In both Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun, criminal gangs and politicians have been quietly trading money and favours for mutual gains. For 37 years, thugs like Paul Atanga Nji, YCPDM National President Prince John Akwo Mukete, the late Nelson Fomenky, Battey Johnson and the late Mayor Ekema Patrick flourished while elected officials thrived. However, the citizens have always been on the losing side.

Today, the mobile phone of Minister Paul Atanja Nji who is wanted by the French Cameroun Special Criminal Court is ringing. And ringing. Most of the callers are candidates for the February 2020 municipal and parliamentary elections, seeking the kind of help that the gangster Paul Atanga Nji is uniquely qualified to provide.

Paul Atanga Nji isn’t a slick campaign strategist. He’s a French Cameroun gang leader who hails from Southern Cameroons and, for two decades, a CPDM grass root baron who now operates as Minister of Territorial Administration and has deep contacts inside Etoudi and the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo’s complex network of politicians and French Cameroun military gangs. The calls coming to Minister Paul Atanga Nji are all inquiring candidates wanting to know: “How much they need to pay and who do they need to pay the money to so they can get elected?

Minister Paul Atanga Nji, the renowned Samuel Eto’o and I were in a recent flight to French Cameroun!! Majority in the plane shared a conversation with Eto’o but ignored Atanga Nji who was a candidate in the Mezam CPDM race sometime ago and brought in a decent man Cletus Matoya to be his protégé.

Paul Atanga Nji has helped broker meetings between the Biya Francophone regime and at least two Southern Cameroons gang representatives in Nigeria, Dr Success Nkongho and General Nambere.  The gang representatives from Nigeria were former front line Ambazonia activists who had walked away from day-to-day thug life, but are still respected on the streets in Yaoundé but can no longer wield enough influence to the Southern Cameroons revolution.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Ever since the abduction and extradition of the Southern Cameroons leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides in Abuja, Nigeria and the emergence of Pastors Samuel Ikome, Chris Anu and Success Nkongho as front liners of the Ambazonia struggle and quest for independence, many in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia have come to the conclusion that one must first be a crook to be a pastor.

Southern Cameroonians are tired of the confusions they see on social media coming from these three so-called pastors. To be sure, it needed the intervention of the jailed leader Sisiku Ayuk Tabe who gave Southern Cameroonians a vice president in the person of Dabney Yerima who has successfully redressed and is now speaking-out and directing the Southern Cameroons war of independence.

Prior to the appointment of Vice President Dabney Yerima, there were three pastors running the Ambazonia Interim Government. The disgraced Ikome Sako was Acting President, Bishop John Egyawan was passing for a Defense Secretary and Chris Anu moonlighted as Communications Secretary.  Judging from their time deep within the Ambazonia Interim Government and after they were replaced by the people of Southern Cameroons, we of the Cameroon Concord News Group can now reveal that these so-called men of God have all along been professing Christ and serving the devil.

It’s so unfortunate that Sako, Chris and now Pastor Success Nkongho have fallen this much. Correspondingly, it will also not be wrong to say all of the pastors are now directly or indirectly serving the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé. To be sure, they lack revolutionary message, a huge sign that they were long disconnected from God and the Ambazonia struggle.

These men of God are holding Southern Cameroons children as slaves in their Churches in Nigeria and the US and via social media. Interestingly, they expect Southern Cameroonians not to say anything. We of the Concord Group will continue to sacrifice our time to free the slaves from their Sako IG camps so that they begin to serve the living God and once again be a part of the Ambazonia revolution.

It remains a mystery how the rapid emergence of counterfeit Southern Cameroons pastors such as Samuel Ikome Sako, Chris Anu, “His Lordship Bishop John Egyawan” and Success Nkongho among the Ambazonia leadership ranks went unchecked. This trend has undermined and brought shame to the people of Southern Cameroon, the Ambazonia Interim Government and God the Almighty Father. It has hurt Southern Cameroons citizens genuinely seeking secession from French Cameroun and it is slowly but surely stifling the Ambazonia independence struggle.

Loosely defined, counterfeits are goods and services of inferior quality, packaged in another’s brand name without the brand owner’s authorization, infringing on the trademark, patent or copyright of the genuine product. The Southern Cameroons revolution is under attack in the same way with fake pastors.

The situation has left a trail of destruction in the Southern Cameroons communities both in Ground Zero and in the diaspora where unsuspecting, gullible and impressionable Ambazonians have been robbed of their hard-earned money, their dignity and are dying every day like flies.

The creation of the Bank of Ambazonia and the launching of the Amba Bonds Project as a means of rebuilding confidence among Southern Cameroons donors have given Southern Cameroonians all over the world something to reflect on. While Southern Cameroonians are investing in the bonds, Vice President Dabney Yerima and his cabinet cannot remain unmoved. Comrade Yerima should usher in a tough approach towards the mushrooming of false information and as Martin Luther King Jr said: “To ignore evil is to become an accomplice of it.”

At this point one of the responsible things to do is to educate Southern Cameroonians on the things to watch out for before painting someone as an Ambazonia frontline leader.

Here are a few signs to counter Sako and Chris Anu IG’s deception.

Inability to lead

Sako, Anu, Kometa and Success Nkongho who now constitute the counterfeit Southern Cameroons front liners have made a concerted effort to lead Ambazonians away from Ground Zero and their jailed leaders leaving them revolutionary malnourished with many dropping down their weapons.

‘Fake pastors must go find other jobs’

The Ambazonia Interim Government must enact laws that restrict fake pastors to hold senior cabinet positions. This will of course enable them to follow different careers and get jobs outside the struggle.

Lack of integrity

If more often than not, there are reports questioning the integrity and ways of a revolutionary leader, one has to be concerned. A leader cannot always be in the news or on social media for the wrong reasons. This is typical of Sako, Chris, Kometa and Success.

Insatiable appetite for money

If during a revolution that has claimed the lives of thousands of Southern Cameroonians the leaders who are all Men of God are the only ones living a luxurious life with financial donations from the citizens, there is a reason to be doubtful.

Southern Cameroonians cannot be living in the bushes, open fields, tents or abandoned buildings in Nigeria while the leader is living a lavish life in the USA.

Sako Ikome, Chris Anu and Kometa including Success Nkongho were leaders who presented super-hero personalities in public but are private successful failures.

When electing an Ambazonia leader in your host country in Europe, the US and Canada be sure that the individual has a corporate job, is able to lead himself and his own family well before leading you.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

THE PUBLIC INVESTMENT BUDGET (PIB) AS A TOOL OF SOCIO-POLITICAL DISCRIMINATION.

See the unequitable distribution of the 2020 PIB with gross discrimination in favour of “le pays organisateur”. Year in, year out the same trend.

PIB Budget in 2020 Finance law voted by parliament.

1). Adamawa Region =CFAF 59,417,374

2). Centre Region = CFAF 292,190,870

3). East Region = CFAF 33,433,851

4). Far North = CFAF 73,537,549

5). Littoral Region = CFAF 60,713,801

6). North Region = CFAF 40,240,132

7). North-west Region = CFAF 47,334,675

8). West Region = CFAF 88,620,734

9). South-west Region = CFAF 20,693,320

10). South Region = CFAF 139,643,792
(With Dja & Lobo division alone having CFAF 40.458.679)

Analysis and facts.

▪Dja & Lobe Division alone with CFAF 40 458, 679 doubles the PIB of the South-west Region (CFAF 20,693,320 (with 6 Divisions .
▪South Region (650.000 inhabitants) has almost 7 times the PIB budget of the SW Region. (1.3 million inhabitants)

▪PIB budget for the South Region doubles that of the North-west /South-west put together.

▪PIB South region is 4 times more than that of East Region.

▪PIB budget of Dja et Lobo is CFAF 40,458,679 for a population of 200,000 inhabitants is 26 times more than that of Donga and Mantung Division – CFAF 1,553,820 with a population of 400.000 inhabitants.

▪PIB of Dja & Lobo is almost 8 times that of Fako Division.

A clear demonstration of lack of equity and open promotion of social discrimination.

We would like to start year 2020 by congratulating the people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia for successfully launching the “Ambazonian war of Independence“. Needless to say, the government of La Republique du Cameroun is shaking. This, without any doubt, is proof that the sound of the gun is the only language that the oppressor hears. A position, Vice President Dabney Yerima is currently selling to the Southern Cameroons diaspora.

It is also refreshing and inspiring to note that the international community is now seeing black to black oppression for what it is as the United States of America, Belgium and other Western countries have reportedly told the French Cameroun dictator, Paul Biya to negotiate with the Ambazonia Interim Government and its jailed leadership.

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group are stating here, and unambiguously so, that  soon, and very soon French Cameroun will take a bitter sip from the same cup of violence as the Ambazonia Interim Government begins plans to take the war deep inside French Cameroun territory. That is if the arrogant Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo supremacist government continues to bury its head in the sand in ignorance of the British Southern Cameroons statehood restoration cause.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, the leader of the Ambazonian nation and his Vice President Dabney Yerima have both reminded the consortium of CPDM crime syndicates running French Cameroun that the Ambazonia revolution wheel will never turn backwards. To a majority of the people of Southern Cameroons, war is a necessary evil. Southern Cameroonians will never forgive nor forget the painful history of the Biya French Cameroun genocide and continuous marginalization, hatred and oppression.

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government made some genuine efforts to engage the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo supremacist government in French Cameroun in the most rational, respectful and peaceful manner. But Ambazonians have now learnt a bitter lesson that human rights abusers and oppressors do not deserve any kind of respect.

Instead of doing the right thing, ie to respond to the Notice and arrange a neutral venue where the political elites of the two Cameroons we can sit around the table and discuss peaceful separation of Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun, they Yaoundé regime spent millions of US dollars in Nigeria to arrest and orchestrated the extradition of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides to French Cameroun. The French Cameroun leader and his gang did not stop there!! They have ever since been sending heavily armed French Cameroun state agents to raid and destroy French Cameroun towns and villages killing thousands of innocent women and children.

Independence struggles have many formulas. No one issues the oppressed with a permit to start an armed struggle. It is upon the oppressed who are suffering under the heavy weight of oppression to take matters into their own hands and liberate themselves. There is time for reasoning and talking. The Ambazonian Interim Government and its Vice President have done enough of this in many cities in the West. There is time for action and this is the time.

Look up in the sky and around you and read the writing on the wall. The political climate in Southern Cameroons is changing very fast. If you are a politician or individual earning your salary, wage or commission through selling out the people of Southern Cameroons to the government of French Cameroun one way or another, you are nothing but a traitor!

That means you are a danger to yourself, your children, your family and the Ambazonian nation at large. The principle of the revolution demands that you must be taken out of the community as soon as possible because of the danger you pose. The only sentence for a traitor is death by necklace.

“Wata na wata” and even men like Ekema Patrick who attempted a counter slogan that “wata pass wata” now knows that truly “wata na wata”.

By Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap with files from MLO Secretary for Information and Public Affairs

  The Matabeles in Zimbabwe

Ever since the so-called Swiss Peace Initiative was made public to the international community, several Southern Cameroons civilians have been killed by the French Cameroun army deployed to Ambazonia. Recently, three French Cameroun soldiers were killed in the Northern zone of Ambazonia. The three were reportedly killed in a firefight with the Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces. The three represented the 23^rd and 24^th French Cameroun deaths in Southern Cameroons since the attack on the late Retired General Tataw James convoy en route to Mamfe.

Correspondingly, that’s a modest count compared to the old days when the Manyu Odeshi Warriors and the Red Dragons of Lebialem were actively around in the towns of Mamfe and Fontem and the Great Nso Warriors ran the resistance in Jakiri and French Cameroun army deaths were three times higher. Nonetheless, French Cameroun military deployments have been limited to the urban towns with very little or no involvement in fighting in rural areas.  Still, there’s reason for concern. Through just some few months into the Swiss Peace Initiative, more Southern Cameroonian civilians have been killed than in any year since the revolution started— a peace initiative which was supposed to mark the end of the French Cameroun combat mission in Southern Cameroons.

The latest Southern Cameroons deaths occurred in the midst of ongoing and reportedly intensive and productive discussions between the Swiss government, a Southern Cameroons group known as Sako’s IG, and, to a lesser extent, the Ambazonia Interim Government. To his credit, and based especially on his public statements, the Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima appears serious in his desire to end the more than three year old indecisive French Cameroun war in Southern Cameroons. The complete absence of any French Cameroun delegation appointed by President Biya, the early withdrawal from the talks by Vice President Dabney Yerima and the continues attacks on Southern Cameroons civilians, demonstrate that while Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Ambazonia Interim Government are working from a position of strength as they pursue a “talk-and-resistance” strategy eerily reminiscent of that of the ANC in South Africa, the 11 Grand Masters of the so-called Sako IG are simply seeking for relevance and cheap Ambazonia money.

It’s highly unlikely, if not impossible, for Southern Cameroons to win in any meaningful sense this war of liberation if something is not done and done in a hurry to put an end to this international childishness being demonstrated by the disgraced Samuel Ikome Sako and his gang using a group of half-baked Southern Cameroons intellectuals in the USA. This is obvious as all the empirical evidence, from statements from US lawmakers, members of the UK House of Commons, the African Union, and deliberate neglect by major Southern Cameroons donors’ points to impending Yaoundé victory or perpetual stalemate.

Two recurring problems best explain the poor international image of the Southern Cameroons war of liberation: Sako, Chris Anu and their acolytes serving as anti-anything-President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and Vice President Yerima and the fear that Southern Cameroons may just be another South Sudan.  This is why the 11 Grand Masters in Maryland are still trading the Swiss Peace Initiative to many ill-informed Southern Cameroonians while the Ambazonia Interim Government including Vice President Dabney Yerima long found the Swiss peace talks both insulting and intellectually bereft.

Leaving aside all the high-level, macro analysis and wealth of available information being put out there by the renowned Boh Herbert, the one million dollar question is: Southern Cameroonians and the Swiss are talking in Geneva, but is anyone in Yaoundé listening?

Day-by-day, the French Cameroun army is flooding in more troops and stationing them in key Southern Cameroons locations and the Ambazonia Restoration Forces are essentially under siege and facing daily attacks often within sight of their camps.  It is shameful that young Southern Cameroons boys and girls are in Ground Zero desperate to break the French Cameroun army siege, protect women and children including the old and the sick, and resist just a bit more for help to come from the Amba Bonds Project and others in the diaspora passing for front line leaders are instead playing dangerous political games with some like Cho Ayaba creating local militia, arming and paying them, and positioning them (with Francophone advisers) in Southern Cameroons villages.

Like Dr Cho Ayaba of the ADF, Minister Paul Atanga Nji of French Cameroun is also empowering local warlords, favoring some Southern Cameroons tribal fighters over others and Southern Cameroonians who are putting themselves first before the resistance are indirectly helping the French Cameroun surrogate.

Most of the Ambazonia semi illiterates that were  incorporated into the defunct Restoration Council headed by Mr. Kometa have transformed into warlord-led militias in Europe and the US and are using social media to send out wrong signals about the Ambazonia Vice President and the Interim Government in Ground Zero now littered with locally controlled armed bands.  And slowly but surely, Ground Zero is beginning to view as illegitimate anything coming from the diaspora with whom they had far more in common under President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe.

The whole charade of people seeking attention and staging swearing-in ceremonies and issuing medals of honour to cronies and publicizing them on social media has left many both in Ground Zero and in the diaspora frustrated, angry, and, finally, deeply disoriented which is why we of the Cameroon Concord News Group find the whole conversation over the Swiss peace talks a little ridiculous, and very absurd. To be accurate, shameful, disgusting and disgraceful!

The only reason why the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is still in this war since the arrest of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides in Nigeria is the character and determination of this new generation of Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero who understand that the French Cameroun military cannot win, cannot even marginally alter the outcome in troubled Southern Cameroons and to a greater extend the poor handling of the crisis by French Cameroun’s 86 year old President Biya and his Beti Ewondo kinsmen.

Maybe President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe will actually be the one to end Southern Cameroons’s longest war; maybe he won’t. But what is actually passing for a Swiss Peace Initiative in Geneva will not change anything in Southern Cameroons. The civil war will wage on, the Ambazonia Interim Government under Comrade Dabney Yerima’s stewardship will generally emerge triumphant. Thus, when Southern Cameroonians finally get to Buea, whether soon or years from now, expect most Ambazonians to target men and women like Sako Ikome, Chris Anu, Elvis Kometa and Irene Ngwa.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé is directly responsible for crimes against humanity in English speaking Cameroon now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.  The Francophone dominated government; its military and the French Cameroun elite force also known as the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) including the National Gendarmerie Service and Amba Boys the Yaoundé regime arms and supports have committed numerous atrocities on the civilian populations in the entire Southern Cameroons.

The Francophone soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons are overseeing and directly participating in massacres, summary executions of civilians-including women and children – burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the people of Akwaya in Manyu, Aghem in Menchum and Nso in Bui. The Cameroon government army has killed several Roman Catholic priests, An American Missionary and a sea of Christian Pastors.

The Biya government and its Amba Boys have killed thousands of Southern Cameroonians – often in cold blood, raped women, and destroyed villages, food stocks and other supplies essential to the civilian population. They have driven close to a hundred thousand Southern Cameroons civilians, mostly farmers, into camps in neighboring Nigeria where they live on the very edge of survival.  More than half a million have fled into the bushes but the vast majority of war victims remain trapped inside French Cameroun cities such as Douala, Baffoussam and Yaoundé.

This conflict has international historical roots but escalated some three years ago when the Biya regime used excessive force on Anglophone teachers and lawyers who were demanding an abrupt halt to chronic economic marginalization, respect for the Anglo-Saxon system of education and the Common Law. They also sought government action to end Francophone dominance in Anglophone districts.

The Biya Francophone regime responded to the ‘lawyers-teachers’ demands by targeting the Southern Cameroons civilian populations.  The Yaoundé government brazenly engaged in its policy of manipulation by reintroducing the North West/South West Divide tactics which was designed to put the Anglophones of Bantu and semi Bantu extraction at daggers-drawn positions with the Anglophones of the Grass field known as the Tikars. The Francophone military was deployed in their thousands to Southern Cameroons and President Biya, backed by French Cameroun elites of his ruling CPDM crime syndicate has been providing effective impunity for all the crimes they are committing.

The Cameroon government army partnership with what is now known as the Atanga Nji Amba Boys is characterized by joint attacks on civilians rather than on the Ambazonia Restoration Forces. These attacks are staged to force the Southern Cameroons population to develop a kind of trust on the Francophone regime in Yaoundé.

All Cameroon government attacks in Southern Cameroons towns and villages have decimated farming communities, with death tolls estimated by the Ambazonia leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe as more than 20,000 with most unrecorded.

The Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian Churches that were in a better position to document abuses in rural areas previously well-populated like Kembong in Manyu, Fontem in Lebialem, Wum in Menchum, Jakiri in Bui and Ndop have withdrawn several revered fathers and Pastors due to killings and kidnappings sponsored by the Francophone regime in Yaoundé. The leadership of these two strong Christian churches has been also consistently inconsistent with their positions ever since the beginning of the conflict.

With some few exceptions, the rural areas in Southern Cameroons are now empty. Everything that can sustain life – houses, livestock, food stores, TV and radio sets have been looted or destroyed by Francophone soldiers. Villages all over Southern Cameroons have been torched not randomly, but systematically – often not once, but twice.

The huge Francophone army presence sometimes with helicopters in the burned rural areas, and in burned and abandoned villages, has driven Southern Cameroons civilians into the bushes and the poorly paid and badly fed troops who speak only the French language kill, rape, and pillage – even stealing emergency relief items – with impunity.

Despite international calls for investigations into allegations of gross human rights abuses in Southern Cameroons, the regime in Yaoundé backed by Francophone African diplomats deep within the African Union headed by Chad’s Moussa Faki and the French government of President Emmanuel Macron has responded by denying any abuses while attempting to manipulate and stem information leaks.

Yaoundé has strategically been keeping an Anglophone as prime minister and head of government with no powers than to read from scripts provided by the Biya Francophone regime. The Prime Minister’s role is to limit reports from Southern Cameroons in the national press, restrict international media access to Southern Cameroons and host UN, Francophinie, Commonwealth and African Union leaders in five star hotels in the nation’s capital Yaoundé and both former prime minister Philemon Yang and now Dr Dion Ngute have tried to obstruct the flow of Southern Cameroons refugees into Nigeria and Francophone Cameroun.

For close to four years into the conflict, no high-level UN or European Union assessment team has been permitted to enter Southern Cameroons. The 86 year old President Paul Biya and his gang of French Cameroun political elites have promised unhindered humanitarian access, but have failed to deliver.

With counterfeit municipal and parliamentary elections coming up in February 2020, the Biya regime has reportedly intensified its genocidal campaign and continuing human rights abuses in Southern Cameroons.  The United States government has cut Cameroon from a trade pact over allegations of human rights violations.

President Donald Trump said the West African nation failed to address concerns over its “persistent gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” allegedly committed by Cameroon’s security forces.

The US also cut more than $17 million in security aid and support to Cameroon in February over concerns about its human rights record. And lately, 9 US lawmakers wrote to President Biya urging the dictator to seek a peaceful end to the conflict in Southern Cameroons.

Thousands of Southern Cameroons civilians could die in the bushes from lack of food and from disease within the next six months.

The international community, which so far has been very slow to exert all possible pressure on the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime to reverse the ethnic cleansing and end the associated crimes against humanity it has carried out, must act now.

President Donald Trump should take urgent measures to ensure the protection of Ambazonian civilians, decree the unrestricted delivery of humanitarian assistance and reverse ethnic cleansing in Southern Cameroons. It will soon be too late.

By Asu Isong and  Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Three weeks after reports that Cameroon had blocked the internet in English-speaking parts of the country, residents say services have yet to be restored. So what is going on?

Cameroonians have little doubt that pulling the plug on internet services for about 20% of the population is an intentional act by the government.

The two regions affected, South-West and North-West, have seen anti-government protests in recent months.

Just a day before services disappeared, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued in which it warned social media users of criminal penalties if they were to “issue or spread information, including by way of electronic communications or information technology systems, without any evidence”.

The statement also confirmed that the authorities had sent text messages direct to mobile phone subscribers, notifying them of penalties, including long jail terms, for “spreading false news” via social media.

A number of Cameroonians have posted screenshots on Twitter showing the various warnings they were sent.

There has been no official comment about the internet since then (or any credible reports of technical faults) leading many Cameroonians to conclude that the severing of services is part of government attempts to stifle dissent.

What do the mobile phone companies say?

In criticising their government, some Cameroonians have also taken aim at the mobile phone companies who provide the services through which many access the internet.

These firms may not have been able to prevent the outage, since they all rely on fibre-optic infrastructure provided by a state-owned company, but nor have they been objecting publicly about the interruption to their services.

The biggest provider, MTN Cameroon, denied it had violated customer privacy by forwarding the ministry‘s warning texts and added that all its services remained accessible. That was and since then it has not commented.

Some subscribers say they have since received messages referring to “circumstances beyond our control”.

There has been no comment by Orange Cameroun, Nexttel or Vodafone Cameroon.

What has been the effect of cutting internet services?

Much of Cameroon‘s digital economy is located around the South-West capital, Buea – an area known as Silicon Mountain.

Some entrepreneurs and their workforces are reported to have relocated temporarily to Douala or Yaounde where the internet is available.

Less mobile, digital-dependent businesses will be suffering.

The outage is also reported to have hit the banking system, causing cashflow problems for businesses and individuals.

A week ago campaign group that blocking access to the internet over the previous two weeks had cost businesses up to $723,000 (£570,000).

That may not sound very much now, but the long-term cost of damaging the area‘s digital ecosystem could be very much higher.

And then there are the unquantifiable social costs entailed in cutting channels of communication and entertainment.

The United Nations has said internet access is now a basic human right. Cameroonians with access to Twitter have been tweeting their opposition to the outage using the hashtag #BringBackOurInternet.

Why is this an issue only in English-speaking areas?

It follows a period of rising tensions in which long-held grievances of English speakers against the government have erupted into protests and strikes.

The protesters say that Anglophones are discriminated against by Cameroon‘s French-speaking majority.

Last November, and at least one person was shot dead in demonstrations over the use of French in courts and schools.

In January, over the issue, turning the main city in Cameroon‘s North-West region into a ghost town.

The government responded by and warning against protests and “malicious use of social media”.

English speakers in Cameroon say they are often excluded from top civil service jobs and that many government documents are published only in French, even though English is an official language.

English-speaking lawyers object to the employment of French-trained court workers who do not understand the English common law system.

Residents also object to the posting of teachers who do not speak good English to the region‘s schools.

Why is the country divided along language lines?

The official language or languages of African nations are usually a legacy of their colonial past.

Cameroon was colonised by Germany in the 19th Century and then split into British and French areas after World War One.

Later, areas controlled by Britain and France joined to form Cameroon after the colonial powers withdrew in the 1960s.

In 1961, a referendum was held in the previously British areas – Southern Cameroons voted in favour of joining a unitary Cameroonian state, while Northern Cameroons decided instead to become part of neighbouring, English-speaking Nigeria.

A secessionist movement, the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), emerged in the 1990s and has been banned.

How widespread are internet shutdowns in Africa?

There have been many other in the past 12 months, including in Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Morocco and Uganda.

This is generally seen as an attempt to stop opposition activists from using social media to mobilise protests, although governments say it is to prevent violence, or to stop people circulating false election results.

Human rights groups have said such action probably violates international law and should “”.

Deji Olukotun, senior global advocacy manager at Access Now, : “As more people use the internet and social media, they are also increasingly enjoying the freedom and opportunity these provide to organise themselves and advocate for what they want.

“In response, it seems governments are shutting down the net more often to stop this practice.”

Culled from Wellston Journal

 If given the opportunity again by the United Nations, Southern Cameroonians will overwhelmingly vote for independence. They actually do not want anything more to do with the shambles of today’s La Republique du Cameroun, whose head of state goes on holiday and stays in a five star hotel in Geneva for nine months during worst political crises.

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government and its leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is absolutely correct to reassure Ambazonians of their right to secede from La Republique du Cameroun. It is common knowledge that the supreme civil right is that to self-government, and the inferior tier of a federation is entitled to claim it, not the superior one to permit.

Southern Cameroons has now accepted the Ambazonia Interim Government unchallenged for 4 years. The exiled administration controls the entire rural areas of the territory, while support for independence is growing even among pro Yaoundé Southern Cameroonians.

The 86 year old French Cameroun dictator, Paul Biya and his acolytes are still thinking that Yaoundé has the authority to choose who to speak to in Southern Cameroons and who they should respect. That is exactly what the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime has been doing for 36 years.  They are choosing to ignore the Ambazonia Interim Government and its leadership and the consequences have been far reaching.

This crisis is a Restoration’s opportunity. Not much is certain in Yaoundé these days. No-dealers are fighting with no-confidencers. French Cameroun political elites are at daggers-drawn positions. The SDF, MRC and the ruling CPDM crime syndicate are fighting with national unity-all trying to get that taxi to the Etoudi palace. It is chaos.

Yaoundé now faces precisely the dilemma that confronted Sudan under Omar el Bashir: negotiate with the Ambazonia Interim Government, or face a break-up of La Republique du Cameroun.

Only one thing seems sure. In the coming 2020, either before or after the February counterfeit municipal and parliamentary elections, the economic side of the Southern Cameroons crisis ignored by the Francophone regime in Yaoundé will be able to hold French Cameroun to ransom mindful of the fact that investors in the world have very low appetite for Cameroon’s debt and corruption for which the government is known is making it hard for foreign money to make its way into the country’s economy.

Biya is a prominent member in a long line of French surrogate leaders determined to infuriate Africans and who do not think properly. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group are simply saying that Yaoundé has ignored the progressive disintegration of the giant of the Sub Saharan Africa. While bilingual countries in the world have steadily prospered, French Cameroun and its political leadership have wasted 57 years trying to assimilate British Southern Cameroonians. Through persistent, bumbling misrule it has alienated the so-called Anglophone CPDM elites, and fuelled the fires of separatism.

The ensuing bloodshed is going to lead to total independence in the nearest future if Biya is not removed from power. Southern Cameroons separatism, previously unthinkable has surged overnight and spending millions of US dollars to get President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides abducted and forcefully repatriated to Yaoundé had not worked.

State radio and television may continue to tell Southern Cameroonians that they are better off under Yaoundé and its FCFA. But Ambazonians are now more concerned with national identity, pride, self-reliance and local accountability.

A majority of Southern Cameroonians now support independence after Biya’s poor outing in France

Southern Cameroons has more population than Equatorial Guinea, with much the same resources, better infrastructure and talent. Once it was richer than Chad and even Benin Republic. Today its GDP per person is below one dollar a month with millions living far below the UN poverty line.

History teaches us that people who have pulled out of some funny political fabrications, have enjoyed small-state autonomy, and clearly prospered from it and are rich and happy.

Sooner or later, the French government backing the genocidal campaign going on in Southern Cameroons will be forced to grow up and recognise that French Cameroun has sacrificed the right to rule the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Southern Cameroonians are gone already! So, Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate should take the initiative and prepare a fiscal and legislative independence package; one that withdraws Anglophone MPs from the French Cameroun National Assembly and sees the Federal Republic of Ambazonia join the African Union, but keeps travel and citizenship ties in place.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai