Politics

At least three killed and 24 others injured in Mora town, with authorities suspecting involvement of Boko Haram.

A suicide bomber on a motorbike killed three people and wounded 24 at a market in north Cameroon, where armed group Boko Haram has been waging an armed rebellion since 2009, authorities said.

A senior military official told Reuters news agency that the bomber was also killed in the attack in Mora, in Cameroon's Far North province. 

He said that it was possible one of the three victims was also on the bike. Another security source said authorities were convinced this was the work of Boko Haram, which has pledged allegiance to ISIL, wants to create an Islamic state in the region spanning four countries. 

 A regional offensive against Boko Haram led by Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger - the four countries most affected by the armed group - has chased it out of towns in the Lake Chad region.

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Rita Akana

21.Aug.2016

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First Chibok girl rescued from the Boko Haram militants in Nigeria claims to have missed her militant husband and that she is unhappy to be separated from the father of her baby.

Amina Ali is among the over 200 school girls kidnapped by the militant group two years ago. Amina, 21 year, with her four months old baby were rescued early this year.

'I want him to know that I am still thinking about him… Just because we got separated, that does not mean that I don't think about him. I just want to go home - I don't know about school,' she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an exclusive interview.

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Rita Akana

18.Aug.2016

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Barely two weeks to the end of the 2016 voter revision exercise (to end on August 31, 2016) nationwide, Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) is multiplying strategies to get more Cameroonians registered on the electoral list before the deadline. The sensitisation campaign is not only on the traditional media but more on the social media, believed to be a soft-spot for youth and women, who constitute the major target of ELECAM.

 The Facebook page of Elections Cameroon is immersed with messages sensitising Cameroonians of voting age to register before the August 31 deadline given by the Electoral Code. The page reminds its visitors of their civic right to be inscribed on the voters’ register. Some of the Facebook messages read “Hello, we are just days to the end of this year’s voter registration; please do register as from the age of 20”, “Registration on the voter registers ends this August 31 according to the law” and “do not wait for the 31^stAugust deadline, register now”. 

According to information gathered from the ELECAM Communication Division, the facebook account opened in November 2015 has more than 6,000 followers, the most followed public institution in Cameroon. Cameroon Tribune learnt that ELECAM’s operations “20,000 youths in 20 days” launched last February registered 46, 266 youth thanks to the social media campaign. ELECAM has not only limited itself to  Facebook as it also operates twitter, sound cloud accounts, a Youtube channel and a website where sensitisation information, photographs, audio and videos are shared to the public. These, Charles Ebune of the ELECAM’s Communication service says are all techniques to get to a large variety of Cameroonians.

He attributes the large number of voters registered since January 2, 2016 to the vibrant social media campaign. Statistics published on the ELECAM Facebook page on August 9, 2016 indicates that 435,270 voters have been registered in 2016 as against 206, 873 recorded same time last year.

Cameroon Tribune

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Rita Akana

18.Aug.2016

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It has been two days since the jihadist sect Boko Haram released a video that showed as many as 50 of the missing Chibok schoolgirls still alive, and the Nigerian government has yet to reach out to the family of the girl who was singled out in the video.

The lack of contact has again left the families of the Chibok girls feeling neglected.

"No one from the Nigerian government has contacted us. Maybe it's because we are poor or because we don't have oil in Chibok. We are nobody. But I am glad to know that God has answered my prayers by keeping her alive," said Esther Yakubu, whose daughter appeared in the video. "The message I have for the federal government is to release the [jailed] fighters so that the [other] fighters will release the girls.”

In the latest Boko Haram video, Yakubu's daughter Dorcas Maida Yakubu spoke in her native language.

"We are suffering here. There is no kind of suffering we haven't seen," Dorcas Maida Yakubu says in the recording. "Tell the government to give them [Boko Haram] their people so we can also come home to be with you. ... There is nothing you, or we, can do about this, but to get their people back to them, so we can go home."

Dorcas Maida Yakubu also says many of her fellow abductees have been injured and hurt. Some have been killed by Nigerian airstrikes, which the Nigerian military said was unlikely.

The captive was 15 years old when Boko Haram abducted her and nearly 300 of her classmates from their school in the town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria in April 2014.

Possibility of negotiations

Boko Haram's latest video has sparked a fierce debate within Nigeria about the possibility of negotiations between the federal government and the jihadist sect. Last year, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said he was open to talking to a credible Boko Haram leader.

That is a struggle for the group.

Ever since the 2009 extrajudicial killing of its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, the sect has been fractured, with splinter groups emerging and disappearing from the public eye.

Earlier this month, a leadership crisis erupted when the Islamic State announced Mohammed Yusuf's spiritual son, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, as the "governor" of the Islamic State's West Africa Province (ISWAP), otherwise known as Boko Haram.

The announcement implied that Abubakar Shekau, who has led the group since the death of the founder, had been replaced.

The group is now split into factions, with both al-Barnawi and Shekau vying for supremacy and denouncing one another in recent audio broadcasts.

The Nigerian federal government said it has reached out to the group. But the divisions threaten possible negotiations.

Failed talks

In the past, talks with the sect have fallen through over lack of credible liaisons. The Nigerian government said it is being cautious.

But some say that the latest video is a publicity stunt by Shekau, who appears desperate. An ongoing military offensive by troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon has forced Boko Haram to flee from many areas it once controlled.

Muslims Rights Concern, a Nigeria group that protects the rights of Muslims, says, "Boko Haram released the video because its logistics are in shambles. It is surrounded on all sides. Its supplies are cut off. The game is up. Boko Haram should surrender instead of trying to hoodwink Nigerians."

Counterterrorism policy analyst Yan St-Pierre says Shekau's message is intended to go beyond his own followers and his rival, al-Barnawi. It may be aimed directly at the central power, the Islamic State.

"It's actually speaking to [IS leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi and anyone else who is in the high rank of ISIS officials to show them, ‘Look, choosing Abu Musab al-Barnawi is a mistake. I'm actually the one in the charge. I'm the one that provided results for this organization. I'm the one who still has control. I'm the one who is still pulling the strings,' " said St-Pierre, using another acronym for the militant group.

The Bring Back Our Girls group, which has spearheaded the campaign to pressure the Nigerian government to find and rescue the missing Chibok girls, says it is not opposed to negotiations. The members plan to march to the presidential office in the next few days to re-engage with Buhari.

Repeated requests

Boko Haram has repeatedly used the Chibok girls as a bargaining chip, demanding the federal government release detained Boko Haram members in exchange for the girls. But there are also hundreds of other, lesser-known hostages being held by the group.

"Will they also be used as bargaining chips?" St-Pierre asked. "By negotiating with Boko Haram, by giving into its demands, it would most likely set a precedent that would not end up well.

"At this point in time, especially if you look at the larger picture, it's not to the advantage of the Nigerian government to free the girls via negotiations, especially if you consider all that PR [public relations] rhetoric about being on their way to defeating Boko Haram, and Boko Haram being kicked out. It would be acknowledging the fact that they are unable to complete the job," he added.

Boko Haram has killed at least 20,000 people in its seven-year uprising against the Nigerian government. It surpassed IS in 2014 to become the world's deadliest terrorist group, according to the 2015 Global Terrorism Index, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Esther Yakubu knows how dangerous the group is, but she says negotiating with them is a high price that must be paid as soon as possible. After the mass abduction, she fled her home in Chibok. More than 2 million people have been displaced because of Boko Haram attacks.

Her family now rents a two-bedroom home in Abuja, where every night the family gathers to pray for Dorcas Maida to return.

"I just want my sister back," says 15-year-old Happy.

Esther Yakubu ends the night the way she often does, opening her Bible and looking at the photos left between the pages — two pictures of her smiling daughter captured just days before she was kidnapped.

Staring at the photo, tears gather in her eyes and fall down her cheeks.

"We are with you in spirit, even though you are not physically here with us," she says.

VOA

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Rita Akana

17.Aug.2016

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Last Sunday, 14 August, 2016, marked the eighth year following Cameroon’s take-over of the hitherto disputed Bakassi Peninsula. Cameroon, however, regained full citizen and tax control of the Peninsula last 9 October following an agreement that any inhabitant of the area must either declare for Nigeria and pay resident permit or declare for Cameroon and obtain the National Identity card.

Within the eight years of Bakassi-back-home, the Cameroonian government has been very much in the news for investing social, economic, and political interest in the oil and fish rich peninsula. The investments are reported to cost billions of FCFA to sustain local governments or Councils (six in number), provide potable water, erect schools (primary, secondary and high), install agricultural offices, establish Police stations and maintain the Defence Forces on the field.

The most recent investment was noted when PAMOL Plantations opened an area in Bakassi early 2016 to resettle farmers of oil palms and also repopulate the land. Before then, the Military Engineering Corps had invested some FCFA 640 million for 60 fishermen homes and CFA 300 Million for telecommunications pylons. An on-the-spot appraisal of the projects showed the pylons were 50 percent finished last May. Meanwhile the fishermen village of 60 homes was completed at New Beach and awaiting a final works report by the Military Engineering Corps as the executing agency. This would lead to an official reception by MINEPIA. The Military Engineering Corps led by Colonel Jackson Kamgain, MINEPIA led by Oumarou Ousmanou and MINATD headed by Ndian Senior Divisional Officer, Ntou’ou Ndong Chamberlin, accompanied by experts were on the field on 30 April this year to inspect the work.

The two earmarked villages for fishermen are the New Beach-Isangele and Mbemong. At New Beach-Isangele a 5-hectare land surface has been invested to host 60 homes each on 53 square metres (56 in blocks and 4 in wooden material), all electrified with solar energy, 64 toilets in eight structures, and a borehole with a water reservoir functioning with solar energy. Each of the homes has two bedrooms and a veranda. A six-kilometre access road linking the village to Isangele headquarters was also created by the “Genie Militaire”.
According to Mr. Oumarou Ousmanou of MINEPIA, the last thing to be done is for Government to install security posts in the fishermen village and everything shall be ready.

Cameroon Tribune

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Rita Akana

17.Aug.2016

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Cameroon has been arresting or dismissing members of local self-defense militia in the country's north amid fears that Boko Haram may be trying to turn some of them against their communities.

Local authorities told VOA the crackdown follows an investigation by security agencies.

Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of the Far North region, expressed concern that Boko Haram militants may be trying to infiltrate Cameroon via the local self-defense groups.

Authorities are screening the groups, Bakari said.

He added that authorities are organizing self-defense groups so, going forward, they'll coordinate with security forces and denounce suspects.

Crackdown in border villages

Bakari did not say how many of the vigilante group members had been arrested. But local newspapers report that at least 70 have been picked up by the police in a dozen border villages and that the crackdown is still on going.

Authorities did not offer any examples of this alleged cooperation between self-defense group members and Boko Haram and whether it has contributed to any specific attacks.

Last month, Amnesty International accused Cameroon of arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses against suspected Boko Haram supporters. Amnesty said more than 100 people have been sentenced to death since July 2015 in trials it described as "deeply unfair."

The government slammed the Amnesty report as biased.

Abdoul Garba, who leads a self-defense group in Kolofata on Cameroon's northern border with Nigeria, says the insurgents promise better conditions and deceive some vigilantes to work as spies.

Call for better working conditions

Garba said the government should give the self-defense groups food and material to boost their morale. That would improve working conditions and spur volunteers to work as the government expected, he added.

Self-defense groups say they've helped the military by patrolling villages and hard-to-reach border areas, but say they need more training for the hard, dangerous work.

Inoussa Hama, a member of a Kolofata self-defense group, said some of his men had been kidnapped and killed. He said they need special instruction to handle overnight shifts from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Cameroon authorities said they've reduced the terrorists’ ability to organize large-scale attacks but that the terrorists are trying to replenish their ranks by recruiting vulnerable youths in Cameroon.

VOA

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Rita Akana

16.Aug.2016

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