9, April 2020
Cameroonians are worried about coronavirus but also about an absent president 0
Like elsewhere, Cameroonians at home and abroad are very worried over the novel coronavirus which has been rapidly spreading across the country.
By the close of April 7, Cameroon had registered 685 cases of Covid-19, with nine deaths, overtaking other countries to become the second hardest hit in Sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa. Cameroon now has over 15 times as many confirmed cases as any other country in the central African sub-region and one of the highest numbers of daily new cases on the continent. Like many other African countries, Cameroon is not well-equipped to handle a major outbreak of the disease.
But as Cameroonians grapple with the spread of Covid-19, they are also preoccupied with the absence of their leader. President Paul Biya, 87, who in 2018 secured another mandate to extend his 36-year rule to 2025, has not publicly addressed his compatriots since the country registered its first case on March 6. His next-door peer, Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, with just 30 confirmed cases, has addressed his people on at least three occasions, despite still recuperating from a stroke.
Biya was last seen in public on Mar. 11, when he received the US ambassador to Cameroon at the Unity Palace in Yaoundé. No official mention has been made of his whereabouts thereafter. Even pressure from activists and opposition leaders has not forced the African strongman out in public.
Two weeks ago, Cameroon’s main opposition leader, Maurice Kamto issued an initial seven-day ultimatum, calling on president Biya to personally address the nation. On April 3, Kamto called on the population of coronavirus-affected regions to stay at home—a move the runner-up of the 2018 presidential election said he took because “the Head of State has refused to assume his functions in the fight against the coronavirus.”
The Popular Action Party on its part expressed concerns over the inaction of President Biya and accused Yaounde authorities of playing “a hide-and-seek game.” The party promised to seize the country’s constitutional council to make a declaratory statement on the vacancy or not of the presidency.
Despite his country exhibiting multiple layers of vulnerability to Covid-19, Biya has stuck with his reticence for public speaking. He however instructed the prime minister to put in place a 13-point response strategy and has through social media called on Cameroonians to respect the measures put in place. From wherever he is, the president has also signed several decrees, including one instituting a national solidarity fund to fight COVID-19 and another appointing officials to lead the reconstruction of the conflict-ravaged English-speaking regions in the country’s southwest.
It isn’t unprecedented for Biya to be unseen or silent during critical moments in the life of the country. Even recent widespread rumors of his demise on social media have not forced his hand. His aides and supporters have described this phenomenon as “presidential silence” and have often argued that “his attitude is a sign of maturity and wisdom.”
Biya’s “private visits” to his usual retreat at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva has often been a source of political controversy and quiet embarrassment. One estimate is that he’s spent 15% of his time in power, abroad.
Over the last decade, Biya has made the top floor suites of the five-star luxury hotel into his home away from home spending months at a time even as his country has slowly descended into conflict from Boko Haram Islamic terrorists in the north and an Anglophone-led insurgency in north- and southwest of the country.
Culled from Quartz Africa
11, April 2020
Why Dr Fontem Neba is a symbol of the Ambazonia Resistance 0
The Wedge in our Struggle
My people, there are a number of things the enemy has done to us through these fellows to systematically disrupt our struggle or restoration quest.
1. They killed trust in leadership by propping up dishonest guys in our midst. The act of smearing honest people and making them look untrustworthy is by far the deepest cut. Crooks have become our reference point. No wonder, we no longer trust anyone. Those who can drive this struggle have crumbled under the bullets of unverified calumny. So, when a good idea comes from them, we pull up the smear and use the stench to disqualify its proponent, then the bad guy continues to shout “Feeloo ambazoonians”. No plan on how to move forward except bannings and sowing division. Simple tactic!
2. Disunity among the leadership, so that no constructive action can be taken against LRC. They only agree when the action will not favour us. See the Swiss initiative. They were already exposing our fighters to the Swiss and pushing everyone into their luggage when the plan leaked and the trip by the LGA chairmen to Switzerland was aborted. That was a massive brainwashing scheme that would have brought our liberation struggle crashing. And they were just happy to go and see Switzerland, not knowing that it was a satanic plot.
4. Egotism and the love for money have driven a wedge between us and our goal. Why would someone remind anyone offering to mediate about money owed him by LRC at this time? Why would someone even place a financial precondition for holding talks? Why would someone lie that he has the largest force on the ground and use that to position himself as a power broker before the Swiss? Why would a group of people decide, against expert advice, to sign away to the Swiss their right to a multilateral mediation format? Why would SCian politicians accept Swiss money to go from UK, Canada to the US advertising the Swiss initiative to the exclusion of the European institute for peace (an EU funded organisation)? These questions beg for answers.
4. Disrupting fund raising projects is a major scheme to render the struggle bankrupt, apart from embezzlement. Every time a seemingly viable fundraising initiative is laid out, they too will do theirs and distract the public that is already weary of bickering. They cause the public to transfer their stigma on it, and when the momentum dies down, they abandon theirs. See the bonds, the pins and other financial ideas.
5. Disinformation and Misinformation of the masses. Using their very loud megaphone, they distort every notion of good. Points 1-4 above have been achieved through the alphabet TV and paid social media activists. Some of them puts out their write-ups using the name of some of these activists in exchange for a fee. They deceive the people at home about non-existent diplomatic moves and breakthroughs and distort international relations concepts. It’s like a veil of darkness cast over our people’s heads.
5. The lure of power and the desire to exercise corrupt influence . Even some of the IG converts in the diaspora are easily brainwashed because of the temptation of corruption. Many of them see themselves as an emerging Bulu/Beti clan when we restore our independence. So, they use that to make their communities and families believe that as future ministers and LG chairmen in SC, they will have more benefits and influence than others – greed! Let them show us the blue print or the strategy that will take us to Buea.
6. Killing or disarming our own fighters cannot be excused on any grounds. Is it surprising that we have lost more of our elite soldiers to our own bullets than to LRC? After commissioning Nambere to eliminate some of his peers, it was time to do away with him so that all traces could be wiped. But he preferred to surrender to the enemy than to succumb to the bullets of his own people. He confided his ordeal to those who were ready to listen. This is a familiar scenario which the RFs do not yet understand. Many who sensed danger have fled the resistance because they don’t know when the order for their execution will come. Others have been captured because their position was deliberately leaked to the enemy. Who does that? Does the mass execution of the Bui 23 tell us anything?
In all
I have travelled round this country and have met different people who have complained about the manner in which they were robbed in broad day light and lamented the general state of things. They told me how they were harangued into donating thousands of dollars for diplomatic trips which never happened. In others, Ngwa Irene personally went there and collected $12000 cash and when the community asked for a receipt it became a brawl. Some communities have not recovered from the financially induced coma caused by these buccaneers.
I challenge all those hiding in WhatsApp groups or FB, wearing aliases to come to a public debate to explain their plan for the restoration, if there is any, and stop using subterfuge to deceive our people. If you cannot diagnose a disease, then you cannot treat it.
Denying these facts is denying, like LRC, that our people don’t have any problem. “Any man who does not know, and knows that he does not know is willing to learn; teach him. Any man who does not know, and knows not that he does not know is a fool; shun him”. We should now understand why for two years we have been spinning in the same spot and claiming that we are on course. Having run out if arguments, they claim that it is because some people don’t use the name “Ambazonia” and so it affects the struggle. 😫 Lame excuse! With all what is going on, ask yourselves again, are these people truly taking us to Buea or to Golgotha?
Yours in the struggle
Fontem Neba
Scholar & Freedom Fighter