Politics

A delegation of some Southern Cameroons human rights advocates led by the law firm, Foley Hoag LLP, met with the office of the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide on July 27, 2017.

  

If appropriate preventative measures are not taken by the UN, there is a significant risk that the Government of the Republic of Cameroon will engaged in further widespread and systematic attacks on the Southern Cameroonian minority.  There is concern that the Government may use force to crack down on peaceful demonstrators advocating for Southern Cameroonian rights.  Demonstrations are expected to take place in September 2017, when French only schools and courts reopen.  The government has continued to bring troops into the Southern Cameroons Territory to intimidate those who oppose the government’s discriminatory policies.   

 

During the 1.5 hours long meeting, the delegations requested that the UN conduct a fact-finding mission and take steps to prevent further human rights violations in Cameroon

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Rita Akana

29.Jul.2017

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A Boko Haram ambush on an oil survey team and an ensuing battle with Nigerian security forces has left more than 50 people dead. Details are still emerging about exactly what happened.

More than 50 people have been killed in northern Nigeria in an ambush by 'IS' militant group, Boko Haram. The victims were part of an oil exploration team, and included soldiers, civilians and staff from the University of Maiduguri. With strict military control over access to rural Borno, details of the attack have been slow to emerge.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has been surveying, for more than a year, for what it says could be vast oil reserves in the Lake Chad Basin, where Boko Haram is active. On Tuesday, militants are reported to have kidnapped members of the survey team.This was followed by a rescue attempt that has allegedly left scores of people dead.

Nigeria's oil minister said he was still waiting for official confirmation from military authorities on the kidnapping and attempted rescue of people, including NNPC staff. He declined to comment on the death toll.

Rising death toll

According to AFP, a source on the ground said on Thursday: "The death toll keeps mounting. Now we have more than 50... and more bodies are coming in. It's clear that the attack wasn't for abduction. They (Boko Haram) attacked just to kill."

In Magumeri, 50 kilometres (32 miles) northwest of Maiduguri, an aid agency worker has said that 47 bodies were recovered from the bush as of Wednesday evening.

"Eleven of them were badly burned in the attack. They were burned alive in their vehicle, which was stuck in a trench. We buried them here because they couldn't be taken to Maiduguri."

Dani Mamman, from the University of Maiduguri, confirmed they had received four staff member's bodies, and said two of them were academics. 

"We got the impression our staff on the team were rescued, because that was what the military spokesman said yesterday. But we were shocked when we were given four dead bodies. This means it wasn't a rescue. We still have other staff that are yet to be accounted for."

Williams Attah, a resident of Maiduguri, described the situation to DW: "From recent happenings nobody is safe, some people were kidnapped, some people were ambushed, even the University of Maiduguri is not safe now. The government needs to come out, put politics aside, and face things squarely."

Setback for Nigeria

The deadly ambush is a blow to the Nigerian government after it claimed success against Boko Haram militants in recent months.

In December, the Islamist group appeared to be permanently in decline after President Muhammadu Buhari announced its last stronghold in the Sambisa forest had been destroyed.

However, insurgents from the outfit continue to carry out attacks and terrorize the population.

Local Maiduguri resident, Daniel Nyam Gwash, told DW: "Going by the full force of their re-emergence nobody believes what the military has been preaching all this while. We have not seen any changes that back-up the claim of the military that they have subdued Boko Haram insurgence. Look at the killing all over the place."  

Nigerian political analyst, Umar Baba Kumo, also spoke with DW: "They (Boko Haram) want to show the military that they can still operate, despite the huge security and the strategies that were introduced. Nonetheless the attacks have continued. People are becoming very apprehensive. They are becoming disturbed that despite the gains that were recorded in the past, these people are trying to revert to the situation we were facing earlier. It is very disturbing."

At least 20,000 people have been killed and some 2.7 million more forced to leave their homes during Boko Haram's eight-year insurgency to create an Islamic state across parts of Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon. 

Boko Haram is also known for kidnapping civilians, especially young women and boys, for recruitment purposes.

The most prominent of these cases was the abduction of 276 girls from a government school in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria. Since then, at least 100 of the girls have been rescued.

Two-thirds of Nigerian revenue comes from oil. But constant attacks on energy facilities in its southern Niger Delta oil heartland last year cut production by more than a third, deepening the recession in Africa's biggest economy.

cw, cl/bk (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

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Rita Akana

29.Jul.2017

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Militants of the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM), traded fisticuffs over the fate of Anglophone pupils and students, who have not been to school since the escalation of the Anglophone Teachers’ strike.

The CPDM militants exchanged blows during a recent joint party section conference that was summoned to deliberate on the re-opening of schools for the 2017/2018 academic year.

Militants split into two warring factions when the question of whether the untutored children should be promoted to the next class or not. 

While one group supported that the pupils and students should be promoted, another group said the students should be repeat because they did not learn anything to warrant their promotion.

In the course of the argument, a bitter quarrel erupted that led to a few skirmishes before the party bigwigs could bring the situation under control.

At the end the party barons who convened the conference said the decision rest on the parents of the pupils and students.

A CPDM militant who is a teacher, said as a tutor, she would not allow any of her children to move to the new class.

“There is nothing wrong with having a child repeat a class,” she said.

Another parent enthused “when the powers-that-be called for schools resumption, some parents did not send their children back to school. Now that official examinations were written, there is no way children should repeat.”

The parents are now waiting to see what Government is going to do to resolve this problem. 

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Rita Akana

29.Jul.2017

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Retired Chief Justice Ayah Paul Abine has spoken up again.
All judges handling his case were promoted recently when the council of magistrates met in Yaoundé under the watchful eye of Paul Biya, he observed.
It is for this reason that Ayah believes that no fair trial can come his way at this point in time, reports Cameroon-Info.Net, citing Le Quotidien Emergence.
Justice Ayah Paul has  been in 'unconstitutional' detention in Yaoundé for over six months now. 
The reason for his arrest, which he calls abduction, is not yet declared to him.
However, he believes that he was arrested because he had strongly opposed the 2008 constitutional amendment, which principally makes the mandate of the president unlimited. The mandate of the president is seven years, renewable...
Ayah Paul was a member of parliament by then.
He was dismissed as judge and sent on retirement while in 'captivity' by Paul Biya during the recent meeting with major legal practitioners.
Ayah Paul is among a host of other Anglophone Cameroonians detained in Yaoundé in the wake of the unrest in West Cameroon. 

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Rita Akana

29.Jul.2017

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If corruption were a disease in Cameroon, we may never find a cure for it. We have grown to love it as the body needs blood.

And what is more shocking is the fact that this is happening right under the nose of so-called anticorruption commission CONAC.

I was travelling on Saturday from Yaoundé to Bamenda on board a seventy-seater Amour Mezam bus when a glaring case of corruption hit me right on the chest. 

As we neared entering Bamenda, a certain 'doctor' stood and warned that anyone without the National Identify Card should inform the driver before we ever got to the last  checkpoint.
Two persons raised their hands.
When the bus drove up to the checkpoint, the conductor came over and collected FCFA 500 from each of the two guys.
The rest of the passengers walked down and presented their cards.
But the men in uniform at the checkpoint rejected the money, as if they didn't want to be corrupted.
But little did we know that they wanted and increase.
One if the two victims suggested they wanted the amount doubled. And when they did, the money was collected quietly.
And the journey continued.
The question I ask myself is: What is the reason for that 'strict' checking when nothing changes after all?
If it were to prevent criminals from travelling with good people, why then would they let those 'criminals' go through?
Or is it just another way of helping greedy uniform men and women to squeeze the last penny out of the feeble hands of the needy? 

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Rita Akana

29.Jul.2017

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On Friday, early in the morning, an explosion was heard in a locality called Meme some 13km form Mora, which killed four female suicide bombers.

Reports from Cameroon-info:net reveal that, according to security sources, the women made their way into the small village without being noticed. One of them at a point detonated her own bomb which killed her and two of the others. The fourth woman was shot by a police man before she could make any dangerous move.

Meme is a small village not too far from Mora which has equally been troubled by suicide bombings. One of its heaviest attacks from Boko Haram was on 19 February 2016, which left 20 people dead and over 50 others wounded as related by info:net.

The village is equally said to be a centre of the multinational task force which is fighting the Nigerian based terrorist group

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Emergency Admin

29.Jul.2017

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