The Cameroon News Agency (CNA) has reported that some 5 elements of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR)have been apprehended at the Buea Sand Pit neighbourhood, for allegedly kidnapping a man in the same locality.

The man( name withheld) was kidnapped while at home. The kidnappers jumped over the fence to find their way into his residence around the Catholic Church.

Buea GMI intercepted by tracking the mobile money number they used to collect a ransom from the victim’s family.

More than half of the CFAF 2 million ransom was paid into their MTN Mobile Money account on Thursday.

On Friday, January 10, 2020, the irresponsible uniformed officers were arrested and the victim released.

One of the kidnappers, a BIR officer, lives in the same neighborhood as the victim.

Rogue elements of the army have been giving brave Southern Cameroonians fighters a bad name as they engage in kidnapping and recklessness, including the killing of innocent civilians.

Source: Cameroon News Agency

The Yaounde government has resorted to using child soldiers in its bid to restore peace and order in the two restive English-speaking regions of the country.

With many soldiers defecting or deserting the army, the government seems to be desperate and it has been organizing recruitment drives in East Cameroon, especially in the South region whence most of the country’s ministers hail.

Kids of less than 18 years are made to believe that political power is theirs and that Southern Cameroonians are challenging their authority.

Most of the young soldiers are even drugged and many do not even understand why they should be killing their fellow countrymen.

The fear of death has caused many of them to desert and those who have committed some of the worst atrocities are today suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and are not receiving any government assistance.

The Southern Cameroons crisis, which started in 2016, has resulted in the deaths of some 2,000 soldiers, most of whom are from the ethnic group of the country’s president, Paul Biya, who has ruled the country for almost 38 years and has nothing to show for such a long stay in power.

The crisis, which has destroyed the economic and social infrastructure of the two English-speaking regions of the country, has also had a huge impact on the country’s economy.

Many state-owned corporations in the two English-speaking regions of the country have been put out of business because of the conflict that has pitted the gerontocratic government in Yaounde against Southern Cameroonians who hold that they have been marginalized for more than five decades.

The country’s second employer, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) has taken a blow to the liver and it will take a long time to put it back on the right path.

PAMOL, another major employer and a provider of a great revenue stream to the government, has simply been deleted from the face of the earth, as angry fighters have set fire to its facilities across the entire Southwest region of the country.

SONARA, the country’s lone oil refinery, has gone up in smoke and it will take huge amounts of money to bring it back to working order.

The country has been all over the world looking for much-needed resources to rebuild the refinery.

The government has been sending delegations to development finance institutions like the African Development Bank and the World Bank to source for funding, but their efforts have not produced and admirable results, as donors are reluctant to pour money into a country they consider as a dry hole because of government corruption and inefficiency.

With the elections approaching, more troops are being deployed to the two English-speaking regions of the country and not many will be returning to their families, as Southern Cameroonian fighters have acquired more sophisticated weapons and are willing to bring down anybody who stands in the way of their effort to restore their country’s independence.

Some 700 soldiers have already been sent to the two English-speaking regions of the country, but many have already escaped and others have lost their lives after exchanging fire with tough Southern Cameroonian fighters.

The situation is dire and the international community must intervene if the entire sub-region has to avoid the type of chaos that has plague other parts of the continent.

By Kingsley Betek and Joyce Ekinde in Cameroon.

Cameroon government soldiers are shooting and killing scores of young Southern Cameroonian boys residing in the rural areas and in the outskirts of the major towns and cities in the territory now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dozens of Ambazonian youth reported to be in their early 20s were shot in both the Southern and Northern Zones of Southern Cameroons recently by troops deployed to protect candidates for next month municipal and parliamentary polls.

Eyewitness reports say every Southern Cameroons young man living in Ambaland is now a potential target for arrest or execution.

In Babessi, a locality in the Ngoketunjia County in the Northern Zone, a group of young men waving at the Francophone soldiers seemingly to indicate that they meant no harm were all gunned down in front of journalists from the state owned radio and television who were there to cover the counterfeit election campaign.

The Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima in a press briefing late yesterday observed that hundreds of Southern Cameroons youth killed by the Francophone army did not pose a threat to the French Cameroun military establishment illegally operating in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

It was clear, however, that at the time the Babessi youth were killed following news of the abduction of the mayor of the municipality, they were not participating in any violent activity.

By Kingsley Betek in Bamenda with additional reporting from Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap