The growing political conflict in Yaoundé over who to succeed the 89-year-old President Paul Biya is a result of some tribalists struggling to maintain the Beti Ewondo hegemony and making extremely provocative moves.

It’s a serious situation in which some few in Etoudi are driving the already divided country into a major conflict east of the Moungo, and it’s all about Beti Ewondo political elites protecting the Biya hegemony and also protecting their unique power status.

An obscure group known as the National Network of Youths for Peace and Stability in Cameroon has recently being flying banners of Franck Emmanuel Biya in Yaoundé as the potential successor to his father President Paul Biya.   

In one of its large banners deployed on Saturday, July 9, 2022 in front of the Grand Mosque near the Police Academy in Yaoundé and ignored by state authority, the so-called youth movement wrote that “God, destiny and the country present Franck Emmanuel Biya to continue the work of his glorious predecessors. Together, let us take up the challenge of a more prosperous Cameroon”.

The leader of the group Alhadji Aboubakar Garba, an unknown political figure has been quoted as saying that the banner heralds Franck Biya’s campaign for the presidential elections of 2025.

The choice of an Alhadji as leader of the group is deliberate and is designed to bring tremendous pressure on the Northern regions and also on the huge Muslim community in order to try to make the North accept the Beti Ewondo’s leadership and to comply with the Biya family succession plan. This is a dangerous situation and the consequences will be far reaching.

These Etoudi insiders are playing with fire at a petrol station by attempting to give Franck Biya the nation’s top job.  

The placing of the Franck Biya banner in front of the Grand Mosque in Yaoundé remains an extremely provocative move by the Biya gang. The people of French speaking Cameroon have been very, very slow to respond, but they will do at some point.

The 51 year-old Franck Biya, has not commented on the current situation and some in Yaoundé say he is simply apolitical, entrepreneur and a businessman.

By Rita Akana in Yaoundé

Never underestimate your enemy and never hold that old ways will always deliver the same results. This is the lesson the Yaoundé government is learning after realizing that the military violence which had put an end to the Marquisard movement which rocked the country shortly after independence cannot roll back the massive rebellion staged by the country’s English-speaking minority.

When the issues in the two English-speaking regions of the country started, the government thought it would resort to its old ways to roll back the uprising. It did not know that times had changed and a change in attitude was necessary.

For more than five years, the English-speaking parts of the country have been transformed into an open killing field for both soldiers and civilians. The government had underestimated the anger that had been eating up English-speaking Cameroonians and its poor choice of outdated solution has only made matters worse.

For close to six years, Cameroon has been bleeding. Thousands of its sons and daughters have been sent to an early grave. A protest, designed to draw the government’s attention to the sorry plight of the English-speaking minority, has been poorly managed and it has today become a millstone around the government’s neck. Many children are out of school because they are being denied their right to education by separatist fighters in many towns and villages in Southern Cameroons.

Sex has become a weapon of war, with women being raped and young girls impregnated by people they do not even know. Soldiers who are supposed to protect honest and ordinary citizens have themselves become a major threat to the people they are supposed to protect. The Southern Cameroons crisis has become their stock in trade and their bosses in Yaoundé are doing their best to ensure that the war does not come to an end anytime soon.

The Amba fighters, whom many people thought would protect the population in their poorly organized war for independence, have become the law onto everybody. They have turned against their own people, using the war to earn fast cash. Uneducated gun-totting rascals have become judges, lawyers and even archbishops.  They settle disputes they know nothing about, and their decisions are never based on any sentencing guides. To them, anything is just an opportunity for them to demonstrate their newfound power, power exercised through the barrel of the gun.

The Southern Cameroons crisis is a real disaster in its superlative degree and there is no end in sight. Many lives have been lost and people’s livelihoods have been ruined because the government’s poor decisions. This is a war which could have been avoided through dialogue and negotiations if the government had embraced new and innovative ways of dealing with conflicts.

The government, especially its extremist members, who thought that violence was their weapon of choice to crush the rebellion, is now seeking to find new ways which will help the country heal. The talk in Yaoundé now is how to bring in moderate Southern Cameroonians into the government so as douse some of the fire which is destroying the country. 

Any Southern Cameroonian who has some leverage over some of the people in Southern Cameroons and abroad is today being wooed to play a key role in the country’s government. According to a secret service agent in Yaoundé who spoke to Cameroon Intelligence Report on condition of anonymity, human rights activist, Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla, had been contacted for him to join the government as a way of demonstrating that the government was warming up to the idea of an inclusive government. 

Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla, who has been a key player in the socio-political events playing out in the two English-speaking regions of the country, tactfully declined the proposal brought to him by a Beti Minister whose identity the Cameroon Concord News Group has decided to protect.

According to the secret service agent who received the minister’s report and feedback, Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla told the minister that he was focused on the post-Biya era, as the government had demonstrated a lot of bad will when it comes to dealing with the main issues Southern Cameroonians have presented to the government. The government is clearly stranded, and it is now using any means to find a lasting solution to a problem it said did not exist.

For months, the Unity Palace has been struggling to put together a government of national unity which will include a brand new and neutral prime minister who does not belong to a political party and has extensive leverage over the separatists who have demonstrated that they are made of the stuff which can destabilize the Yaounde government. 

According to a secret service agent who operates within the Unity Palace, government officials are losing sleep because of the chaos which is playing out in Southern Cameroons. They have run out of solutions and even the most zealous among them are now eating a massive humble pie. Their threats and intimidation have not cowed Southern Cameroonians who are more determined to address many issues now rather than later to spare future generations the pain of dealing with a decades-old problem. 

The Unity Palace has been talking with non-CPDM members for a possible replacement of the current prime minister, Dion Ngute, who has fallen short of the ruling Mafia’s expectations. He has not succeeded to disconnect the Southwest region from the rebellion as expected and he is even accused of killing his former henchman, Kenneth Nanji, because of money.

It is being reported that the leading candidate for the post of Prime Minister is insisting on the government releasing all Southern Cameroonians arrested during the conflict which is tearing the country apart. To the candidate, such a gesture will demonstrate that the government is honest and serious about bringing peace to the country.

The candidate, an international civil servant, who, according to sources at the Presidency, clearly stands for an American or a Canadian-style federal system, is also calling for a general amnesty for all those who have been directly or indirectly involved in the war which has already consumed more than seven thousand lives as evidence that the government wants to walk away from this conflict which has cost much money and ruined the economy.  He has also advised the government to rapidly deal with the issue of dual nationality which will be a demonstration of its willingness to work with its expanding Diaspora. 

The government is stuck, and it wants to relief itself of its self-imposed pain. Its arrogance has brought more pain than gain and if it really wants to put the country back onto the path to peace and development, it must make peace with the various factions which disagree with it, especially its English-speaking minority which has proven that winning a war does not depend on the size of the military. If peace must really return to Cameroon, Biya regime must change its ways. It must consider English-speaking Cameroonians as citizens of Cameroon in their own right, and it must learn how to live up to its own commitments. 

There is no issue in Cameroon that cannot be addressed if the political will is there. For more than five years, the government has been chasing shadows. It must learn how to focus on the objects, if not its issues will continue to stalk it like a stubborn shadow. The Southern Cameroons crisis will not go away until the government adopts new ways. Silence and arrogance have not cut it for five years. This demonstrates that the wrong solutions have been adopted and the results leave much to be desired. The government cannot be trusted. It has always been speaking on both sides of its mouth and that is why reasonable Southern Cameroonians are reluctant to be part of any solution engineered by the government.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with correspondent files

In some African countries that are striving to move forward, their constitutions are very strong and their leaders weak. In Francophone Africa, Cameroon included, leaders are very strong and constitutions are very weak.

It is common knowledge that the one important job of a constitution is to limit the power of the leader. However, this is not the case with all the countries in Africa where French is the official language.

President Paul Biya’s days as head of state now looks numbered after a sea of health issues. But while several possible successors including his eldest son Franck Biya have been suggested, there is no clear favourite.

Once Biya goes, the whole CPDM regime will fall, up to and including those in the so-called Senate and National Assembly and for genuine leadership to emerge, the politically docile French speaking Cameroonians would require a revolution that can lead people to the sunlight uplands.

Frankly speaking, nothing will change after Biya if French Cameroonians particularly those in the military and the gendarmerie turn a blind eye and do nothing in Yaoundé.  What those currently in Etoudi are planning is simply one yellow cake replacing another yellow cake. They all are criminals with blood on their hands.

Biya should never have gotten in and as we wait in joyful hope for his departure, his acolytes, his Beti Ewondo kinsmen and women who are only there to continue collecting bribes and putting one tribe against the other while destroying the economy will surely face the long arm of the law.

Unfortunately, anyone from the ruling CPDM consortium of criminal syndicates who replaces Biya will be no different. The agenda as teleguided in Paris is to destroy the Anglophones and guarantee France complete and total access to Cameroon’s mineral wealth. This agenda will not change. So, in the one and indivisible Cameroon, Southern Cameroonians and French Camerounians are just “allies”, not family.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The two Cameroons are undergoing the greatest struggle in the name of freedom since the rigged 1961 reunification.

Southern Cameroonians are fighting to take back their country-the Federal Republic of Ambazonia while French Camerounians are fighting for their freedom.

Many are now convinced and confident that, at the end of the day, Southern Cameroons independence and Southern Cameroons sovereignty will prevail and will be there long after the 89 year-old Paul Biya has left the scene.

The reality is that the people of Southern Cameroons have survived five years of French Cameroun military onslaught and they are well on their way to outlasting the Biya administration that criminals like Atanga Nji and Joseph Dion Ngute serve.

There have been continued calls from the embattled President Biya to stop the military operations in Southern Cameroons and hold genuine negotiations with the jailed Ambazonian leaders.

While acknowledging that the Francophone dominated armed forces were suffering painful losses on the front lines in Southern Cameroons, President Biya and criminal gang believe that Cameroon government troops would be able to hold on in their fight against Ambazonia fighters, and eventually stifle the resistance.

People in the know including many political commentators have come to assess that the war in Southern Cameroons has tilted in Ambazonia’s favour, Biya and his Francophone Beti Ewondo officials believe that the opposite is in fact true — that the so-called one and indivisible Cameroon is emerging from the current struggle with an advantage brought on by the provision of Made in France weapons and the deliberate silence of the West.

The problem facing the Francophone leaders in Yaoundé is the harsh reality of military math. Amba fighters are destroying vast majority of Yaoundé’s pre-conflict arsenal. This fact is played out with violence daily — in a conflict that has taken on the characteristic of a massive artillery duel with Amba fighters using the hit-and-run tactics.

The hard truth is that even Paul Atanga Nji is now fed up with the Biya Francophone pattern of governance.  Francophone military officials and some Roman Catholic clerics are now admitting high casualty rates.  Correspondingly, there is no way Biya’s offer of more money to the military will reverse the inevitable tide of Cameroon government’s looming strategic military defeat in Southern Cameroons. The emergence of Boko Haram in the Far North makes Biya’s offer to the army very hollow.

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group believe that when the so-called Biya military operation will be over and Biya gone for good, the one and indivisible Cameroon would no longer exist as a nation.

There is a price to be paid for the fanciful delusions of Mr. Biya and his Beti Ewondo kinsmen, and those in Yaoundé like Fru Ndi who believe them, and that price may be the very existence of the United Republic of Cameroon as a country.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

You may have heard of the Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o scandal, in which at least three prominent Francophone figures were also arrested! To be sure, a deputy director of a bank, a Treasury inspector and an army colonel were all detained alongside the man once tipped to succeed President Biya and charged with diverting public funds and corruption.

When that sprawling con burst into public view, it was easily the biggest financial scandal that ever rocked the ruling CPDM government and only compared to the Albatross Affair. That was bad enough, but today the disgraced former Minister of Defense, Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o appears in court holding a glass of very chilled champagne (See photo attached to this report).

The Francophone political players may be a little different, but the Anglophone basic premise is correct: Reunification was a rigged game. We found this out in the last five years, when Francophone army soldiers were deployed to slaughter innocent Southern Cameroonians while series of related corruption stories spilled out of nearly every government sector in Yaoundé including SONARA, the National Oil Refinery Company. The recent financial scandal facing the National Hydrocarbons Corporation (SNH) is a justification that corruption in Biya’s Cameroon is just about everything.

Journalist Jules Koum Koum, who died in a Cameroon government road accident plot, had in 2010 investigated an alleged over-billing scandal for military uniforms at the defense ministry when Mebe Ngo’o was minister.

A fifth person questioned in the same investigation is nowhere to be found! They are all blood relations to the Head of State President Biya.

It is no surprise to Southern Cameroonians that the Special Criminal Court which deals with major corruption cases now allows criminals to attend hearings with champagne making the legal process a manipulation-on-manipulation situation.

What is happening in French Cameroun is the height of criminality. It’s time for Southern Cameroons to leave.

The Mebe Ngo’o bad news didn’t start at the ministry of defense! Before joining the government, he had led the police force and run the presidency’s civil office. But the biggest shock came out of the defense ministry where he spent six years and also in the ministry of transport.

Biya and his Francophone political elites have made Southern Cameroonians to be living in an era of undisguised, French Cameroun conspiracy, in which the only solution for the people of Southern Cameroons is to get back to Buea and begin all over again.

By Isong Asu

Tribalism, nepotism, poor governance and corruption have plunged the Cameroonian nation into such dire social straits that conditions in society today look similar to those that led to the civil wars in Liberia, Rwanda including the Ivory Coast.

Rampant killings, kidnappings and attacks against Anglophones, Bamilekes and Sawas carried out by Beti Ewondo uniform officers in past years has increased in an alarming proportion.

Southern Cameroonians, Bamileke and the Sawa people have been subject to violence and dehumanization similar to what was practiced during the colonial era against the Bassas and after the 1984 April 6 Coup against the Hausas.

The destruction of Southern Cameroons and now the Littoral region aims to fight the potential political and economic power the Ambazonian diaspora and the Sawa communities in Cameroon could wield in the nearest future.

Beti Ewondo army soldiers will themselves to slaughter Anglophones at church service, Bamilekes at their shops and Sawas at their homes.  These heinous acts are their way of saying that President Biya and his kinsmen are at war with the changing Cameroon. For them, hanging on to power in Yaoundé is now at stake!

Hatred is helping the Biya gang to fuel their violence, but ultimately, hatred is mostly a consequence of their beliefs in holding on to power.

Cultural and development associations too have morphed into political groupings and tension is mounting everywhere! Recently, Francophone soldiers killed nine civilians including a baby in the North West region in what the Francophone dominated Ministry for Defense painted in a statement as a “misunderstanding”.

The Cameroon government military said the four soldiers were searching for a missing colleague on June 1 when they encountered “a group of frenzied villagers”. The troops opened fire, killing four women, four men and an 18-month-old girl and slightly wounding a 12-month-old baby. The incident took place in Missong.

Nobody cares about Anglophone lives in Cameroon and today’s widespread killings in Cameroonian society, which is reflected in the numerous acts of Beti Ewondo state terrorism and hate crimes against Anglophones, Bamilekes and Sawas has now led to conditions that put Cameroon on the verge of a civil war.

Many in Yaoundé may find this thinking alarmist, but Cameroon is much closer to the conditions that led to civil wars in Liberia, Rwanda and the Ivory Coast.

At the end of it, President Biya may find himself in Kondengui prison soon and very soon if he continues to do nothing about Beti Ewondo provocative actions and the patriarchal politics that foment the anti Anglophone, anti Bamileke and anti Sawa sentiments.

By Enowtaku Ebanghatabi Christelle

The Biya Francophone policy towards the English speaking people of Southern Cameroons is failing completely and the reality reveals the depth of progress made by Ambazonian restoration forces despite Yaoundé’s efforts to maintain the present status quo.

Surprisingly, in the face of this fiasco, French Cameroun political elites continue to hold a questionable position on the armed struggle in Southern Cameroons while relying on an unrealistic old, frail and out-of-touch leader.

Continued military operations and deployments to Southern Cameroons, various covert operations, and thousands of arrests haven’t stopped the Southern Cameroons resistance nor changed the Ambazonia behavior, and it is now very doubtful if the Biya Francophone policy will succeed in the future.

There can never ever be a military solution to the crisis in Southern Cameroons. The concept of huge military presence in Southern Cameroons is no longer working! Weapons entering into Southern Cameroons from Nigeria illustrate this fact. President Buhari’s failures in Nigeria and his well documented hatred for the East region are providing Southern Cameroonians with help that they do not even need!! The arms flow will get worse in the days and weeks ahead.

The base for Yaoundé’s policy vis-a vis Anglophone Cameroon is still founded on the thought that Francophone’s are superior with their military might and the National Gendarmerie Force, even though Southern Cameroonians have achieved and excelled more than Francophones everywhere in the world and in every international establishment.

Southern Cameroonians have succeeded in overcoming significant financial barriers, especially in the West and North America. Their knowledge is now broad and they want French speaking Cameroonians to come to Southern Cameroons as partners and not as masters.

Moreover, according to Ground Zero voices, the quest for independence is now enjoying support in Southern Cameroons and, therefore, even if all the front line leaders are killed or arrested, it is unlikely that the struggle would be abandoned.

The bottom line is that Paul Biya’s French backed Anglophone Cameroon strategy is failing. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group think that there is a huge gap between the statements from Biya’s cabinet ministers and the reality on Ground Zero.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Politically docile pro Yaoundé Southern Cameroons figures have turned the entire Federal Republic of Ambazonia into a huge French Cameroun military base.

Joseph Dion Ngute and Paul Atanga Nji are now responsible for a Francophone policy which allows the Francophone dominated regime of 89-year-old President Paul Biya to turn the whole of British Southern Cameroons into a massive French Cameroun military base.

For over five years now, Francophone army soldiers have been wandering in Mezam, Manyu, Menchum, Bui, Ndian, Fako, Meme, Lebialem, Kupe Munanenguba Divisions and other constituencies in Southern Cameroons. The Southern Cameroons homeland has now turned into a huge French Cameroun army base.

Dion Ngute, Paul Atanga Nji, Philemon Yang, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle and Paul Tasong helped Yaoundé in creating an atmosphere of war with Southern Cameroonians. These so-called prominent Anglophone political elites got Southern Cameroonians intimidated and eventually made acceptable the conversion of the Southern Cameroons homeland into a Francophone military base.

Today, Southern Cameroons is now a tool for France-Afrique power politics and Ambazonians are being use to demonstrate the superiority of French power in Africa regardless of the pain that the people of Southern Cameroons are going through!!

Currently, Francophone military bases have been established all over Southern Cameroons and some of the bases are helping French multi nationals in exploiting Southern Cameroons hydrocarbon resources in Ndian Division, the Bakassi Peninsula including increasing French naval influence in the Gulf of Guinea.

Every divisional and sub divisional capital in Southern Cameroons is home to a Francophone army base! The Biya Francophone regime has extended its military base policy even to Ambazonia villages!

Yet, the same Francophone regime is informing the world that Ambazonian fighters are terrorizing the local Southern Cameroons population!! This begs the question: Who is being threatened with these Francophone military bases? Why are these military bases being established in Southern Cameroons if they cannot protect hospitals or motor parks?

At the moment, our cream of Cameroon Concord News reporters cannot count all the Francophone military bases in Southern Cameroons, there are so many. … The entire Southern Cameroons is La Republique du Cameroun’s military base.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai