French Cameroun Head of State so-called reconstruction plan, sold to the international community to avoid a UN intervention into the crisis in Southern Cameroons, gave French Cameroun surrogate, Prime Minister Dion Ngute and his gang of CPDM thieves the green light to start lining up fake consultants and contractors to siphon the imaginary millions budgeted for the suffering peoples of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

The French Cameroun government’s Southern Cameroons reconstruction plan is already heading towards complete fiasco and the appointment of Minister Paul Tasong by Dion Ngute has turned the plan into an illusion. The only solution left for Southern Cameroonians all over the world is to continue to fund Ground Zero self defense operations under the direct supervision of Vice President Dabney Yerima.

Approximately four years ago, the French Cameroun dictator declared a war against the people of Southern Cameroons and Biya gave the Cameroon government army ‘plein pouvoir’ to carry out a scorch earth policy.  Ever since soldiers loyal to the regime in Yaoundé invaded Southern Cameroons towns and cities, Biya has repeatedly endorsed their atrocities which include the destruction of more than 300 Southern Cameroons villages and towns and the killing of thousands of innocent Ambazonian citizens including women and children.

Southern Cameroons groups have unanimously resisted the French Cameroun military invasion which largely meets the financial demands of French Cameroun senior army officers and has so far achieved nothing than pushing the people of Southern Cameroons slowly but surely into achieving an Ambazonia state.

The so-called reconstruction plan does not provide the people of Southern Cameroons with anything new but allows the French Cameroun regime to continue its genocidal campaign in the territory and also to continue to plunder Southern Cameroons wealth. The plan inter alia denies Southern Cameroons detainees the right to freedom from French Cameroun jails and detention centers mindful of the dangers posed by the coronavirus.

The Ambazonian leader Sisiku Ayuk Tabe has called on the international community to prosecute Biya and his French Cameroun regime at the international Criminal Court.  In a recent statement, the Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima appealed to the United Nations to pass an immediate resolution necessitating an Independent Fact Finding Mission to start work in the Southern Cameroons. Dabney Yerima observed that only such a mission will establish the facts in Ngarbuh and other scenes of genocides in Southern Cameroons.

There has been conflicting signals coming from the USA and in Western Europe following a dramatic U turn made by former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman J. Cohen. Hon. Cohen has been quoted as saying via a tweet message that “Elements of peace starting to come together in Cameroon: Government transparency about Ngarbuh massacre; US congratulations; Anglophone citizens becoming fed up with extremism of separatist militias. Let the US-led talks begin. ”

Cameroon Concord News Group has not been able to confirm if the US administration are 100 percent backing the French Cameroun regime but Yaoundé has interpreted retired Ambassador Cohen’s pronouncement as meaning that the Americans absolutely are siding by Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate and the European Union hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic is so shy in their statements regarding what’s going on in Southern Cameroons. The European Union is practically doing nothing in effect to stop the killings going on in Ambzonia.

Senior Southern Cameroons leaders both within and out of the Ambazonia Interim Government have  said the French Cameroun reconstruction plan with Minister Paul Tasong at the head has dealt a devastating blow to the so-called One and Indivisible Cameroon. To be sure, the Biya plan has indeed closed the door to all Southern Cameroonians serving the French Cameroun regime.

Cameroon Concord News Group gathered that prominent Southern Cameroons scholars in the West have raised fingers against Ambassador Cohen with many observing that his recent take on the Ngarbuh massacre among other Southern Cameroons issues served as a green light to Biya and French Cameroun to float international law.

An aide to Vice President Dabney told Cameroon Concord News Group that  the former US diplomat is a man of integrity and understands that “French Cameroun administrators and troops in Southern Cameroons are colonizers and their activities clearly indicates that this is an occupation, a brutal occupation, and Ambazonians have got to stand up and resist until help comes.”

Biya and his French Cameroun political elites have become more brazen in their efforts to trample upon Southern Cameroonians’ rights since he started the extermination campaign four years ago and the French government of President Emmanuel Macron has unprecedentedly intensified Paris support for the Yaoundé regime.

Southern Cameroons leaders have voice their strong opposition to any reconstruction activity which French Cameroun Prime Minister Dion Ngute and Minister Paul Tasong are being teleguided by Biya and his French Cameroun gang to implement in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and we of this publication are emphasizing the need for popular Southern Cameroons resistance against any scheme from Yaoundé.

The level of barbarism being perpetuated by Mr Biya’s military and his government militias as they pursue their genocidal war and scorch earth policy to completely annihilate the Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) is alarming. So far, as a result of the on-going genocide in the Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia), an estimated 20,000 people have been killed, over 280 towns and villages have been burnt down, over 120,000 people are seeking refuge in Nigeria and further afield, over 1million people are internally displaced or living in bushes and over 3,000 persons incarcerated in prisons and detention facilities. It is also reported that over 4.5. Million people are at risk of famine. One thing we know for sure is that Mr Biya and his military and private militia will be held accountable for these crimes. While not exonerating Ambazonian self-defense forces, we also know that Mr Biya’s government is doing everything through its private militia (popularly known as Atanga Nji Boys) to commit atrocities and link them to self-defense forces, so as to evoke international sympathy. Only an independent fact-finding mission can establish the facts and thus far, Mr. Biya’s government has resisted all requests by independent humanitarian organizations to visit Southern Cameroons and establish the facts.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic that has put everything in life on hold, many in Cameroon thought they were second only to God.

Due to their being around for too long, some Cameroonians were already thinking that they were immortal.

But the Coronavirus has changed all of that. The country’s president who has been making a mockery of his critics for years has been hiding at the Unity Palace.

Sources at the Unity Palace say he sometimes hide under the bed for fear that the insidious virus might show up at the Unity Palace to look for him.

The virus does not like fat and old people. It has run amok in Italy and America where it has been on a cleanup campaign.

Nature has a way of ensuring that there is equilibrium in the world and in this case, it has sent a virus to rid the world of old people who have had a long life.

This is a reason for Cameroon’s Lazarus to be hiding. He knows that if the virus runs into him, he will not stand a chance.

He is not the only person hiding. Even people like Rene Sadi are all hiding in their homes, refusing to even receive their collaborators.

Times have changed and many people around the world have suddenly discovered the emptiness of life.

Ever since Atanga Nji was appointed as the country’s Territorial Administration minister, he has been conducting himself as if he was above death.

He has plotted the death of many young Southern Cameroonians just because he wants to prove a point.

He has been urging the Southern Cameroonian fighters to drop their arms without conditions and has even attended ceremonies where those fake Amba fighters have dropped their guns as a strategy to woe others to follow suit.

For more than three weeks now, a group of Amba boys has been struggling to meet the authorities so that they can drop their weapons, but nobody wants to meet with them.

The group contains some guys infected with the Coronavirus and they really want to meet with Paul Atanga Nji and the Northwest regional governor, Adolphe Lele L’Afrique, but the most powerful guys in Cameroon are not in any mood to meet them. Nobody toys with COVID-19 and Atanga Nji is in no rush to leave this planet.

The virus has cut the Yaoundé strong men to normal human proportions. Atanga Nji who loved going to Bamenda every week no longer wants to meet Amba Boys who want to help him stage his normal show.

The weapons are in the jungle and until he meets with them, the boys will not down their weapons. They may be observing the global ceasefire, but downing their tools will only happen when they shake hands with the all powerful territorial administration boss.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman/Editor-In-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

A Manyu Town Hall Meeting has been called for Sunday the 26^th of April 2020 at 7pm Amba Time. As Manyu people congregate to take the future of the Ambazonian revolution in their county into their own hands, Cameroon Concord News Group shares their enthusiasm and wisdom. It was this media outlet on the 8^th of April 2020 that incessantly flashed out signals about the clumsy and impractical governing experiment in the county. We are delighted that the people of this strategic county are responding to the challenges ahead. The people of Manyu are about to begin a new chapter in Southern Cameroons history instead of waiting to be concealed by regret in the years ahead.

Cameroon Concord News has been provided insight information that the four LGAs in the Manyu County have been inefficient at fundraising and collaboration and consequently making the CPDM criminals in Yaoundé to look professional and well-organized. This media outlet can confirm that many LGAs in the northern zone of Ambazonia spent more on defence materials than the County of Manyu over the last nine months. But Manyu has Senators and Congressmen. The bureaucracy within the county has evolved to nothingness as titles of Chairman, Senators and Congressmen have been the preoccupation of county officials. Somehow, these people have forgotten that their country is at war!

Manyus have a long and occasionally dishonourable history with titles and ego but even the most zealous advocates of such cultural insanity would never have contemplated such foolishness in the middle of an existential war. Fortunately, the court of public opinion and some elders in the county have decided to act. From Ground 1 and Ground 0, there is a current impatience with social media lawyers, pseudo political scientists, social media grammar consultants who spend hours showcasing their pitiful personalities on whats app platforms than raise funds for the struggle. The excitement from G1 and G0 towards the new setup is understandable and the need for Manyu people to join is encouraged.

We of the Concord Group have learned that some in Manyu intended to make their county governing structure a gladiatorial political game with titles and social media congresses and senates while their villages are being burned and villagers are sleeping in the forests. Conditions of genocide in Ambaland convey no emotions to these US based comedians. With the impending structural change, fundraising and self-defence is the foundation and plaudits should go to this triumph of logic over social media emotions. The Manyu county coordinator remarked last night ‘this is intended to separate the real Manyu Men and Women from the rogues and noisemakers’.

We hope that profound lessons have been learned and that these changes will encourage a more aggressive fundraising and self-defence dynamics in Manyu. It is tasteless to insist on titles, bureaucracy and politics when the number of avoidable deaths in the county is rising. Cameroon Concord News believes that the moment of reckoning has come for Manyu and all people of goodwill in the county should celebrate by opening their minds and wallets. Any blackmailers and campaigners against this genuine progress will face the colossal force of the Ambazonian people. And that is a contests they can’t win. 

Despite the lack of progress and a stagnation of self-defence operations in the county, our understanding is that a rogue element within the current administrative structure is determined to oppose this impending positive change and progress. Let it be known that Ambazonia is at war and any citizen who stands in the face of constructive and dynamic change in Manyu will be considered an enemy of the state of Ambazonia and will be treated as such!! Ambazonian self-defence forces are facing danger and a ferocious enemy daily. We owe them a duty to make available the best materials possible in their quest to protect our land.

The stirring up of sentiments intended to bring hostility between Mamfe Central LGA and Eyumojock LGA by bigots from Eyumojock local government area is a CPDM style madness that shouldn’t and wouldn’t be tolerated. Cameroon Concord News and Cameroon Intelligence Report intend to name and shame anyone who engages in division and blackmail at this crucial point of this revolution. We would not tolerate anyone or anything that aids and abets the enemy. Any conspirator will be crushed with ferocity and rapidity. Ambazonia is at war!

This media outlet believes that the new structure in Manyu will showcase the potential for a more planned, practical and fruitful way of fundraising as well as defending Ambazonia. Manyus need to recognise and embrace this great opportunity to get their revolution back on track. The time for Manyu to rise again is here. Sunday the 26^th of April 2020 at 7pm, the journey starts for this strategic county. A stitch in time saves nine

By Isong Asu

London Bureau Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

Sixty eight days ago, we woke up to a familiar dose of state sponsored barbarism by the French Cameroun regime in the village of Ngarbuh in Dunga Mantung County. According to the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, twenty three local residents, amongst them fourteen children, eleven girls and nine under the age of five were executed in cold blood. In this massacre, a pregnant woman was executed and another lost her baby at a local hospital. After their brutal and unprovoked killings, French Cameroun military personnel set ablaze nine homes in the village to cover their dreadful crimes. The atrocities of the 14^th of February 2020 will never be deleted from our consciousness as a nation.

I come to you today in profound disappointment following the report released yesterday by the regime in Yaoundé into the massacre.As a government, our initial investigation after the attack pointed to French Cameroun’s military. Our judgment was accurate and now we must bring the atrocities of this neo-colonial regime to the consciousness of the world.We must remind ourselves that the regime in Yaoundé initially rejected any role in the massacre. But French Cameroun’s self-confession that ‘17 members of a local vigilante committee’ were working with their soldiers in this atrocity confirms our previous accounts that they have been sponsoring militant groups to terrorise and kill civilians in Southern Cameroons.

The neo-colonial regime in Yaoundé claimed immediately after the massacre that it was an accident after fuel supplies exploded into flames during a gun battle with separatists. They have now contradicted their own version of events. The inclusion of a so-call vigilante committee is a farce and deplorable. For over two years now, we have flawless evidence that the regime in Yaoundé is actively involved in stirring up intercommunity violence in Ambazonia.

The French Cameroun regime has never had an association with truth and honesty and so it claimed that ‘panic-stricken, the three servicemen with the help of some members of the vigilante committee, tried to conceal the facts by causing fires’. Even by their unashamed standards, this statement is an assault on the truthbecause all eyewitnesses confirmed that this was an unprovoked attack on a village in Southern Cameroons.

In March 2018, Mami Sarah Appih, 96 years old was burned alive in her bed in Kwa Kwa village by French Cameroun forces. In May 2018, the Guardian Newspaper in the UK carried an article after painstaking investigation on the burning of villages by French Cameroon forces. In May 2019, French Cameroun forces invaded a peaceful community in Muyuka, Southern Zone and summarily executed scores of people including five months old baby Martha. The burning of villages by forces loyal to Paul Biya’s regime has been plentiful and documented. None of the above atrocities have been investigated.

Yesterday’s statement endorses our reservations that this regime can’t be trusted to investigate its atrocities. On the 18^th of February 2020 in Geneva, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated‘We call on the Government to ensure that the security forces abide by applicable international law norms standards during the conduct of their operations’. Yesterday’s report identified that the United Nations was invited to attend but it offered technical support instead. As a people, Southern Cameroonians regret the non-attendance of the United Nations in this investigation.

Since the declaration of war by French Cameroun on the peaceful people of Southern Cameroons, army loyal to the regime in Yaoundé have burned down over three hundred and twenty villages. The village of Ngarbuh in Dunga Mantung County is one of their hundreds of crime scenes. We condemn these acts of genocide strongly. These attacks are now premeditated, predominant, well-planned and they show a flagrant disregard for life by these soldiers. It is particularly disturbing that on paper, French Cameroun is a signatory to many international conventions on human rights but in Southern Cameroons, their military is pursuing and executing acts of genocide with impunity.

After yesterday’s report, the evidence is now overwhelming that this regime and its forces aren’t trustworthy.  Yesterday’s statement admits reluctant guilt on the part of French Cameroun’s forces.

We are today calling on the international community through the United Nations to pass an immediate resolution necessitating an Independent Fact Finding Mission to start work in the Southern Cameroons. It’s our paramount belief that only such a mission will establish the facts in Ngarbuh and other scenes of genocides in Southern Cameroons.

We hope that the international community accepts this statement as a genuine attempt from the people of Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) to bring this war to a close and the perpetrators of these crimes to real justice.

Sincerely,

DabneyYerima

Vice President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

State of confusion

Ambazonia would be the first new country in a decade, and a potentially rich one. But, as Yoletta Nyange reports, the battle for independence from Cameroon is far from over

Last June, the InterContinental hotel in Geneva cleared its 16th floor for an exceptionally loyal and lucrative guest. At $40,000 a night for his family and entourage, President Paul Biya of Cameroon has been favouring the InterContinental with his business for longer than many of its staff can remember. He stays there when health concerns bring him to Switzerland, and frequently for summer holidays. In 2019, his 37th year in power, he might have had a third agenda item too: a Swiss offer to mediate a conflict that threatens to split Cameroon in two and turn part of it into the newest country in the world.

Biya declined the offer but his break was still rudely interrupted. Cameroonian emigrés infuriated by his extravagance (average earnings in Cameroon are less than $10,000 a year) staged daily protests outside the hotel on Chemin du Petit Saconnex. Swiss police tried everything to move them on, including tear gas and water cannon. The protesters wouldn’t budge and so Biya was asked to leave instead.

The point of the protest was “to ask Mr Biya to go home and receive medical care in Cameroon”, Marcela Nkwi, one of its organisers, told me. “If he wants to sleep in a luxury hotel, he should build them in Cameroon and sleep there. Geneva was a battlefield and the Swiss don’t like disorder as it inspires others.”

Later, I visited the place that is defying Biya and the weight of its own history to aspire to nationhood. It consists of Cameroon’s two westernmost regions – the only two where English rather than French is an official language. It’s half the size of Portugal and could be rich and bustling. Instead, it has become a battleground where violence can suddenly give way to emptiness and silence.

Walking through the town of Tiko felt like being in an epic Western, with the wrong plot. There were no sandstorms, no cowboys riding horses, only empty wooden market stalls on the roadside. In Mutengene too, to the west, human activity had come to a halt. To the north, in Muyuka, metal sheeting sealed the doors of shops, restaurants and supermarkets. Along the slopes of Mount Cameroon, there was an endless string of military checkpoints set up to control an invisible population outlawed as terrorists by its own government.

The wind was the only soundtrack, interrupted by gunfire and stray bullets, because these two regions are sliding towards war. They should be lucky places. They form a rough oblong of territory blessed with extraordinary natural wealth. Their volcanic soils are preternaturally fertile. Their dark brown beaches are a well-kept secret. Their coastal waters give access to largely untapped oil and gas, and their people are confident enough to have set their heart on self-determination. If their dreams come true they will create the first new country in nearly a decade, after South Sudan. It could become one of the richest in Africa, and it would rejoice in the name Ambazonia. The word derives from Ambas Bay, an historic indent in the West African coast at the mouth of the Wouri River, where in 1858 an English missionary founded a settlement for freed slaves.

Ambazonia is a place, but also a cause. Over the past three years it has served as a rallying cry for nearly 5 million English-speaking Cameroonians whose parents and grandparents were forced into a French-speaking country 60 years ago and kept there, they say, as second-class citizens.

Parts of this territory have become no-go zones for Biya’s army. Others have felt his wrath: his soldiers have torched nearly 300 towns and villages leaving at least half a million people in internal exile. On satellite pictures, where there used to be neatly demarcated streets and compounds, there are now grey smudges.

Ambazonia’s self-proclaimed leaders sit in prison in the French-speaking capital, Yaounde, but most of their homeland is controlled from day to day by bands of armed volunteers who have filled Ambazonia’s power vacuum with incipient anarchy.

These are the Amba Boys, some as young as 15. Between flashes of violence they preserve a sort of calm, as if before the storm. Their cause is financed by a Cameroonian diaspora spread from Oslo to Birmingham and Houston to suburban Washington. Their time, they are convinced, will come.

Within the territory they claim, Ambazonians have ceased recognising central authority. Their default posture is non-violent resistance: businesses and individuals have stopped paying taxes and started using what they call “ghost town” tactics against the regime, rather as Marshal Kutuzov used the evacuation of Moscow against Napoleon. To vanish, they have learned, is to prevail.

They used similar tactics to sabotage Cameroon’s latest elections, on 9 February: both Anglophone regions boycotted the poll, as did the official national opposition, leaving Biya’s ruling People’s Democratic Movement with an overwhelming but meaningless majority.

For now, Biya remains nominally in charge and Ambazonia’s two halves are still officially called the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon. But on 1 October last year the people of Bamenda in the grasslands of Northwest region came out to celebrate their independence and chant the name of Sisiku Tabe, an engineering graduate from the University of Sheffield.

Exactly two years earlier, Tabe had declared Ambazonian independence. At the time he held a teaching position at the American University of Nigeria in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, and it was there, three months later, that he was hosting a cabinet meeting of the Ambazonian government in exile when Nigerian police broke into the meeting room in the Nera Hotel and arrested them all. They were extradited to Cameroon and consigned to Kondengui maximum security prison in Yaounde, where they are still being held, and where their sense of destiny is palpable.

“We have learned from the Tamils, the Sahrawis [of Western Sahara] and the people of East Timor, South Sudan and Kosovo,” said Fidelis Ndeh-Che, one of the prisoners. “Nothing will change the inevitable march of history.”

Since the start of the war the Cameroonian army has been stationed along Ambazonia’s western border to intercept weapons from Nigeria’s black market. From the east, the government deploys militias that can be disowned when diplomatic appearances require, and from Douala, Cameroon’s commercial hub, prisoners have been released to wreak havoc in the Northwest and Southwest regions. “Thieves and bandits have deserted the economic capital and relocated to Ambazonia, where war brings more opportunities,” Halima Alim, a Douala based police officer, told me.

There is no real centralised command in the Ambazonian heartland that the Amba Boys call Ground Zero, only a loose co-operation between each community patrol group dictated by the rhythm of military clashes. Most Amba Boys are aged between 16 and 25, forced out of school and armed only with “den guns” from their parents – weapons traditionally used during cultural celebrations such as weddings. They now make do with captured weapons from government soldiers, and with spirituality.

“When Amba Boys call you have no choice but to respond,” Che Paul Bih, a taxi driver in Ekona, told me. “They called me to come sit with them and eat, to find out if I was on their side. We ate dog meat [a taboo food] to mark our alliance and they taught me the coded language.” That language is partly visual, partly verbal.

Some Amba Boys wear distinctive red beads with supposedly bulletproof properties, reminiscent of the Edochie cult in Nigeria. For added protection, some also cut themselves to insert charms under their skin, and all use incantation – a form of prayer.

Real Amba Boys, Bih added, claim a higher moral ground than the fake ones, who steal phones and money, or the government soldiers, who kill and rape. They don’t harass; they “advise”, he said. “But if they see you as a black leg, as someone who is against them, they will take you to their camp to explain yourself. If you don’t talk they will keep you in the bush and tell the government ‘we have taken one of your people’.”

In their diversity, the people of the Cameroons have an attitude that could be misread as passivity. Like Ugandans, they know they are spoiled by extravagant natural abundance and don’t make a big fuss of it. They also wear a mane of stubbornness, borrowed from their national football team – known as the Indomitable Lions.

But this only partially explains why the Cameroonian army in all its might, with modern artillery and armoured vehicles, has failed to crush the Ambazonian independence movement. Its leaders are convinced they are righting wrongs inflicted on a people who were forced into a cohabitation with a partner whose language they don’t speak. In the late 19th Century their homeland was colonised by the newly unified Germany and named Kamrun. In 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, it was divided between France and Britain. In 1961 a UN resolution declared that the Ambazonians’ forebears had “decided to achieve independence by joining the [Frenchspeaking] independent Republic of Cameroun”. But the details of their relationship with the republic were left to “urgent discussions” – which never happened. For four of the six decades since then their fate has been bound up with that of President Biya, one of Africa’s longest-serving dictators and a Francophone to his core.

Like the Kikuyus of Kenya and the Igbos of Nigeria, the Ambazonians’ cause is one of economic selfempowerment. But it is also, crucially, a reaction against Biya’s policy of forced Francophonisation; of governing in French in a place that doesn’t speak it. It is not hard to find French-speaking Cameroonians who see why this can’t work.

“How is it possible to judge an Anglophone in French when he cannot understand what he is told?” asked Emmanuela Afewo in Limbe, a surf town on the Atlantic coast. “How can he be told ‘tu signes’ [sign here] and be sent to jail? How can Francophone teachers be sent to teach Anglophones when they don’t speak the language of their students?”

Last October, startled by the depth of popular support for Tabe and his imprisoned cabinet, Biya convened a “national dialogue” intended to steal their thunder. It achieved the opposite. The secessionists were not represented and Biya wrapped up proceedings stating that “the future of our fellow citizens in Northwest and Southwest is in our republic”.

The dialogue served only to raise the stakes in a conflict whose participants fear will end if not in the creation of a new country, then in genocide. Charity workers say 20,000 people may have been killed since the violence began, many of them burned along with their villages and buried in mass graves.

This scorched earth strategy might have achieved its aim by now, but for the Cameroonian diaspora. Thousands of Cameroonians, Francophone and Anglophone, have left the country during Biya’s decades of misrule. Many are now wealthy, and some took part in the protests that embarrassed the Swiss into sending Biya home from Geneva last year. Others have been peacefully protesting in front of the Cameroonian embassies around the world.

In London, they use eggs. “Seven of us have shut the embassy down without breaking the law,” Kingsley Sheteh Newuh, a Cameroonian political scientist based in Birmingham, said. “We believe in pressure rather than violence. We would buy a thousand eggs to throw at the embassy building in protest. We chose eggs for each life that is killed in Cameroon.”

Different pockets of the diaspora support – and fund – different groups of Amba Boys. The Ambazonia Defence Forces is backed from Norway by Lucas Ayaba Cho, a former youth organiser. The Southern Cameroons Defence Forces is led from Maryland by Ebenezer Akwanga, an ex-trade unionist. Another group is part-funded from Houston by Chris Anu, a pastor facing allegations of embezzlement whose brother leads yet another – the Red Dragons and Tigers – in the hills of Lebialem.

Cho and Akwanga are seen as hardliners embittered by long periods of imprisonment in the 1990s. They have distanced themselves from Tabe since his emergence in 2017, believing he enjoys the legitimacy that they earned. With Tabe’s imprisonment, infighting and intrigue in the diaspora has intensified to the point of farce.

In 2018 Samuel Ikome Sako, a preacher living in Baltimore and moonlighting as acting president of Ambazonia, launched a multimillion-dollar online fundraiser that he called “My Trip to Buea”. It was billed as a sort of liberation pilgrimage to Buea, a bucolic town on the eastern slopes of Mount Cameroon that Ambazonians regard as their Jerusalem.

With tickets going for up to $8,000, Sako promised to deliver a state in three months or else resign. He later withdrew the pledge in a live Facebook interview, claiming he was no longer able to deliver the new country because his demand for $2 million had not been met.

It was, says Martha Tataw, a Cameroonian accountant based in Paris, “the most elaborate scam” – but more broadly the diaspora has lobbied effectively against the Biya regime. The US has suspended military aid and the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has called for a new dialogue with all “stakeholders” present.

West of the Bonabéri Bridge over the Wouri River, the natural boundary between Cameroon’s two linguistic communities, Ambazonia unfolds as a giant agro-industrial complex that starts 20 kilometres west of Douala. Here, 42,000 hectares of bananas, rubber and palm oil are grown, processed and marketed for foreign export by the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), the country’s second-largest employer.

Twelve of Cameroon’s 14 functioning oil and gas pipelines come ashore on Ambazonia’s coastline. All told, the region accounts for 60 per cent of the country’s $35 billion economy. Independence movements can be awkward when so much is at stake. Ambazonians believe they were tricked into choosing between Nigerian and Cameroonian independence in 1961. Their uprising is a blow to foreign companies that have invested heavily in the country’s infrastructure. It has upset relations between the CDC and Del Monte, for example, which buys 98,000 tonnes of bananas every year from Ambazonian plantations. And it complicates life for foreign stakeholders in a new $1.5 billion Etinde gas field off the coast – among them the Scottish company Bowleven and Russia’s Lukoil.

Beneath the surface, a jumble of players is fighting for control of the Gulf of Guinea, a choke point for the transport of oil and goods to and from central and southern Africa, and a node of instability between the kleptocracies of Equatorial Guinea and the Central African Republic (CAR). France’s President Macron is anxious to bind Cameroon into a single currency for 15 West African countries that would deepen French influence over them all. Bowleven’s stake in the Etinde field was announced by Liam Fox, the then UK international trade secretary, as part of Britain’s push to expand into new territories post-Brexit. And Russia, which has upgraded Africa to a foreign policy priority, is using mercenaries from the Wagner Group to establish a post-colonial outpost in the CAR.

But Ambazonians themselves are fighting above all for control of Buea. Built at the heart of the plantations, Buea was Cameroon’s first capital, and even now it exudes a distinct colonial charm. There is one road in and out. It leads ultimately to Yaounde, 200 miles to the east, where on 1 October last year, I saw Sisiku Tabe sing Next Year in Buea, the anthem of a country-in-waiting, behind bars in Kondengui prison.

Tabe likes singing. He and the nine others arrested in Abuja are now serving life sentences handed down by a military tribunal, and they sang in court as the verdict was read out. In the prison I sat in the sun in an exercise yard with the men who have become known as the Nera Ten. These are all fathers and grandfathers who, at 50 and older, have become Cameroon’s most dangerous criminals. What I saw were men who – like their people on Ground Zero and abroad – knew they were free.

“We need ourselves, we have ourselves and we will do it ourselves,” Tabe said. “We have all studied in Western universities and we have nothing to envy Westerners. They know that and they are afraid that we’ll set an example to other Africans. It is either total independence of Ambazonia or resistance for ever.”

As I stood up to leave, all ten of them gathered around me in a circle and held hands. Nfor Ngala Nfor, the 67-year-old leader of the Southern Cameroons National Council, offered a short prayer. It was “for our enemies in the Cameroonian government to free us”, he said, “so that we can go work the land and leave it for our children”.

Cameroon may be doomed to repeat a familiar cycle of insurgency and vengeance – or, just possibly, it may bequeath to the world a small, perfectly formed new country with every opportunity to thrive. Much will depend on the man with a weakness for Swiss five-star hotels, but the current of Ambazonian independence runs strong. From what I saw, it has the power to sweep away the past.

This story was published by Tortoise

French Cameroun head of state, Paul Biya, is only 87 years old, but his recent disappearance from the British Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun political scenes following the outbreak of COVID-19 has pushed many political commentators to be concerned about his bill of health.

The butcher of Yaoundé is known for spending millions of Cameroonian tax payer’s money to sustain his lavish lifestyle in a five-star hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. There are several other elements that have Cameroonians questioning if the 87-year-old is still alive.

Biya has a horrible drinking habit and despite his age, he has continued to poison himself in the hope that alcohol will help shield himself from the furious attacks from his compatriots.

President Biya’s inclination to red wine and champagne is no secret.  He consumed so much wine during the OAU summit in Yaoundé and forgot that he had to welcome the Great Nelson Mandela at the Nsimalen International airport.

Mandela arrived on time and Biya’s acolytes rushed the then Prime Minister Simon Achidi Achu to meet him. It needed the intervention of French President, Jacque Chirac, to get Mandela back in Yaoundé for Biya to make up for his shameful costly mistake.

Alcohol is one of Biya’s vices as observed by his late wife Jeanne-Irène Biya. Like every other Beti, Bulu and Eton citizen, Biya loves his liquor.

The presidency spends millions of US dollars each year on alcohol, and Biya prefers expensive brands. He mixes it with champagne and this gives him the false impression that he is a chemist.

It is not only alcohol that is Biya’s Achilles heels. He also loves good food and has been eating himself to death.  BBC Focus on Africa reported more than two decades ago that Biya was limping, likely due to a strain in his legs.

The BBC article stated that Biya had pain and inflammation from too much uric acid in the joints. His love of red meat has caught up with him and when he gets flares, he cries like a baby.

It became evident in Paris during Biya’s recent meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron that Biya was far more concerned with feeding himself than helping his people get out of poverty. Biya has been hiding for 37 years as head of state.

And while that could be a way to guarantee his continued stay in power, it could also just be a bad political habit.

Biya like Shakespeare’s Macbeth does not sleep

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that President Biya has difficulty sleeping. After carrying out high-level killings and purges in his own regime and jailing prominent ruling CPDM barons, including Prime Minister Inoni, Biya now fears for his own life even he is by the side of his grave.

Allegedly, this fear keeps him up at night, and he is not getting enough sleep. Indeed, his current Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji  noted that Biya knew when a cabinet minister went to downtown Yaoundé to purchase a bottle of wine.

His much published meeting with the French ambassador, Christophe Guilhou today in Yaounde as a response to declarations made by Prof. Maurice Kamto has been dismissed as a French political game to keep the CPDM regime alive and active.

Biya with French Ambassador Guilhou

Biya is actually suffering from insomnia and other age-related ailments

Biya’s family is paranoid. His late elder brother never got a tumor removed from his body because he was afraid boarding a plane to France and was too worried about being killed by doctors in Yaoundé.

Whether he sleeps or not, he has no control over death. Living long in pain may only be nature’s way of getting back to a man who has had more than his fair share of life by crook.

He has never won an election. He runs away from everybody, thinking that everybody is his enemy. But his real enemies are Ahidjo’s ghost that constantly visits him and the liquor that has ruined his health.

He still has time to repent before leaving this world. If he keeps on holding back his thoughts, he will keep on suffering in silence and dying gradually.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

GENESIS

Julius AyukTabe was born in Ewelle village to a mother from Kembong and a father from Ewelle on the 2 May 1965. Both villages are in the Eyumojock Local Government Area, Manyu County in Southern Cameroons. He started primary education in his village and later at the border village of Ekok. He was the only pupil to pass his Common Entrance examination in List A in 1978 which led to his admission to the prestigious Government High School Mamfe where he spent seven years and obtained his GCE Ordinary and Advanced Level certificates. He was appointed Senior Prefect of GHS Mamfe- an institution with more than 1,700 students in the 1984/1985 academic year. The adage ‘the child is the father of the man’ was used to describe him whilst in primary and secondary school as his leadership skills were noticeable.

SCHOLARSHIP TO STUDY IN GREAT BRITAIN

As the Senior Prefect, he was expelled from GHS Mamfe on the 25^th of January 1985-a decision that compelled him to prepare for his GCE A-Level from home. After passing his GCE A Level examination with exceptional grades in 1985, he was one of two students in GHS Mamfe to be offered a scholarship on academic performance. He studied Computer Science and Mathematics at Keele University in the United Kingdom. He graduated with honours in 1988 and proceeded to the University of Sheffield where he took a Master’s degree in Control Engineering in 12 months. His lecturers and the administrative staff at the University of Sheffield were impressed with his IQ & performance and recommended that he enroll for a PhD program immediately.

After writing his PhD proposal, British Aerospace offered to fund part of his PhD program on Flight Control after he worked on his project for them for six months, on “Fault tolerance of flight control”. Whilst waiting for the Cameroon government to confirm its commitment to fund part of the program, he was invited by the then Board Chairman of Cameroon airlines, Minister Augustin Frédéric Kodock, whose board was impressed with his PhD proposal and his determination to undertake  research in a subject that will benefit Cameroon Airlines. Shortly after returning to London to start his PhD program, he found that the government of Cameroun had discontinued its PhD scholarship in engineering courses.

Undeterred by this minor disappointment, Julius Ayuk Tabe returned to Cameroun in 1990 and was among the pioneer badge of PhD students at the Yaoundé Polytechnic in 1991. His authoritative and attractive academic achievements in the United Kingdom meant that he didn’t have to take long to enter the job market.

SONEL CAMEROON

He was employed as a Systems Analyst and a software developer at the National Electricity Corporation (SONEL) at its Douala office in 1991. While in his forte, he joined a team that designed a major part of the customer billing application which was deployed throughout Cameroon. He said “when I joined SONEL, the cashier systems were almost completely manual. Computers were only used in cashier operations in Douala, Yaoundé, Garoua and Victoria. In my first years at the corporation, a team of young engineers and I developed computer applications throughout the nation.”

As the years passed at SONEL, he moved from application developer to the customer service and distribution arm of the business. He moved to Yaoundé where he was the head of the Sales and Marketing Division. He was later promoted to Delegate of the Adamawa province and transferred to Ngaoundere.

THE GCE BOARD CONNECTION

It was during his time at SONEL Douala that Julius Ayuk Tabe performed one of the most under-reported charitable duties ever undertaken by a Southern Cameroonian. It’s worth recalling that the creation of the GCE Board by the French Cameroun government in 1993 was part of this familiar battle of oppression. The people of Southern Cameroons demonstrated for days in front of the Ministry of Education in Yaoundé before the institution was reluctantly created by Dr Mbella Mbappe’s ministerial decree and the French Cameroun regime. It was thus understood that there would be no adequate allocated finances and material resources to the GCE Board. For the GCE Board to succeed, Mr Ayuk Tabe volunteered his services.

Without a laptop or personal computer, but propelled by a genuine affection for computer software design and goodwill, he single-handedly produced a twenty page document and proceeded to design and develop the computer software that automated the processes of the GCE Examination, from registration to the production of results. Phenomenal! Working tirelessly with Mr Matthew Akoko and Mr Azong Wara, the Pioneer Deputy Registrar and Pioneer Registrar of GCE Board respectively, he accomplished this astounding task of delivering the revolutionary software on time at no business cost to the newly created organisation.

Impressed by Mr. Ayuk Tabe’s contribution to the advancement of the GCE Board, Mr Andrew Azong Wara, the institution’s head, said that “when the story of the GCE Board is written, it won’t be complete without mention of Ayuk Tabe after the work he did in writing all the computer programmes that helped us kick-start our project”. It’s worth mentioning that at a seminar in Cambridge, UK, computer programmes used to facilitate the GCE, GCSE exams were marketed to the fine of £80,000. The Cameroon GCE Board declined the package as Julius Ayuk Tabe had delivered software of equal effectiveness. A team of IT engineers were sent from the UK to appreciate the software he had developed and needless to say they were impressed.

HEAD-HUNTERS AND CISCO SYSTEMS

With his talents, global head-hunters were never far away. It is said that when you start, you look for work, as you approach virtuoso, work looks for you. In 2006, an opportunity came that matched his talents and ambition. This was the top job at Cisco Systems which obliged him to move to Lagos-Nigeria. At his new job, he led the Cisco Networking Academy as its manager for West and Central Africa. Julius Ayuk Tabe said “leading the programme in 23 countries in the African sub-region was one of the richest professional experiences of my life”.

The highly innovative Julius Ayuk Tabe worked for CISCO Systems for five years (2006-2011), during which he developed programmes for hundreds of institutions and helped to give valuable, employable and certifiable skills to thousands of youths. This brought a lot of joy to him and he could not hide this feeling when he said “my joy today comes when I go into an event and meet people who come to me with pride to say that my advice and mentorship led them to CISCO and a new rewarding career. In fact, some of these young boys and girls are already becoming the leading network experts in the companies for which they work. One who studied and got his certification from the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana became a pioneer network staff at the Liberian Presidency working for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.”

RETURN TO THE FORTRESS OF LEARNING

In his mind, Julius Ayuk Tabe knew that as a distinguished scholar, the most suitable environment to share his knowledge was in academia. His next move was to accept an offer from Dr Margee Ensign, the then President of the American University of Nigeria to work as the pioneer Chief Information Officer for Africa’s Premier Development University in Yola in 2011. Under his watch, his office was charged with the design, deployment and maintenance of the University’s computer network application systems and training in information and communication technology among other roles. As a member of the University’s senior management, he helped the drive to 24/7 internet usage and a complete wireless campus to improve the use of e-resources which make up 99.9% of its study material.

His leadership skills meant that he rose quickly to the position of Assistant Vice President and Chief Information officer in a role that meant he led four departments; Information Technology, Auxiliary Services, Information Systems and the University Library. His office of support team was made up of Americans, Spaniards, South Africans and Nigerians, with himself representing the Southern Cameroons. He remarked that they were a joy to work with and a sense of personal fulfilment to lead such a talented team of people.

FATHER FIGURE TO ALL

Many French Camerounians& Southern Cameroonians study at the American University of Nigeria. The search for father-figure by freshmen in a University far from home is not uncommon. That is a role he excelled in. His residence in Yola remained open to students and visitors from home, with his house described by some of the students as a refectory. Whenever there was an event to be hosted in Yola, Mr AyukTabe’s house was the sublime location and entertainment centre.

THE FAMILY MAN AND PHILANTHROPIST

Returning from the United Kingdom in 1990, most people would shop for their families but he didn’t do that. Having lost a friend back home, while he was studying in the UK, upon his return, Julius bought memorabilia and a trophy to organise a football tournament for the late Arreymbo.  Arreymbo’s memorial trophy was played in Ewelle in the summer holidays of 1991 with CFAF 1,000,000 as prize money.

In 1999 when John Ngu Foncha, a Southern Cameroonian of colossal standing died, Mr Julius AyukTabe in his capacity as President of Anglophones in SONEL Douala lobbied for a company bus to take Southern Cameroonians working in SONEL Douala to attend the great man’s funeral in Bamenda

In 2007, Mr Julius Ayuk Tabe and his wife set up the ATAB (Ayuk-Tabe-Agbor-Bakia) Foundation which was to empower and support people in entrepreneurship, health and education. They recruited two graduates from the University of Buea and trained them in Nigeria for months through NGOs in Port Harcourt, Enugu and Lagos. Upon completion of their courses, their employees went to villages in Eyumojock LGA to train people on self-reliant initiatives and disease prevention. The ATAB Foundation gave scholarships to schools, provided books and uniforms to pupil and students. Potable water and filter bottles were also provided. During holidays, football tournaments were organised and sponsored by the foundation.

In 2012, while the Chief Information Officer of the American University of Nigeria, Mr Ayuk Tabe and Dr Mathias Fonkam enrolled ten Southern Cameroonians and assisted them in achieving full scholarships to study at the American University of Nigeria for four years at the annual cost of US$20,000. As a befitting testimony, one of these students who graduated in 2016 visited him in January 2020 at theKondengui Main Prison to inform him that he had been offered a job in Germany.

In 2017, Sisiku Julius AyukTabe paid tickets for refugees who travelled to the USA from Nigeria. For most of 2017, records and personal testimonies corroborate that he spent an average of US$2000 monthly for the Ambazonian struggle, supporting our displaced people. Whilst detained incommunicado at SED Yaoundé, for the first thirteen months, a sum of $100 a month was still deducted from his bank account as his contribution to the Ambazonia struggle.

On the 29th of September 2017, French Cameroun military attacked Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s plantations and farms in Eyumojock LGA, destroying over 60 hectares of farm land, fish farm and livestock. All twenty-eight workers were chased away and the farms and plantations have grown wild ever since. After this attack, his farms and fellow villages suffered considerable damage to person and property. He instructed a team to evaluate and ascertain the cost of the damage. When the cost of CFAF 3,800,000 was reported, he sent CFAF 1,900,000 as 50% support to the affected people.

Mr Julius AyukTabe is happily married to Mrs Lilian Agbor Bakia with whom he has made all these professional moves from Douala through Yaoundé to Ngoundere, Lagos and Yola. Their loving union has lasted since 1992. They are blessed with four wonderful children all of whom are University Graduates.

THE CORONATION: MANYU ROYALTY

In 2015, following his distinguished academic and professional achievements as well as his philanthropic work, his family, village and the custodians of Manyu culture invited him and bestowed upon him the utmost title and responsibility awarded to a son of their County – the title of Sisiku. This enormous responsibility and veneration is only bestowed upon the honourable and visionaries.

AMBAZONIA CALL OF DUTY

Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was elected the Chairman of the Ambazonia Governing Council during the third conclave which ended in Nigeria on 10 July 2017. Due to his leadership skills and commitment to the Southern Cameroons cause, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was subsequently elected as the President of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Following his “Takumbeng call”, on  22 September 2017, there were worldwide and widespread demonstrations in Southern Cameroons led by women, with peace plants and patriotic chants for the release of their  people detained due to the crisis and the freedom of Southern Cameroons. These peaceful demonstrations were met with ferocious brutality by the French Cameroon military. On that day, Sisiku and many leaders of the struggle accompanied the “Takumbengs” in a mammoth demonstration in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

AMBAZONIA INDEPENDENCE DECLARATION

On the 1 October 2017, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe led the people of Southern Cameroons to reclaim their freedom by declaring independence and naming the country Federal Republic of Ambazonia.  His position as Chairman of the Governing Council and eventually as President of the Interim Government of Ambazonia took him to many parts of the world. His tours drew attention to the plight of the suffering masses of Southern Cameroonians. His charisma triggered a sense of identity among Southern Cameroonians who saw a dedicated and selfless leader.

President Ayuk Tabe was abducted from Abuja, Nigeria, with eleven members of his leadership team on Friday 5 January 2018 from a hotel (Nera) recreational park. Ten of them were eventually extradited to French Cameroon in total disregard of international law.. They were kept incommunicado for eleven months and eventually in a kangaroo court session lasting over 20 hours, they were tried and sentenced and are now serving life sentences. Though abducted for restoring the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, he has remained unfazed and committed to the total independence of Southern Cameroons. Despite being held incommunicado for close to a year, both in Nigeria and in French Cameroon, the leaders emerged strong against all seemingly insurmountable obstacles and odds. 

President AyukTabe has evinced an irrevocable determination to defend the goals of the Southern Cameroons revolution. He has demonstrated to the people of Southern Cameroons and the international community that he understands the universal tenets of peace, justice and freedom.

President AyukTabe, for your resolve and personal sacrifice in defence of the people of Southern Cameroons, you deserve our respect, prayers and profiling.

Written and narrated for CAMCORDNEWS by Asu Isong

Searching the pages of history and examining personal experiences, one appreciates the significance of great leadership to a family, organisation and a country. Had Winston Churchill not been the leader of the United Kingdom during the Second World War, there is a valid argument that the world would be different today. The same applies to Nkwame Nkrumah, Patrice Limumba, Nelson Mandela and the many giants of Pan-Africanism  who fought all over Africa to break the shackles of colonialism thus attaining freedom and independence for millions of us. Of the many definitions of leadership, the following is of particular significance today; ‘leadership is the ability to guide others without force into a direction or decision that leaves them still feeling empowered and accomplished.’

Cameroon Concord News Group believes that it speaks for the Ambazonian nation in stating that a lack of leadership after the abduction of Sisiku Ayuk Tabe in Abuja, Nigeria on the 5th of January 2018 is the fundamental reason for our lack of progress in our pursuit of independence and freedom. French Cameroun’s decapitation strike on our revolution achieved its aim. The appointment of Comrade Dabney Yerima as Vice President in May 2019 has steadied the shivering revolutionary boat. Prior to his appointment, wretched leadership was a grave reality in our struggle for justice, peace and independence. Unfortunately, much to the astonishment of this media outlet, over the last few months, pockets of this absurdity are now reappearing. We are incredulous at the bulk of people in this struggle for self-determination who seek power for self-aggrandizement.

After Ikome Sako failed woefully as acting leader of the Southern Cameroons struggle, Cameroon Concord News Group deemed it of paramount importance that anyone who seeks leadership at LGA, County or National level should be vetted and auditioned vigorously. Rev Sako and many in his mob were dubious and possessed less than a honorable past. They slipped through the net with little or no vetting. Correspondingly, many like them shouldn’t be allowed to do so in future. As we all volunteer our time, energy and money, the red lights should start flashing when comrades become vicious and dishonorable in their quests for control.

Cameroon Concord News Group has examined potential and current leaders at various sections of this struggle and whilst some exude confidence and the skill set to take Ambazonians to their intended destination, quite a significant proportion possess not the elementary skills required for leadership. This trend is disquieting and must be addressed immediately to snuff out stagnation. The insistence on titles and positions sounds trivial but it’s now a major concern and a dangerous trend that must be discouraged and stopped. We of the Concord Group have concluded that the French Cameroun system of titles for pomposity has infested the Southern Cameroons psychic. We must call this out at every opportunity for we intend to build a nation on sound human values. 

Cameroon Concord News Group is cautioning Ambazonians to allocate no time and tolerance to comedians and administrative utopians to whom only tittles are of significance! Ambazonia is at war! Special and challenging times call for brilliant leaders. And in this exceptional Ambazonian revolution, we need decent men and women with integrity and decorum to be the leaders at all levels. We need leaders who are trustworthy and accountable. We need leaders who are motivated to work for Ambazonia and its people not ego soothing fanatics. We need reliable leaders who inspire trust and confidence not leaders who engage in backstabbing.

Individuals with sound judgment wouldn’t entrust their political futures and a revolution to anyone thoughtless, calculating and lacking in self-control. The generosity and tolerance of the good people of Ambazonia should never be taken for granted. Comrades should never be deluded that they have supernatural rights and abilities so leadership must gravitate to them. Leadership is trust from the governed and must be earned!

The political illiteracy of the nice people of Southern Cameroons is no longer an opinion, it’s a fact. The evidence is obvious from the multitude of untruths consumed from social media platforms.

Cameroon Concord News Group stresses on the deployment of caution in appointing and electing leaders at any level of this struggle for we can’t afford unfortunate leadership anymore. Good leadership matters in this revolution as it makes a difference between being alive or not.

Isong Asu

London Bureau Chief

Some disturbing videos on how Africans are being treated in China because of fears of the Coronavirus have been making the rounds on social media. Some of the actions are outright racist and could be revolting.

However, while those videos clearly demonstrate that Chinese are suspicious of Africans being responsible for the resurgence of the virus, it is still necessary for Africans to respect local laws.

They should accept that they must be tested against the virus as a way of checking this insidious enemy. Those mitigation measures will not only ensure that they are safe, but will also ensure that others don’t get infected.

As we all know, there are some carriers who will remain asymptomatic all through their lives and such persons are the super spreaders who may inadvertently kill many people who are immune compromised.

However, no African should just accept any kind of humiliation because of efforts to roll back the virus. There are internationally recognized protocols for the checking of this virus that has overwhelmed the planet.  All countries are bound by treaties to respect those protocols without creating any racial or gender issues. 

Africans have passed that stage where they have to feel inferior because of somebody’s skin color. If Chinese do not change their ways, then Africans should also start chasing them out of this beautiful continent. Africans should not always behave as if they do not have a homeland. If it does not work out there, come back home. Just change your mentality and you will make it big in Africa.

Maybe Africans do not know this. Africa may have issues of governance, but it has it all here. Let nobody decisive Africans that they can only become somebody if only they leave Africa. Times have change and that mentality must belong to the past.

Progress, no matter where you are, comes only through discipline, hard work, futuristic thinking and determination. Africans should not let anybody make them think that they cannot make it in Africa.

Just sitting in someone else’s country and be eating and putting on weight is no sign of financial success. The good thing with Africa is that you do not need huge seed capital to start a small business. All you need is an iron will, foresight and a genuinely business mentality.

There are more Chinese in Africa than there are Africans in China. If the Chinese do not stop the dehumanization they are subjecting Africans to, let them know that the youthful and energy-filled African population will chase them out of Africa.

No Chinese comes to Africa to help anybody. It is about business and Africans can do most of the things Chinese are doing. Africans need them just as they need Africans and let them not think that they are doing anybody a favor on this continent.

They better wake up and smell the coffee or they will trigger a bomb that will cost them their business and citizens. It is worthwhile commending efforts by the African Union to ensure that Chinese put an end to their molestation of Africans.

However, the population will not be waiting forever for diplomacy which is always slow to fix things. The people of Africa are angry and the Chinese must be prompt to end their harassment of Africans, failure of which a huge storm may come the way of their citizens in Africa.

The anger and frustration of Chinese misconduct can be felt in Africa. The Chinese must avoid any bloodshed. The ball is in their court.

Africans are hospitable, but they won’t let others to look down on them. Times have changed. The new generation of Africans may not accept what their parents have accepted for decades. It is time to use better ways to check the spread of the virus in China. A display of racism will not address the issue. It will only pit Chinese against Africans. This should be avoided.

By Dr Arrey Joachim

Cameroon Concord News Group