Politics
Clashes reportedly took place on Saturday night in Zelevet, between elements of Boko Haram and the Cameroonian army a military source has hinted Cameroon Concord. According to our source, clashes took place in Zelevet, deep within the Mayo-Tsanaga Division. Two Cameroonian soldiers and several members of the Nigerian Islamic sect were killed. Our source in Maroua also announced the death of sixty Boko Haram fighters and several arrests, including that of a pregnant woman, a member of the Islamic sect.
On May 6, still in the Mayo-Tsanaga Division, Boko Haram militants attacked the village of Tchébé Tchébé in the district of Mayo-Moskota killed 7 and destroyed property including livestock. Cameroon Concord’s chief correspondent in the Far North region revealed at the time of writing this report that Cameroon’s border with Nigeria is almost closed.
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An Open Letter to the Editor, Cameroon Concord
Dear Mr. Editor,
Why I Still Believe In The Sinful Church
Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai (AMDG).
Recently I met a Cameroonian Catholic who expressed great worry and doubt about the Church. He referenced an editorial he had read from your paper, and asked me: is God still at work in the Church? I read that editorial myself, but did not give it much thought, because there was much on my plate at the time. However, looking at the number of unprecedented hits that editorial has had, and the feeling of doubt about the Church that it has generated and will likely continue to do so, I seek to offer a response that I hope will be helpful in shaping our understanding of the failures of the members of the Church.
Firstly, some preliminary considerations. The hierarchy of the Church has the obligation to listen to the lay faithful. Catholicism is not a clerical club. The laity has the right and obligation to call the attention of the hierarchy to face the music, though it is advisable to do so respectfully. The crisis of priestly pedophilia in the Church has shown the damage that can plague the Church when you have a passive or an indifferent laity. As Newman once said, the Church will be a very awkward place without the laity! Thus, the question is certainly not that of priests opposed to lay voices. I think Vatican II has moved the Church pass a crippling clerical obscurantism of ecclesia life.
That said, it is helpful to recall that to say that the Church is sinful is to say what all Catholics say at the start of each mass, “I have sinned, through my fault, through my fault, through my most gracious fault.” It was Benedict XVI that said at the height of the sexual abuse scandal, “I am heading a sinful Church.” The reality is that the Church has been sinful from the time of the Acts of the Apostles to present. It will continue to be till the time when the Angel of the Apocalypse announces the completion of time, the end of history, when Jesus Christ will hand over the Church, his purified bride to the Father, so that God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).
At the root of human sin is the greatest gift of creation, human freedom. Sometimes we wonder why God allows sin to flourish. Why does God also allow good and virtue to flourish? St. Augustine argues that without freedom, the human being cannot be held accountable for his or her actions. You cannot blame or praise one who is not free. It is precisely because we are free that we need to be held accountable for our actions.
The ordained need to be held accountable, precisely because of the gift of human freedom and the charisma of leadership bestowed on them. It can be abuse. It has been abused. It will be abuse. What is important is to remind ourselves of a distinction traceable to Augustine of Hippo and made more explicit by John Henry Newman: the difference between the holiness of the Church and the mystery of sin in her members. The objective realities of the Church are holy: her sacraments, her rites and rituals, her gospel message. Also, the Church will never be completely lacking in terms of holy persons who cooperate with the message of the gospel. There will always be holy persons in the Church. Consequently, we cannot let the failures and sins of some in the Church to cloud our conviction of God’s presence in the Church. God is in the Church, sinful as she might be. Precisely because the Church is sinful, the power and presence of God is all the more operative, for where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more (Rom. 5:20).
Also, we must remind ourselves that the Church is always on the way, always moving toward her eschatological fulfillment with Christ. The Church as it stands at this point in history is not the perfect one, the one that has already arrived. In the words of the Second Vatican Council, the Church is a piece of land to be cultivated (Lumen Gentium, 6). Every farmer knows that the process of cultivation could be uncertain and difficult, but such difficulties do not deter us from farming. If anything, the challenges of farming should motivate us to intensify our efforts because we are aware of the good that comes with the harvest season. So it ought to be with our attitude toward the Church. We are patient with her, working hard at our own call to holiness, trusting that each little step cultivates the farm of the Church, trusting in God’s power to bring home a good harvest.
It is advisable to keep in mind that to love the Church is to be ready to suffer from her. Every lover of the Church must go through a time of Calvary, of rejection and pain, of even utter meaninglessness. How can we say we love if we have no suffering to show? A lover who cannot suffer cannot love. Ratzinger said as much: the uniqueness of the Christian God is that he loves and suffers. A God who does not love and suffer is a god of mathematics. Such a God cannot save, for to save the human being entails love and suffering. A love that does not suffer is a hired love. To love and to suffer always accompany the reform of the Church, that beloved Mother, old, slow, sinful, and yet bearing in her the hope of humanity, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the One who gives life its decisive meaning. Yes, because of Christ and not in spite of Christ, I still believe in the sinful, miserable Church, because with all her sinfulness, Christ is her head and we are the body of Christ, and without Christ, I do not know how to understand myself. And without the Church I will not know Christ, and without Christ, I will be more selfish and wretched. I will not know how to understand myself. Hence, I continue to believe in the sinful Church because I can still find Christ in the sinfulness of the Church.
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Seven people were brutally slaughtered and nearly 30 houses burnt down during a surprise attack by Boko Haram in the village of Tchébé-Tchébé, a military source has hinted Cameroon Concord. The Boko Haram onslaught which reportedly took place on the night of Wednesday to Thursday in the village Tchebé-Tchébé located in the Mayo-Tsanaga Division in the Far North region of the country also witnessed the stealing of livestock.
Military sources said the Boko Haram fighters were equipped with firearms, machetes and arrows. They asked the villagers to leave their houses and announced that they would kill all those who were not Muslims. The members of the Nigerian Islamic sect made away with cattle, sheep and goats.
Our military informant in Maroua continues to indicate that the elements of Boko Haram are weakened and have few weapons. This is the second surprise attack Boko Haram in less than 10 days. On April 30, the fighters of the sect attacked the village of Mada, 20 km Waza.
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The United Nations (UN) says at least 214 young women and girls recently rescued from the the camps of the Takfiri Boko Haram militants in northeastern Nigeria are pregnant. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA)’s executive director, Babatunde Osotimehin, said Monday that many of these women are undergoing medical tests and screening for various diseases and infections, including HIV/AIDS. "About 214 of those already screened were discovered to be at various stages of pregnancies, some visibly pregnant and some just tested pregnant; but we are supporting all of them with various levels of care to stabilize them," the UN official added.
“Some of the children that were freed along with the women, it was discovered, were born in the forest and had never been out in the open until their release by the Nigerian Army,” Osotimehin said. Nigeria’s army says it freed almost 7,000 women from various Boko Haram camps last week. Army spokesman Chris Olukolade said Monday that soldiers found an additional 260 women and children, who had escaped from the terrorists, on the outskirts of Chalawa Village in the northeastern state of Adamawa.
Most of them come from the nearby town of Madagali and surrounding communities, he added. Earlier on April 31, Nigerian army rescued 234 women and children from a Boko Haram stronghold in Sambisa Forest in the restive northeastern state of Borno. Boko Haram militants regularly abduct women and girls during their attacks on various Nigerian villages and towns. On April 14, 2014, the militants kidnapped 276 girls from a secondary school in the town of Chibok in Borno. Two days later, 57 of the girls managed to escape but 219 remained in captivity, reportedly in the Sambisa Forest.
It is still unclear if the missing Chibok schoolgirls are among those rescued recently. Meanwhile, those who have been freed say the group is fracturing, as shortages of weapons and fuel foment tensions between its foot soldiers and leaders. Boko Haram says its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government. It has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various parts of the country since the beginning of its militancy in 2009, which has so far left about 15,000 people dead and displaced about 1.5 million.
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Boko Haram is fracturing as shortages of weapons and fuel foment tensions between its foot soldiers and leaders, women rescued from the Islamist jihadi fighters by Nigerian troops told Reuters. The group abducted an estimated 2,000 women and girls last year as it sought to carve out an Islamic state in the northeast of Africa’s biggest economy. The army has freed nearly 700 in the past week as it advances on Boko Haram's last stronghold in the vast Sambisa forest. The militants began complaining to their captives about lacking guns and ammunition last month, two of the women said, and many were reduced to carrying sticks while some of their vehicles were either broken down or lacked gasoline.
A 45-year old mother of two, Aisha Abbas, who was taken from Dikwa in April, said the fighters all had guns at first but recently, only some carried them. Even the wife of their captors' leader, Adam Bitri, openly criticized him and subsequently fled, two of the women said, with one describing Bitri as short and fat with a beard. Of 275 freed captives brought to a government-run camp for internally displaced people in the Malkohi hamlet on the outskirts of Adamawa state capital, Yola, only 61 were over 18, and many small children hobbled around visibly malnourished. The women said they were kept inside, occasionally brought food and sometimes beaten severely. The children were left to run around or do errands for Boko Haram while those of the fighters were trained to shoot guns. “One evening in April, Boko Haram followers stood before us and said ‘Our leaders don’t want to give us enough fuel and guns and now the soldiers are encroaching on us in Sambisa. We will leave you.’” one of the women, 18-year old Binta Ibrahim from northern Adamawa state said. “They threatened us but after they went we were happy and prayed the soldiers would come and save us.”
The women said once the militants spotted two helicopters circling at noon on the day of their rescue, they began trying to sell the women for up to 2,000 naira (about $10) each. Towards evening, as the army approached, the captives refused to flee with Boko Haram fighters, who began stoning them but then ran away. "We heard bullets flying around ... we lay on the floor. Some of the women were crushed (by army vehicles) and others wounded by bullets. Eighteen were killed. We counted them, they included infants," Salamatu Mohamed from the Damboa area in Borno said. The defence ministry was not immediately available for comment. Mohamed said she gave birth while in captivity and had trouble feeding her newborn as there was not enough food. Boko Haram seemed almost unstoppable and fast becoming a regional threat after it gained control of an area larger than Belgium last year and increased cross-border attacks on Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
Its six-year-old insurgency has killed thousands and forced 1.5 million people from their homes and the group caused a global outcry when it abducted over 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok. The women said the men frequently threatened to sell them or bring them to Boko Haram’s elusive leader, Abubakar Shekau, deep in the forest. Nigeria has claimed to have killed him several times. Defence spokesman Chris Olukolade told Reuters the man was not a priority target. Hanatu Musa, a 22-year old mother kidnapped in June from Gwoza in Borno state, quoted the fighters as saying their leader had deceived them into fighting and killing in the name of religion. While the Nigerian army, which launched its counter-attack in January, is confident it has the group cornered in the Sambisa nature reserve, a final push to clear them from the area has been curtailed by landmines. None of the women interviewed had seen any of the Chibok girls, but Abbas said fighters who travelled from a camp in Sambisa where they were held to source food would describe the situation. "They said the Chibok girls were married off this year. Some sold to slavery, then others (militants) each married two or four of the girls," Abbas said.
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Gunmen have killed dozens of civilians, mostly women and children, in Nigeria in a series of attacks across villages in the country’s central-eastern Plateau State. Nanzing Bani, a regional community leader, said on Sunday that the fatalities were caused when heavily-armed gunmen in military uniforms went on an indiscriminate shooting rampage in Kardarko and nearby villages on Saturday. “The soldiers were shooting indiscriminately,” media outlets quoted Bani as saying. He also estimated that the number of fatalities across the troubled region could surpass 100.
Local residents and witnesses say the assailants also set fire to a large number of houses and buildings in the area. The armed raids sent scores of local residents fleeing on foot from the targeted villages. Meanwhile, a report by Nigerian Vanguard newspaper has blamed the country’s anti-terrorist Special Task Force for carrying out the deadly raid against villagers, claiming that they were retaliating for a recent killing of four soldiers in the area. However, Ikedichi Iweha, the force’s spokesman strongly rejected the report and said soldiers have been shielding the local population against attacks by ethnic militants operating across the troubled region.
“Our mandate is to protect the people and that mandate has not changed,” the spokesman said. The Nigerian military had in the past been accused of attacking civilians in retaliation for the death of security personnel and soldiers. Various regions of Nigeria have been marred by militancy as well as ethnic and communal violence in recent years.
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# Paul Biya and his regime
Explore the political landscape of Cameroon under the rule of Paul Biya, the longest-serving president in Africa who has been in power since 1982. Our Paul Biya and his regime section examines the policies, actions, and controversies of his government, as well as the opposition movements, civil society groups, and international actors that challenge or support his leadership. You'll also find profiles, interviews, and opinions on the key figures and events that shape the political dynamics of Cameroon.
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Learn more about the history, culture, and politics of Ambazonia, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon that have been seeking self-determination and independence from the Francophone-dominated central government. Our Southern Cameroons section covers the ongoing conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the human rights violations, and the peace efforts in the region. You'll also find stories that highlight the rich and diverse heritage, traditions, and aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian people.
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