A 29-year-old Ghanaian pastor, Isaac Nii Armah Attoh has been shot during a riot that took place in West Akone in Cameroon.

The young pastor is said to have been hit by a bullet during a commotion between the Francophone and Anglophone speaking neighbours.

Pastor Isaac Nii Armah is an associate pastor with Destiny Impact Ministries, a Ghanaian church whose head Pastor is Apostle Charles Akong-Attah and headquartered in Accra.

According to Pastor Anthony who is a close friend and colleague pastor of the deceased, Pastor Isaac was returning to Cameroon where he heads one of the branches of the church after holding a naming ceremony of his first child two weeks ago before the incident.

He is said to have left Accra on Tuesday 10th July, 2018, and journeyed to Nigeria where he transited to Cameroon on Friday 13th July 2018 after which he lost touch with family members.

Several attempts to reach him proved futile until his family saw pictures of him brutally murdered on social media.

The body of the deceased is yet to be conveyed to Accra, as his family is in talks with the Ghanaian embassy in Cameroon for all necessary documentation to be done.

He left behind a wife and a month old son.

Source: Ghanaian web

Cameroon is embroiled in what could be the precursor to a civil war. The nation is currently divided into two basic populations: the French-speaking majority and the English-speaking minority to the southwest who want to break off as their own nation — Ambazonia.

Those in the Anglophone region feel underrepresented by Cameroon’s government. Two years ago, they decided enough is enough. As English-speakers in southwest Cameroon clamor for autonomy, the French-speaking state military is clamping down.

We spoke with Efi Tembon, the Executive Director of the Cameroon Association for Bible Translation and Literacy, a partner of Wycliffe Associates. He says, “It’s actually like a genocide where the war is going on in one part of the country, in the English-speaking part of the country. The military has been deployed in that part of the country and they are causing horrible atrocities.”

“There are over 30,000 refugees who have fled into Nigeria and over 200,000 people have been displaced. Many of these people are hiding in the bushes — some of them elderly people, expectant mothers, mothers with young babies, and children without any care, without any food, without medicine, [and] without protection.”

State forces are going into villages in southwest Cameroon, burning homes, and shooting civilians.

The violence has become a vicious cycle.

“The people decided to fight back, so they have young people who get together and form their own groups in communities to defend their communities. So they ambush soldiers, they take weapons from soldiers and when weapons are taken or a soldier is killed, then the military goes out into the community and burns the [homes] and kills more people.”

A paranoid military means it’s not even safe to ride a motorbike in Anglophone communities.

“Motorbikes have been burned in the area and many people have been shot because they were riding on motorbikes. Sometimes the people who attack soldiers also have motorbikes. They will attack the soldiers, ambush them, and take their weapons to fight back. So the government decided to ban motorbikes in some of the areas.”

Because of the travel dangers, including on motorbikes, CABTAL staff have a hard time getting around. But sometimes more dangerous than traveling is the danger of staying. Some translators have left their communities. Tembon says the president of a translation program had to flee the area when soldiers took over his church. Later he found out his entire village was burned.

This outbreak of violence in Cameroon has affected more than a dozen Bible translation projects.

“We have about 13 language projects in the area where this core of violence is taking place,” says Tembon. “Even some translators have died. The husband of one of our translators was shot and killed and we had to go rescue them in the forest. They were hiding in the bushes for weeks with babies and even older people. Whole families were hiding in the bushes, so we’ve taken them out into the regional training center where translation will be taking place now to help them. But even that center is not safe because it is at the heart of the crisis.”

Wycliffe Associates is hoping to raise funds to build a wall around the regional training center compound and make it safer. Also, computers and translation materials have been lost in the chaos. The ministry is trying to recover or replace those items as well. Currently, they are trying to raise $170,000.

Tembon assures, “In the midst of all of the violence, our teams are still working. God’s Word is still spreading. They are still reaching out to people.”

One thing CABTAL is doing to respond to the fighting is provide a trauma healing workshop for Christian leaders to be the healing hand of Christ in Cameroon.

“It’s a trauma healing workshop where we train people who can reach out to those who are suffering from the trauma. So we have launched out this workshop to train pastors and other leaders so they can help all these people scattered in the bushes to heal from this trauma of the war and the killing going on.”
Source: Mission Network News

The Archbishop of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Bamenda, His Grace Cornelius Fontem Esua, has tendered his resignation letter to the Pontiff, His Holiness Pope Francis.

The Prelate handed over his resignation letter to Pope Francis in prelude to his 75^th anniversary. Speaking to reporters on Monday, July 2, 2018, at the St Joseph Metropolitan Cathedral, Big Mankon, Bamenda, during the commemoration of the 75th anniversary on earth and his 35^th anniversary of his episcopacy, Mgr. Fontem Esua said his decision is in tandem with the Canon Law.

“Take note that, according to the Cannon Law, when a Bishop reaches the age of 75, he tenders his resignation to the Pope so that the Pope should find some other person to take over from him, and I have done so already and I am waiting for the time when the Pope will appoint some other Bishop to take over from me,” he said.

He said even though he is due retirement, he is still the Chief Shepherd of Bamenda Archdiocese.

“I am still due retirement; that is, getting to the age of retirement.  I am retired but not tired. From the inspiration I have, I will continue to serve the church as I have been doing.  As long as the Pope has not appointed anybody else yet, I remain the Archbishop of Bamenda,” he averred.

Meanwhile, the Archbishop used the dual celebrations to apologise to those he has hurt in the course of shepherding God’s flock.

Source: Journal du Cameroun

It was early morning in western Cameroon on May 23rd. A local Bible translator walked out of his house to head to his fields that day. Then just down the road, he saw a white vehicle barreling his way.

The translator shares, “Bullets were flying out of the car towards me. But by the power of God, I was able to escape all the bullets and none of the bullets hit me and I escaped. I ran and hid far away in the bushes.”

(Photo courtesy of Efi Efi)

He saw the men in the vehicle get out and approach his house. It had been built by his father, and he had hoped to pass this home on to his own children. So what he witnessed was heartbreaking.

“They knocked down the windows and doors. They knocked down everything and set fire on the house. The house is completely burnt and nothing is left. I thank God because before they came, my family was already out of the house. My wife, my mother, and children were out of the house.”

The Cameroonian Bible translator now lives with his wife, mother, and children in the bush where they are constantly eaten at by mosquitoes. “My children are still too young and I don’t know what I can do now. I am stranded and do not have anything. I have nothing left except the clothes on me; I had them on that morning. All my documents have been burnt, except my ID card that was on me…. I trust in the Living God that I serve, else I should not be here talking now.”

(Photo courtesy of Efi Efi)

These scenes of brutality have plagued Cameroon for several months now. Cameroon was a largely peaceful country until recently when disputes between French-speaking state forces and English-speaking separatists caused violence to break out in the west.

Bruce Smith with Wycliffe Associates explains, “It goes back to the post-colonial season of their history where there was a French-speaking portion of the country and an English-speaking portion of the country that eventually unified to create a federation, which is the current Cameroon. But unfortunately, the people in the western part of the English-speaking majority area has not felt adequately represented or regarded in terms of the governance of the country. This has been growing in recent years and until just [recently] where it has exploded really into this common violence.”

More than 160,000 people have been displaced by the surge of violence in Cameroon, and at least 21,000 have fled as refugees to Nigeria.

Wycliffe Associates has worked with Bible translation partners in Cameroon for about 25 years. The unrest in the country has directly affected Bible translators and their work. One translator, Anka Terence, was among those killed by soldiers in the Ngwo region on May 23rd.

“There has been a number of people that have had their homes burned,” Smith says. “They have had to flee into the bush…. The problem is the violence just seems to continue to be escalating with no end in sight. We’re concerned, naturally, for the people of the country, but also for the progress of Bible translation there as well.”

(Photo courtesy of Wycliffe Associates)

There were 85 Bible translation projects in progress in Cameroon when the violence broke out. About 17 of the Bible translation languages are located in the western region and have either been slowed or come to a dead-stop because of these attacks.

“There is just a huge disruption to the whole family of Bible translation projects that are going on. Even though it’s only affecting 20 percent of them, 20 percent is a pretty large number when it’s your brothers and sisters in Christ.”

Smith explains, “The Church is not really a target in this process, but unfortunately as the Church leaders have tried to mediate this disagreement between different parts of the country, they have also been targeted in lawsuits by the government and basically intimidated in order to back down so that they wouldn’t continue to influence the process.”

Wycliffe Associates is currently seeking to locate other Bible translation partners that have gone missing.

“We’re trying, first of all, to secure the people’s safety, the translators that are part of the teams that have been driven out of their homes. Most of them have lost their fields, they have lost their herds, their animals, things like that as well as their physical homes. They’re basically just surviving [by] hunting and gathering in the bush. So we’re trying to locate them, we’re trying to get them to safe places, trying to help them reconsider resuming their Bible translation work, but they really have to go through some counseling and some adaptation in between now and then in order to make that possible.”

While the hope is to eventually resume the affected Bible translation projects, they also have to recover the lost manuscripts or digital files for those projects and see if they are still viable.

“It’s a huge matter of prayer. It’s an urgent matter for us to respond to financially, so we would invite listeners to be a part of that as well. This is the time for us to stand with our dear brothers and sisters in Christ in Cameroon.”

Culled from Mission Network News

The call for dialogue as a way out of the security crisis in Cameroon’s Anglophone region has been reiterated by the country’s Catholic Bishops.

In an interview with the BBC Focus on Africa, Bishop of Mamfe in the southwest region, Andrew Nkea, stressed that urgent dialogue was required to pull the country back from a “useless and senseless” civil war.

In the interview, he spoke at length about the harrowing experiences that bishops went through during a tour of burnt down regions in the violence hit parts of the Anglophone regions – Northwest and Southwest.

“One of the main things we are stressing is that violence only breeds violence, but if we start talking to each other, we may arrive at a middle point where there will be peace and that is what we want, we want a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

“And this can only come through dialogue, some form of reconciliation, some form of discussion that will bring all the warring parties to save this country from what we call a useless and senseless civil war,” he said.

The regions in question have been riled by armed violence between government and secessionist forces. A cry against marginalization from French-majority Cameroon escalated in October last year when separatists attempted to declare a so-called independent Ambazonia Republic.

The bishop stressed that violence has been on both sides, whiles the army was burning down entire villages, the spearatists were also burning down schools and other state institutions.

The international Crisis Group has identified the church as the most potent political mediator between the government and separatist elements.

Its April 26 report titled: Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis: How the Catholic Church Can Promote Dialogue, averred that the clergy needed to united with a strong common position (between federalism vs. decentralisation) in order to be seen as credible mediators.

Source: Africa News