A video showing 15 of the 219 schoolgirls held by the jihadist group Boko Haram has added pressure on the Nigerian government to secure their release, after activists accused authorities of mishandling the case in the two years since their mass kidnap.

Weeping parents identified the girls captured by Boko Haram fighters, who want to establish an Islamist state in northeast Nigeria and have waged a seven-year campaign of violence, killing thousands of people and displacing two million.

President Muhammadu Buhari, elected a year ago on a promise to end endemic graft and crush the group, said in December the government could talk to Boko Haram if credible representatives emerged.

In January he said the government was launching a new investigation into the kidnapping, vowing to return the girls captured at a school in the town of Chibok while taking exams. But little has emerged since then.

In the video, apparently taken in December and given to government officials by Boko Haram as proof of life for the negotiations, a person asks the 15 girls to say their names as they stand quietly in two rows, wearing headscarves. 

"I saw all the girls and they are Chibok girls," Esther Yakubu, a parent of one of the abducted girls who saw the video broadcast by CNN said. "I recognise some of them because we are in the same area with them."

Yakubu was marching with some 30 other parents and activists to the presidential villa in the capital Abuja to demand the government do more to return the girls. Police stopped them at the road leading to the villa.

Witnesses to the kidnapping, Nigerian military and security officials, Western diplomats and counter-terrorism experts blame a series of failings by politicians and the military in dealing with the militants, including a lack of co-ordination.

Information Minister Lai Mohammed told CNN the government was still reviewing the video. When asked about efforts to get the girls released he only said: "There are ongoing talks."

A top government official who declined to be named, said an official reaction would only be made once the military had established the video's authenticity.

Buhari said in a statement he hoped the girls would be "rescued", suggesting the army will try to liberate them.

"Thousands of persons, mostly women and children, who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, have already been rescued and reunited with their families," he said, without mentioning the video.

Buhari said he "continues to believe that with the total commitment of the Federal Government, Nigerian Armed Forces and security agencies...the girls will be eventually rescued."

INFORMATION "LOST"

Activists said Buhari's government is not doing enough, urging the state to use the video for clues to find the girls and speak to girls who had managed to flee Boko Haram captivity.

"The incredible wealth of information that victims of terrorists can offer our security forces is being lost in the current undefined and ineffective approach," Aisha Yesufu of the #BringBackOurGirls group said in a statement.

Buhari has blamed his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan who was slow to react to the abduction.

Under Buhari's command, Nigerian troops backed up by Chad, Niger and Cameroon have recaptured most of territory held by Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to Islamic State last year.

However, Boko Haram has no unified leadership which makes it difficult for the government to find someone to negotiate with, analysts say.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a video circulated last month in which he seemed to suggest he was ailing and Boko Haram was losing its effectiveness. But another video emerged last week saying there would be no surrender.

Fulan Nasrullah, a security analyst, said there was little chance of a breakthrough in the talks between the government and the militants after the failure of previous efforts.

"The government is angry about the leak, as are the insurgents," he said. "The insurgents are not currently willing to negotiate for the girls following the government's alleged bad faith in previous negotiations," he said. (Additional reporting by Felix Onuoha, Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by James Macharia and Dominic Evans)

Reuters

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Elangwe Pauline

15.Apr.2016

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The Councils of National Orders is meeting in Yaounde to examine over 7.000 files for the eligibility for the award of medals and other distinctions during the National Day Celebrations on 20th May 2016.

The Grand Chancellor of the National Orders, Senator Peter Mafany Musonge is chairing the three-day session.

He called on council members to show proof of objectivity, equity and balance in trades and gender so that only the most meritorious individuals are awarded. 

According to the council members, the Head of State, H.E. Paul Biya, Grand Master of the National Orders has allotted 3350 medals to be awarded on the D-day.

The medals include Silver after ten years of work, Vermeil after 15 years and Gold after 25 years of service.

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Elangwe Pauline

14.Apr.2016

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The Foreign Affairs Ministers of Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria had separate audience with the Prime Minister and Head of Government Philemon Yang this Tuesday 12th April 2016

During the separate audience, each of them handed a sealed message from their President to President Paul Biya.

The Equato - Guinean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Co-operation, Agapito Mba Mokuy who was the first to be received handed his sealed letter from his President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Shortly after, he discussed issues of cooperation and fraternity between the two countries.

He also briefed reporters on his country’s mood before elections few days from now, saying everything is going on smoothly and that his government has urged its Nationals to be promoters of peace as they actively participate in the voting process. He was accompanied by his country’s Ambassador and other senior staff at the embassy.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Minister of State, Minister of Foreign Affairs Khadidja Boukar Ibrahim came after with a sealed letter from his President Muhammadu Buhari.

After a close to 15 minutes talks with the Prime Minister he later on told reporters that the relations between Cameroon and Nigeria is progressing positively.

Common security issues and the plight of Nigerian refugees were also part of their discussions.

He was accompanied to the Prime Minister’s Office by the Nigerian High Commissioner to Cameroon Hadidja  Moustapha.

CRTV

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Rita Akana

14.Apr.2016

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Cameroon’s new Ambassador to the United States of America had served in Israel for the past 22 years! He was ambassador for 17 years!

Henri Etoundi Essomba was appointed April 11 2016 by Presidential decree same like S. Mvondo Ayolo, Cameroon’s new Ambassador to France.

Etoundi Essomba replaces Joseph Atangana Foe while  Mvondo Ayolo who was Ambassador in Gabon, takes over from Le Jeune Mbella Mbella who became Minister of External Relations in October 2015. Both appointees are  diplomats by profession and from the Ewondo clan.

Etoundi Essomba was initially sent as Chargé d’Affaires in the early 1990s, to set up the chancery and pave the way for Cameroon’s first Ambassador to Israel.

 In the mid-1990s, following the assassination of the then Isreali PM, Yitzhak Rabin, Essomba was summoned home. He was thereafter offered the position of Deputy Chief of Protocol from where he rose to the rank of Ambassador at the Cameroon embassy in Moshe Sharet, Tel Aviv, Isreal.

In 2007, in addition to his post of Ambassador, he became Dean of the Diplomatic Corps;the veteran of all the heads of foreign missions in that Middle East country. No Ambassador has spent that number of years in a single country, not even Israel, reports Isreal’s, Jerusalem Post.

Ambassador Etoundi Essomba inherits an embassy where allegations of corruption and embezzlement have been rife amid other complains. Other Cameroonians conversely appreciated the out-gone  Ambassador to the USA, Joseph Atangana Foe who is said to have brought huge changes, and made it easier for Cameroonians have access to services at Embassy in Washington. the The worry about the embassy in France  surrounds the use of Cameroon's " two official languages".

Solomon Amabo Amabo

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Solomon Amabo Amabo

13.Apr.2016

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Dictionary.com defines lies telling thus; “a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood, an inaccurate or false statement; something intended or serving to convey a false impression”.

Dr. George Simon says; “lying serves to give a manipulator an advantage over someone else. They want to keep you in the dark and keep you guessing. One of the best ways to do this is by deception. One subtle approach to lying is lying by omission. When someone wants to pull the wool over your eyes, they don’t have to make an obviously absurd or bogus claim. Many times, all they have to do is make sure they don’t tell the whole truth about something. It’s as simple as leaving out a very important detail or something crucial to understanding the whole picture”.
There are several forms of lying, but one approach Dr. George Simon highlights appears to describe vividly what is happening in Cameroon. He says; “Another type of subtle lying is the use of vagueness. When you confront a manipulator about an issue, they may give you an answer, but they might also be so vague about the details that you end up remaining largely in the dark. Sometimes, the disordered character can manipulate you effectively by doing just the opposite — by using specificity in a response in such a way that it may provide a limited answer to the question you’ve asked, but without providing additional detail that would better address the intent of your question”.

The over thirty-year rule of President Paul Biya has, from many perspectives been characterized by the glorification of lies telling to the point that lies telling has virtually been accepted in Cameroon as a way of life. The main thing here is that, as Jean Paul Satre put it; “In politics all means are good, provided they are efficient”.
In the early 1990s when the wind of democracy swept through Cameroon, the government found it hard to contain the thirst of the people for change. The growing unpopularity of the Head of State and his CPDM Party pushed the authorities to chosing the easy wrong against the hard right. That is how people like Prof. Augustin Kontchou Kouemegne rose to prominence, for telling vital lies that bailed the President out of complicated situations.

Prof. Kontchou’s lies were blatant, provocative and ended up being simply amusing, but no one ever found the opportunity to tell the regime a terrible foundation was being laid for the Republic and that the younger generation shall grow up with the notion that telling lies is not only normal, but acceptable. Elsewhere, fact checks would lead to the resignation of such congenital liars, but in our country, Cameroon, it rather attracts rewards at the highest level.

One striking thing is the degree to which public authorities get away with some seemingly ridiculous lies. In 1994, Cameroonians of all social strata contributed money to facilitate the participation of the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon at the FIFA World Cup jamboree, hosted by the United States of America. Contributions came in from truck pushers, market women and even students anxious to see their heroes rekindle the miraculous performance of the World Cup organized by Italy in 1990. The collections were launched because government openly expressed difficulties sponsoring the team due to the raging economic crisis at the time.

Unfortunately for those who contributed, the money never reached the Indomitable Lions, not a single Franc of that money got to the team in the United States of America. The players found it difficult to carry themmselves around to the point where some benevolent American stars even organized concerts to raise funds and assist them. As could be expected, the performance of the squad was far below average and the team went on to concede 6 goals in one encounter against Russia, handing Salenco as many as 5 of those goals, making him by the same token, one of the top scorers at the tournament. It only took the genius of play maker, Roger Albert Milla for Cameroon to at least score a goal against Russia.
While the public expected government to render accounts on the money contributed, the spokeman at the time, Prof. Kontchou reduced the whole thing into a joke. He told Cameroonians on National media that; “The money was in the air between Paris and New York” and that was it until date. Nothing has ever been said again and no one has been brought to book for mismanaging the money.

Today, Minister of Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bakary has been seen widely as having replaced Prof. Kontchou, churning out what many see as blatant lies at every standpoint. The Minister recently received a missive from the Kondengui Maximum prison from one-time Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Jean Marie Atangana Mebara who sought to correct what he considered outright lies and fabrications the told the public about the matter relating to the purchase of a presidential jet. The view that the Minister’s press conferences are mainly manipulative is somewhat widely shared and he is often compared to the infamous Prof. Knotchou.
As if that were not enough, members of the National Order of Medical Doctors of Cameroon have made a rare unpopular outing in support of their colleagues and their Minister in the Monique Koumateke affair. The Order corroborated a version, mostly considered as inaccurate, by the Minister of Public Health- Andre Mama Fouda, claiming Monique died at home before being ferried to the Lanquintinie hospital in Douala.

The report unfortunately came amidst press reports that members of the Order were trying to bribe late Monique’s sister who performed the operation to claim was a trained nurse, indict the mortuary attendant and admit that Monique died at home, in exchange of the sum of 50 million CFA F and a visa to any European country of her choice.
Without any surprise, the press reports alleging corruption attempts have been ignored by the authorities. Rather, the major pre-occupation remains the need to conceal the truth as much as possible from Cameroonians. A government that bribes its top ranking officials to manipulate election outcomes and confiscates all civil servants to the service of one man, cannot in any way ever lay claims to accountability, transparency and moral rectitude.

It is for this reason we hold at The Times Journal that the much heralded attainment of emergence by the year 2035 is a fallacy as long as this regime stays in place.

BY AKUROH JOHN MBAH

Senior Journalist(The Times Journal)

Communications Consultant

Cameroon||Media Production

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John Mbah Akuroh

13.Apr.2016

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Boko Haram may have abducted children and young women in Cameroon for sex exploitation and suicide bombing. Internally displaced persons were also vulnerable to human trafficking by militant groups.

Yazan Imra, 18, was abducted from the Nigeria- Cameroon border town of Gambarou and taken to one of the terrorists' hideouts. For two years, Imra was sexually abused and is now a mother of a 16 month-old baby. She doesn't know the father of her child.

Since the insurgency began in the early 2000, thousands of young girls and boys have been abducted by Boko Haram militants. Many have been forcefully recruited as suicide bombers, domestic workers and many as sex slaves. "Boys serve as domestic workers and also trained on the use of guns and explosives," Imra told DW. "Girls we were sexually exploited and we also worked as cooks for the fighters," she added. 

In the meeting of police chiefs in Cameroon's capital Yaounde last Friday (08.04.2016), it was revealed that thousands of women, children and men were trafficked from Cameroon, Central African Republic(CAR), Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) and Equatorial Guinea. The head of Interpol office for central African states, Lawrence Oben Enow, confirmed that the victims were later turned into combatants, sex slaves and spies for the Islamist group.

"Women and children are either sold to rebels in the Central African Republic and Boko Haram terrorists in northern Cameroon or forced to join them," Enow said.

The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), said in December 2015 that Boko Haram related violence across the Lake Chad Basin has led to the increased number of refugees in the region. At least 75,000 worst affected Nigerians are still hosted in Cameroon's Far North region and 82,000 internally displaced people affected by the spillover of the conflict to Cameroon since 2013. The UN's children education fund UNICEF saysmore than 1 million children in northeastern Nigeria and its neighboring countries cannot attend school due to insurgency.

Former abductees ostracized

The UN provides food, shelter and medical assistance to former abductees and refugees. However, many of those who escaped or freed from Boko Haram bases face stigma. "Sometimes we've got problems because they treat us like terrorists," Elias Yega told DW.

Hamidou Mohamat, 21, was kidnapped alongside his three brothers from the Nigerian town of Kumshe and recruited as a fighter. Mohamat escaped and handed himself to the Cameroonian military, and since then he has been held in Minawao military camp. Analysts however, say that those like Mohamat who escape captivity should not be held at a military base but rather be rehabilitated in recognized centers.

Cameroon's senior military official, Alain Mvogo, said that those who hand themselves in are held there for investigation purposes. He added that those traumatized refugees and victims were given special attention and counseling. "The global objective is to free all those who have been held in bondage by Boko Haram and bring back peace to their communities," Mvogo said.

DW

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Elangwe Pauline

12.Apr.2016

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