Politics

Four female suicide bombers blew themselves up in a flashpoint area in the Far North Region of  Cameroon on Saturday, November 21, killing 5 civilians including a traditional chief, the regional governor said.

One of the women attackers set off her explosives outside the house of the local chief in a village near Fotokol, a town often targeted by Boko Haram Islamists.

He and 4 members of his family were killed, governor Midjiyawa Bakari told AFP.

The other women blew themselves up but did not kill anyone else.

AFP

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Ngwa Bertrand

21.Nov.2015

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Since the start of this week, Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, has made available provisional electoral registers in all its sub-divisional branches. A nationwide campaign which has been launched simultaneously through mainstream media, bill-posting and banners in major road junctions, calls on the public, political parties and stakeholders to consult the registers in order to identify irregularities such as errors, omissions as well as names of dead persons or persons having lost their capacity to be voters. 

There are signals from Etoudi that President Biya intends to call early parliamentary and presidential elections to guarantee his continued stay in power beyond 2018. In a statement issued to the press yesterday, November 19, 2015, the Regional Delegate of ELECAM for the Centre Region, Joséphine Angèle Essama, said the operation that runs till November 20, 2015 aims at cleaning the voters’ registers before voters’ cards are produced. The publication of the provisional voters’ registers is a major indication that the ruling CPDM may surprise Cameroonians even before 2018.

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Ngwa Bertrand

20.Nov.2015

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Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari says army troops were denied weapons to fight the Boko Haram Takfiri militants due to corrupt multi-billion dollar arms deals that never procured military equipment for the soldiers. President Buhari recently received a report from a 13-member committee set up to investigate the issue of arms procurement between 2007 and 2015. He ordered late Tuesday anyone involved in the multi-billion dollar deals for weapons and equipment to be “brought to book.” “The findings made so far are extremely worrying considering that the interventions were granted within the same period that our troops fighting the insurgency in the northeast were in desperate need of platforms, military equipment and ammunition,” said the Nigerian president.

The corruption has resulted in the needless deaths of a significant number of Nigerians, Buhari said. “Had the funds siphoned to these non-performing companies been properly used for the purpose they were meant for, thousands of needless Nigerian deaths would have been avoided.” According to the presidential statement, the investigation has “unearthed several illicit and fraudulent financial transactions.” The probe came after soldiers complained that despite the military’s huge budget, troops were ill-equipped to fight Boko Haram.

Front-line troops serving under Goodluck Jonathan, Buhari’s predecessor, frequently complained the militants were better armed and they lacked the proper equipment, including bullets, to fight. President Buhari has ordered the arrest of Nigeria’s former National Security Adviser Colonel Sambo Dasuki. Buhari’s office said Dasuki had “awarded fictitious and phantom contracts” worth about two billion dollars for jets, helicopters and ammunition for the Nigerian army to fight Boko Haram.

The weapons were never delivered. Since taking the helm on May 29, the Buhari administration has been primarily focused on the fight against Boko Haram. The 72-year-old former military ruler has given the army until the end of the year to suppress the militants, who have killed at least 17,000 people and made over 2.5 million homeless since 2009. Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to the Daesh Takfiri terror group, which is primarily operating inside Syria and neighboring Iraq.

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Ngwa Bertrand

20.Nov.2015

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Chad's national assembly extended a state of emergency in the western Lake Chad region by four months on Wednesday following a double attack by Boko Haram militants that killed some 12 people. "The state of emergency is prolonged by 147 unanimous votes by the parliament for four months. That is to say it will end on March 22," a ruling party deputy told Reuters. The initial emergency was authorized on Nov. 9 and was set to last 12 days. 

The government wanted a six-month extension but deputies opposed it, another deputy told Reuters. Chad helped force Boko Haram to cede territory earlier this year, undermining the Islamist group's six-year campaign to carve out a Nigerian caliphate. The rebels have since ramped up attacks in remote border areas around Lake Chad.

Oil-producing Chad is a key ally in the fight against the Islamist threat across West Africa, playing a central role in offensives on al Qaeda-linked groups in Mali and Boko Haram militants in neighboring Nigeria. There has not been a state of emergency in Chad, one of Africa's military heavyweights, since a series of rebellions in the 2000s springing from its volatile east. Neighboring Niger also has a state of emergency in its border region of Diffa.

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Ngwa Bertrand

19.Nov.2015

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The Speaker of the National Assembly, Hon Cavaye Yeguie Djibril has granted audience to the German Federal Government Commissioner for Matters Related to Ethnic German Resettlers and National Minorities and Member of Parliament, Hartmut Koschyk. During the meeting at the National Assembly, issues relating to Germano-Cameroon ties and the European Union (EU) including security and immigration were discussed.

Hon. Hartmut hailed the work of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights (UNHCR) in Cameroon and hinted that the European Union Support Fund for Refugees in Africa will go a long way to contribute in ameliorating the refugee crisis in the country. The German envoy also held a working session with members of the Cameroon – Germany Friendship Group in the National Assembly. On the occasion, he revealed plans to strengthen the sector of ecotourism in the country.

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Ngwa Bertrand

19.Nov.2015

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Cameroon’s Minister for Sports and Physical Education, Pierre Ismael Bidoung Mkpatt, has insinuated that the Chamber of Conciliation and Arbitration of the National Olympic and Sports Committee is incompetent to determine the validity of elections at the Cameroon Football Federation, FECAFOOT. The Minister’s stand on the overdue electoral bickering at FECAFOOT was made known yesterday in Yaounde and broadcast nation-wide following fears that the perennial contesting faction of the federation led by former Vice President, John Begheni Nde was bracing up to take over management of FECAFOOT affairs less than 72 hours after the Chamber of Conciliation and Arbitration of the National Olympic and Sports Committee had ruled that the recent elections that brought current President Tombi Aroko Sidiki to power was null and void.

Can we therefore say the curtains have ultimately been drawn on the longstanding melodrama at FECAFOOT? We of this publication say NO! Needless taking you back to how we got to where we are now. Rather, let us take the cue from when Tombi Aroko was sworn in as FECAFOOT boss. As celebrations went underway at the FECAFOOT headquarters in the Tsinga neighbourhood in Yaounde, the brain trust of the distraught faction was meticulously putting together files to challenge the decision to uphold the validity of the elections. One file bungled, while the other one convinced the Conciliation and Arbitration Committee of the National Olympic and Sports Committee to nullify the deliberations of the last FECAFOOT General Assembly, by implication, declaring the elections null and void.

FECAFOOT had 21 days to appeal the decision. But three days into the appeal opening, Minister Bidoung Mkpatt, the same one who had been sacked from Government in 2004 in the heat of the stand off between FIFA and FECAFOOT over the Indomitable Lions single outfit, undertook to hoodwink a carefully chosen group of officials to come up with what is currently tearing apart the football family in the country. Can someone explain to us why Abdourhaman Amadou and Co. who seem to be a particularly clever lot could not be cowed into submission by a conglomerate of learned men of the law? Without being a football astrologer, Cameroon Concord can safely conclude that Abdourhaman and Co. are already whistling foul and are certainly taking the matter to the Court of Arbitration of Sport in Lausanne who, before any other thing else, will raise an objection as to what we will be reminded of as being government intervention in football management in Cameroon.

For a man whom President Biya, against all odds, decided to offer some political rehabilitation, it is regrettable that Minister Bidoung Mkpatt should consciously create more problems for an octogenarian leader suffering from insomnia. Which way out? It is a matter of common sense that in such a long drawn out problem, a lot has been wasted and destroyed in material, financial, ego-tripping considerations. For one thing, the Government will not allow itself to be dragged endlessly in the mud with impunity.

The incumbent is certainly unwilling to let go the golden fleece after coming so close yet so far. And Sheik Abdourhaman Amadou who has demonstrated with outstanding finesse how well to read and interpret mere texts will for nothing at all slant from being The Cameroonian of the Year to a toddler. However, the complicated polynomial which otherwise should necessitate mastery of the Binomial theorem takes just knowledge of a simple linear equation to resolve: Summon Tombi and Abdourhamann to an eyeball-to-eyeball closed door discussion and ask them to grant a press conference after the secret meeting during which they will announce the joint decision and subsequently jointly supervise its implementation. This is our medical prescription to cure the cancerous ulcer lethally gnawing away at the FECAFOOT substrate.

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Ngwa Bertrand

19.Nov.2015

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