Southern Cameroons: Trial of Ambazonia leaders fraught with political baggage ⁰

Yaoundé is still not prepared to launch a campaign that would explain to the world that the trial of the Ambazonia leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his senior aides will be held with total transparency as it unfolds. The Francophone regime headed by 86 years old President Paul Biya has not realize how much is at stake and that they have to do things right.

The whole process of abduction and extradition to Yaoundé from Abuja has discredited both Nigeria and French Cameroun democracies and the Biya Francophone regime as well. The President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and the NERA 9 trial is the most politically explosive in modern French and Bristish Cameroons history.

The Ambazonia-French Cameroun trial also reflect how divisive the so-called one and indivisible Cameroonian nation has become : while the Cameroon government and its ageing leadership insist the trial of the Ambazonia leader is an exemplary demonstration of justice in action, the Ambazonian Interim Government has warned it will prove that French Cameroun’s judiciary is not fit for purpose.

Ten prominent leaders of the Ambazonia Interim Government are in the Yaoundé Military Tribunal and the whole trial process has been shameful, disgusting and disgraceful. They could face the death penalty or a jail sentence of up to 25 years if found guilty of charges of terrorism presented by public Francophone prosecutors predominantly from the Beti-Bulu tribal extraction.

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government Dabney Yerima has warned that the outcome of the trial is a foregone conclusion, because, he claims, the judiciary is controlled by Biya and his French Cameroun political elites who are determined to punish not just an alleged violation of Francophone law but Southern Cameroons nationalism as a whole.

Vice President Dabney Yerima told Cameroon Intelligence Report that the NERA 10 trial is not against a crime, because no crime was committed against French Cameroun. He opined that the Yaoundé Military Tribunal Theater remains a political trial and a prosecution of pro-independence ideology.

Dabney Yerima pointed, for example, to the fact that the NERA 10 have been in Nigeria and French Cameroun custody for more than a year and the Yaounde court keeps changing its trial judges.  Another major bone of contention has been the charges themselves particularly that of terrorism, which implies the use of violence, something that President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe has always publicly rejected.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai