during discussions.

Comrade Dabney Yerima thanked US President Donald Trump for his recent action against the Biya Francophone regime in French Cameroun and called on the European Union to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the US administration to put an end to French Cameroun military atrocities in Southern Cameroons.

Dabney Yerima said that Western sanctions targeting the French Cameroun leader Paul Biya and prominent members of his ruling CPDM crime syndicate were needed to force Yaoundé to engage the Ambazonia Interim Government for genuine peace talks in the presence of a third party and on a neutral ground.

Vice President Dabney Yerima furthered that Washington should apply maximum pressure campaign that will bar Cameroon government officials and senior citizens from carrying out financial transactions in Europe and the USA.

By Asu Isong in London

Ever since the notorious mayor of Buea, Patrick Ekema, passed away, there have been many theories surrounding his demise. For those who bought into his philosophy of protecting the city of Buea and its people, Ekema was a hero who should be buried with pump and pageantry.

But behind the façade Ekema put up, there is an entire story of manipulation, self-aggrandizement, greed and gluttony which connived to bring him down like a pack of old retired cards.

On the outside, while the former notorious Mayor of the City of Buea, Ekema Patrick Esunge, gave the impression that he was a staunch member of the ruling CPDM party, he was, indeed, a schemer and a scammer who was making the most of the CPDM crime syndicate to feather his nest.

Ekema was enriching himself at supersonic speed while using intimidation, a CPDM trade mark, to silence his critics. Ekema had robbed the City of Buea of millions of dollars and most of this money was spent on women and alcohol.

His home, which he built in a very short time, is estimated at USD1 million and for a man whose salary was not more than USD 600 a month, it was clear that he was engaged in something unorthodox.

In a well-managed system, this should have caught the eyes of the authorities and an investigation should have been opened to determine the source of the money he was using to build such a mansion. But since Ekema had given the impression that he could die for the CPDM, any thing he told his Yaounde sponsors was taken down hook, line and sinker.

But while he gave the impression that he was working for the Yaounde government, Ekema had a plan B which he held so close to his chest. He had already moved his five children and his wife to the United States. Today, his wife, Katherine Ekema, and their children are well settled in the United States, thanks to the money Ekema had stolen from the Buea City Council.

Ekema was successfully keeping a family of six in the United States. With USD 600, which was his monthly salary in Cameroon, Ekema could not underwrite such a lifestyle in the United States. His four children with Katherine and the one she had before getting married to Ekema were all school in the United States and this was costing him a pretty penny.

The last child, who turned 4, two days after Ekema collapsed as a result of a massive heart attack in a lady’s house in Douala, was born in the United States. He has no problems. His birthright citizenship kicked in when he got to the USA. The rest were born in Cameroon and with their mother, they are now seeking asylum on the grounds that they are Southern Cameroonians who are being persecuted by the same Yaounde government for which  Ekema worked so tirelessly so that other Southern Cameroonians could continue to live in appalling and inhuman conditions.

While Ekema is quietly renting space in a mortuary today in Douala, his wife, Katherine, has been caught up in a long thinking process prompted by the absence of money and stress because she cannot travel to Cameroon due to her refugee status in the United States.

According to international refugee law, she cannot go back to the country she accuses of persecuting her and her children when she had not had the papers of her adoptive country. The wads of cash that used to leave Cameroon for the United States every month are no longer there, and this spells frustration to a woman who was wont to spending money without thinking twice. The tap has been turned off forever.

Ekema has died and with him are the millions he embezzled from the Buea City Council. Katherine has to figure out how to feed such a large family in the United States and her new status as an asylum seeker does not give her any right to any American money. She must learn how to work off her butts if she wants to meet the needs of her five children.

While Ekema had pulled off a good one on Cameroonians by sending his wife and children abroad to seek asylum, he did not know that the pressure he was mounting on others would end up consuming him. What goes around comes around.

Southern Cameroonian fighters always made sure that they kept him under surveillance. He had body guards everywhere and all the time but living under such conditions for long periods of time was simply not tenable.

Ekema had wanted to rid himself of such a restrictive lifestyle and had made up his mind to leave the country. That was why early this year, he applied for an American visa. As fate would have it, Ekema showed up at the American embassy with another woman, claiming that she was his wife. Ekema was not only uncut, he also had a very low IQ. His ability to think through things was questionable. He thought he could beat the American system. He thought the American system was like the Cameroon system where everything could be manipulated.

But the visa officer who interviewed him told him that he had sent his wife and children to the United States, adding that they had not returned to Cameroon. The visa officer told him that he could not have two wives, pointing out that polygamy was an offense under American law.

Using his crude CPDM mentality, he promptly lied that he had divorced Katherine who was enjoying the Cameroonian taxpayers’ money in the United States. The visa officer knew that he was lying but respectfully asked him to produce a divorce certificate. Documents are easy to produce in Cameroon and it is a lot easier to have documents in Cameroon, especially if you are a mayor.

Ekema rushed to Buea where he was produced a brand-new divorce certificate that was backdated. But the American visa officer had seen through him and had made up his mind. His visa application and that of his girlfriend were turned down. He rushed to the Canadian embassy to secure another visa but met with a rejection. He tried the Belgian embassy and it seemed as if Western embassies had connived to turn down his application for a visa.

Ekema was sick and tired of living the dirty life in Cameroon. He wanted to leave the country with two women. He was not only fond of food, he also loved women and alcohol. His size clearly spoke to his gluttony. His love of expensive booze spoke volume of his false sense of achievement which would later come back to bite him.

He loved every woman, or everything in skirt and he thought he was a lady’s man, forgetting that where there is money, there will be women. Money is to women what honey is to bees. As one philosopher rightly put it, what kills a man comes like appetite and Ekema was brought down by his greed, theft and gluttony.

A product of a poor family, Ekema struggled very hard, most often by crook to climb the social ladder. He faked certificates to get registered into the University of Buea and from there he quickly learned that if he aligned himself with the CPDM crime syndicate, he would gain influence and money, something he did with relative ease.

But there is always a price to pay for the earthly possessions we acquire in a dishonest manner. He might have built a beautiful house, but he will never live in that house. His children who are today refugees in the United States will not live in that house. Poetic justice is prevailing.

He might have wired some money to the states as he prepared to throw in the towel as a means of escaping the stress and pressure that Southern Cameroonian fighters had mounted on him, but nature knew that he would not be enjoying that loot for a long time. His family may be in the United States, but they must know that they are in for a long rough moment as Southern Cameroonians are prepared to send their father’s dirt to the American immigration.

 They cannot be running away from persecution when their father was one of the officials who had his nose to the grindstone just to ensure that the status quo ante continued.  

Ekema was already a dead man from the time he failed to secure a visa. The massive heart attack was simply a finisher. His love of liquor and food had transformed his body into a conference center for diseases to hold their meetings. He will be remembered as the mayor who worked for himself but deceived the people that he was working for them. Cameroonians must wake up and smell the coffee as more “Ekemas” will be coming up soon.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai