Editorial

9, July 2025

Political paralysis has gripped Yaoundé and it is now at a dangerous crossroads ⁰

It is difficult to say where the political chaos in Yaoundé will lead us to after very powerful political leaders from the North announced they were no longer with President Biya. It is hard to predict.

Some of Biya’s men in government are still protesting against the North and struggling to handle pressure coming from Barrister Akere Muna and Professor Maurice Kamto.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Ministers Issa Tchiroma, Bello Bouba and Mey have told loyalists to leave Yaoundé and head back to the North.

Political paralysis has gripped Cameroon and the October presidential election is fast approaching.

Biya and his Beti-Ewondo political elites have been in control for 42-years and now there are extraordinarily deep fissures with rival Fulani and Hausa parties – loyal to the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo.

The Minister-Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh with no experience of the Cameroon political story is trying to form a new coalition and breaking with the tradition that government formation and electioneering is simply the prerogative of the head of state.

Southern Cameroonians have already told Francophones to get out of their land and anger is now rising in the West and in the North.

Ngoh Ngoh is taking the last kicks of a dying horse and in doing so; he is attempting to justify the unjustifiable!

Followers of influential Minister Issa Tchiroma were not faced with tear gas and stun grenades during their political rally in Garoua recently but there’s nervousness about where this issue could lead.

The Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia crisis continues to ravage the country but the threats coming from the North and the Bamilekes seems to be intra-sectarian. The spectre of further violence hangs heavy.

In many ways, what is presently going on in Cameroon is really a power play for the spoils that come from the levers of government. It’s not a spontaneous people’s uprising.

National Assembly speaker Cavaye Djibril is appealing for restraint and de-escalation but what is happening in La Republique du Cameroun reflects the profound instability of a political system of government that was set up to serve one man-92-year-old President Biya.

Cameroon is at a dangerous crossroads.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

9, July 2025

October Presidential Election: Yaoundé has a Paul Biya problem ⁰

It began when the 92-year-old leader peed on his trousers, including on his shoes on the May 20 Boulevard in Yaoundé, the nation’s capital. Biya had refused to make the trip to Yaoundé from Mvomeka’a for the celebration but was forced to do so by his wife Chantal Biya and her acolytes in government.

Biya, the political disaster that has been around for forty-two years has recorded an excellent backward trend performance during his tenure as chief executive.

The ruling CPDM Chairman and his men set fire to every profitable government corporation that was established by the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo and corruption and dwindling profits became their hallmark.

Recent efforts led by Minister Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh to run a tribal crime syndicate that guarantees his continued stay in power are coming up short. And all this is producing tension. But it is now becoming something more brutal: a cacophony of politicians from the Northern regions outlining the myriad ways in which they dislike the 92-year-old President Biya.

Complaints have come from Minister Issa Tchiroma, who recently told the Cameroonian people that Biya is a finished man and no longer in command. They have also come from Bello Bouba Maigari who complained about the poor running of state affairs.

The mutiny deep within the ruling CPDM crime syndicate has become so open that those grousing no longer even bother to do it in private. According to Cameroon Intelligence Report sources, a group of senior government ministers including Prime Minister Dion Ngute and Justice Minister Laurent Esso are now complaining about President Biya’s shortcomings in the presence of prominent CPDM Central Committee members in Yaoundé.

Even primary school pupils are getting in on the act with several of them saying that they want to see a new head of state.

Biya’s delayed announcement on the October presidential election is now the butt of jokes.

Only Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Paul Atanga Nji and Biya’s wife Chantal still think Cameroon should be run by a living corpse. As I write, it is increasingly embarrassing for everyone in the CPDM including the Southern Cameroons comedians that their boss His Excellency President Paul Biya is being laughed at in rarefied circles, and that even his kinsmen and women now see him unfit for office.

The current situation in Cameroon is evidence of leadership failure. The question now is whether to push the idiot out before October or get a decent man like Barrister Akere Muna to challenge him.

We of the Concord Group think that Biya has no defense because his performance over a 42-year period has been dreadful. It is hard in Cameroon today to ask the question “what is the problem?” because everything is the problem!

Anti Bamileke, anti Tchiroma and anti Bello Bouba ranting is not enough to save Biya! Let him go and go now! It is no longer enough to say the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow and when the young people disagree with the corrupt leadership, they are forced to leave the country. This is exactly what is happening in Cameroon.

All of Biya’s partners in Southern Cameroons, West region and now the North have left saying that he is no longer capable of governing the country. Even more concerning is that the list includes many who were considered die-hard Biya loyalists. Even if the ruling CPDM party decides to oust Mr Biya, they do not have a clear successor. The problem with waiting to see how things develop in Yaoundé is that a young and inexperienced soldier might stage a coup and make things more complicated.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

30, June 2025

Issa Tchiroma cannot lead the future. He must answer to the past ⁰

As Cameroon nears a historic presidential election, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a man whose career has been steeped in the noxious stew of breathtaking hypocrisy and betrayal, has now emerged, astonishingly, as a self-proclaimed savior of Cameroon. Tchiroma, for decades, was Biya’s most shameless apologist, the regime’s voice-box and ideological attack dog, who now seeks to unshackle himself from the very chains he spent years tightening around the Cameroonian people. Tchiroma did not merely serve the despotic Biya regime. He defended it with unmatched zeal, rationalizing repression and denying atrocities with unflinching composure. He wasn’t merely complicit; he was instrumental. He did not seek truth; he spun brazen lies. He did not serve the people; he served power. Now, with Biya’s dynasty on life support -its 93-year-old patriarch facing creeping senility, hidden behind curtains of frailty, health comorbidities, and palace intrigues – Tchiroma seeks to disown the house he helped burn, by rebranding himself before the regime’s final collapse.

After decades as the poster child of Biya’s oppressive regime, Tchiroma resigned his ministerial post in Biya’s ossified government and now seeks the highest office in the land. But make no mistake: this is not repentance – it is repositioning. Tchiroma is not a man who made mistakes. This is a man who made a career out of betrayal and political treachery. So, let history record it plainly: Issa Tchiroma Bakary is not a reformer. He is not a rebel. He is not the antidote to Biyaism. He is Biyaism’s final mutation! He is not the answer to Cameroon’s problems. He is the echo of its betrayal. Most importantly, he is not the man to bury Biya’s legacy. He is Biya incarnate – just seventeen years younger and infinitely more vicious and cynical. He who dined with the devil for decades cannot declare himself a priest at the devil’s funeral.

A Life Built on Betrayal

Tchiroma’s career has been one long performance of vaulting ambition without conscience. In a stunning display of arrogance, rife with irony and audacity, the 75-year-old former Minister of Labor and Vocational Training, began his campaign for the October 2025 presidential elections, cloaked in the language of change. But let us be clear: Tchiroma is the past pretending to be the future. His cynical political metamorphosis is not a profile in courage, speaking truth to power. It is political choreography. This is not a new dawn; it is the desperate rebranding of a loyal architect of repression; the voice of a man choking on the smoke of his own arson. His 24-page manifesto, promising federalism, jobs, and reform, is not a vision. It reads like a national obituary; an epitaph for his long-dead credibility. He calls the regime “broken.” But he was its spine. He says the people were betrayed. But he wielded the dagger. He says Cameroon needs healing. But he poured the poison. To hear Tchiroma speak today is to watch an arsonist lecture on fire safety. The hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling, incomprehensible, and devoid of any perfunctory exaggeration.

Tchiroma was the velvet voice of a brutal state. From 2009 to 2018, he served as Cameroon’s Minister of Communication; a post he wielded not to inform, but to distort. As a spokesman for Biya’s regime, Tchiroma did not merely obscure truth – he rewrote it. He legitimized repression, and glorified tyranny. He trafficked in propaganda with clinical detachment, rationalizing the regime’s failures, human rights abuses, and corrupt excesses. His every press briefing was a master class in sycophancy and state-sponsored deception. This was not ignorance; it was strategy. Tchiroma did it for power; he did it for the money! Yet, in a brazen contempt for the people, Tchiroma has offered no remorse or apologies. Not for the blood-soaked years. And in perhaps the most egregious display of moral bankruptcy, Tchiroma has never explained the embezzlement of the compensation for the victims of the 2008 Kenya Airways Flight 507 crash at Mbanga Pongo. To rob the dead is to lose any claim to the living.

The Grand North Remembers

Strategically, Tchiroma’s pivot to the Grand North – his home turf – is no accident. For decades, the region – battered by poverty, battered by Boko Haram insurgency, battered by deliberate neglect – has been treated not as a constituency, but as a voting reservoir to be drained at will. Among its principal architects of economic ruin and stagnation is none other than Tchiroma. With succession battles simmering within the ruling CPDM, the Grand North, long a loyal CPDM voting bloc, is now splintering and looks ripe for political realignment. Tchiroma hopes to position himself as its new patriarch, displacing Biya loyalists and rival power brokers like Bello Bouba Maigari. Tchiroma seeks to rebrand himself as a savior of the North, even as his legacy there is one of abandonment, elitism, and duplicity. Tchiroma is a man who stood guard while his region was turned into a militarized wasteland. His appeal to the Fulbe and northern electorate is not rooted in love; it is rooted in a cynical calculation, a desperate gamble for political oxygen in a region where his name stinks of political opportunism.

But the Grand North remembers; the Grand North remembers how Garoua, Tchiroma’s hometown, remains underdeveloped while he hobnobbed in Yaoundé. The Grand North remembers Tchiroma’s cold indifference to Boko Haram’s terror and how its youth were left to die in fields of war. It remembers Tchiroma’s silence. It remembers his complicity. Tchiroma did not merely serve under Paul Biya – he bent the truth until it broke for him. He became the regime’s most fluent mouthpiece, defending crimes against the people with a pathological liar’s cadence and a sycophant’s conviction. And where did this defense echo loudest? In the Grand North; where his silence on Boko Haram’s onslaughts and his complicity in Yaoundé’s starvation of the region became thunderously damning.

The Political Math Doesn’t Add Up

So, let the record scream: Tchiroma’s candidacy is not a rupture. It is residue. Tchiroma is not a leader; he is a chameleon, changing colors to survive. Sensing the collapse of Biya’s fortress, he crawls from the ruins, painting himself in the colors of dissent, and whispering to the wind that he has changed – that he now hears the cries he once ignored, sees the suffering he once mocked, and seeks to fix the very nation he helped mutilate. Even if Tchiroma were to secure a fractured northern bloc, it is unlikely to yield enough momentum to push him past more widely accepted opposition figures like Maurice Kamto, although Kamto’s shadow is fossilized in the architecture of Biya’s failed regime.

In truth, even if he fractures the northern vote, he cannot unite it. Even if he utters the language of change, he cannot embody it. You cannot ask for trust from a nation you helped silence. Tchiroma is not the future; and does not represent change. He represents a final, desperate mutation of the old order – a regime ghost draped in the fabric of reform. His candidacy is not a rebirth. It is a warning.

Cameroon Deserves Better Than an Unrepentant Traitor

Let us not mistake opportunism for courage. Tchiroma’s departure from government is not an act of defiance – it is an escape route. The ship is sinking, and the rats are fleeing, out of survival instinct. The youth, the Anglophones, the jobless millions – they are not waiting for a man who defended dictatorship until it became inconvenient. They are not waiting for a fossil of the old regime. Tchiroma’s gambit may inject volatility into the election, but let no one mistake his candidacy for a national rebirth. It is the final act of a consummate political chameleon, who knows only how to adapt to survive, never to serve.

Cameroon must remember, and the Grand North must remind itself: not all who speak the language of change carry its spirit. Tchiroma’s candidacy is a mask stretched over a scarred face. To hand he the presidency would not be to escape the Biya regime. It would be to extend its life by other means. Let the Grand North rise – but let it rise with clean hands and clear vision, not under the banner of a man whose loyalty was always for sale, and whose conscience always arrived too late.

Cameroon is at an inflection point. The imminent end of Biya’s four-decade dictatorship presents a rare opportunity for national renewal. But let us not confuse opportunism with bravery. Let us not confuse Tchiroma’s departure from government with dissent. This is not a man who saw the light. This is a man who felt the heat. Tchiroma does not carry the spirit of change. He is the echo of betrayal seeking redemption. But there is no redemption without reckoning. And there is no reckoning led by traitors. There is no future built by the hands that helped destroy the past. So let it be said in every region, repeated and shouted in every dialect: Cameroon deserves better than an unrepentant recycled political hack and CPDM enabler. Let the nation remember him. Let the Grand North remind him. Let the ballot box reject him. Issa Tchiroma cannot lead the future. He must answer to the past.

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai

27, June 2025

Nyene Mawn Palaver and Ndip Joshua Ako ⁰

On the 29th of December 2024, seven members were suspended from the Manyu Women International Association (Nyene Mawn) after they withdrew £23,500 from the meeting reserves without permission.

Over the last six months, these ladies, now known in the Manyu diaspora community as the dodgy seven, have engaged on a campaign of blackmail against the President General of the association, Dr Mrs Patience Abangma who recommended their suspension.

The Dodgy Seven’s newest stunt is to hire an amateur in social media activism with a Manyu name—- Ndip Joshua Ako. Last week, this publication contested in strong terms misrepresentations by the jester and his pay mistresses. After the write-up, Ndip Joshua Ako released a series of wretched smears against the Chairman and Editor-in-chief of the Concord Group.

The purpose of this flat write up is to refocus the conversation. There are three principal points that Ndip Joshua Ako has so far failed to address or challenge from last week’s post and Cameroon Concord News is calling on him to clarify them forthwith. Firstly, he is a container-loader in Sweden with a pitifully undernourished mind. Second, he is a product of the Mondoni Oil Mill/ CDC Camp, so, although he is in possession of a Manyu name, he retains no Manyu tendencies. Third, he has been paid to orchestrate a campaign of deception and blackmail against a grandmother he knows little about.

Ndip Joshua Ako, a man with a wooden and oily face has been told by his relatives that he is a native of Sumbe, a village in Manyu Division that has produced so many champions. His family migrated and settled in a CDC camp in Fako division where Ndip Joshua Ako was presumably conceived. In CDC Camps, where life as painted by Nsanda Eba in the “The Good Foot” was rotten-down-to-earth, Joshua must have learned to smear seventy-something-year-olds.

After leaving South Africa in 2006, Ndip Joshua relocated to Berlin and was sheltered by a respectable Sumbe business woman for obvious reasons. Unable to obtain residence in Germany, Joshua was shipped by his Sumbe sister to Sweden where he now resides. Instead of representing Sumbe with decency and decorum as laid down by the Sumbe Monarch His Royal Highness Chief Ayuk Hope, he has by some strange happenstance become a joke with a Smartphone whose sole purpose is blackmailing of his superiors.

The decision of the corrupt seven to hire Ndip Joshua, who spends all his time on Face Book counting English, has angered many within the Manyu community at home and in the diaspora. The container loader who is struggling to make ends meet in Sweden says he is searching for truth on a topic he is tragically unqualified to tackle. He claims the attack on the earned reputation of a renowned Manyu elder is in the interest of the community, not a campaign of intimidation. Ndip Joshua and his pay mistresses have crossed the reddest of the reds line and are now walking on broken bottles.

Two things may happen in this defining moment. One is that the loud sounding nothing Joshua Ndip may crack under the strain of this public relation disaster of his making and the other is that he may apologize publicly for his madness and stupidity and desist from ever attacking an elder without hard evidence.

So far, people close to him say there has been little sign of him learning from his moment of madness. However, a family member in the US, who spoke to Cameroon Concord News but sued for anonymity, puts that down to him being a slow learner. Another family member in Cameroon said, “Every family has a black sheep but we are so unfortunate to have two and he is one of them. Instead of working hard to support people in our family like many in Europe are doing, he is there making noise on social media. Our family home has been run down for many years; he has done nothing about it.”

Ndip Joshua Ako, a man who counts English as if English language is a numeracy exercise, claimed to have studied in so many universities around the world. However, research into his background shows that he is a professional student who enrolls at universities with the primary purpose of defrauding the student finance system!

According to his social media profile, he has an MSc in Political Science from the SÖDERTÖRNS HÖGSKOLA and another MSc in Environmental Science at the University of Cape Town. He also has in his academic bank a BSc (Hons) in International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in London and a Master of Arts (MA) in Communication for Development at Malmö University. Finally, he has an MSc in Political Science at Stockholm University. In one of his social media attack on my person, he stated that he has three First Degrees and two Masters Degrees!! But with all of these, Ndip Joshua Ako still possesses the working vocabulary and brain power of a nine-year-old.

Interestingly, there is some good news here and it is that Ndip Joshua is the first Manyu man with three First Degrees, two Master Degrees and no PhD yet! Correspondingly, he is the only Manyu man who thinks football clubs in Europe are NGOs. We all should not be surprised that this intellectual eunuch will pop up over the next few years with those hopeless online PhDs that are the hallmark of Mondoni Oil Mill and CDC Camp children.

His claim that football clubs in Sweden and other European countries are non-profit organizations betrays some ignorance and portrays him as a successful and prominent academic failure or better still an academic Lilliputian! Even the CPDM subsection president for Mondoni Oil Mill where he hails from is very much aware that football clubs are huge businesses generating profits.

No right thinking person can muster the courage to say Joshua Ndip is 100% Manyu. Some deep within his family have attempted to describe him recently and one of them was quoted as saying “in Britain, he is a Postman or Milkman baby”.

Ndip Joshua should concentrate on improving himself; he should focus on his family back home and be responsible. The problem in Nyene Mawn is real. The fact is, however long, the issues will be resolved. One fact remains, Nyene Mawn does not need Ndip Joshua Ako and his social media antics. This August, Nyene Mawn queens will gather in Paris and a greater Nyene Mawn will emerge that will reveal that Mami Patience Abangma is a woman more sinned against than sinning.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

21, June 2025

Of Dr Patience Abangma, Nyeme Mawn and a certain social media activist ⁰

In many parts of rural Africa in the past, communities gathered every evening in the village square for elders to share wisdom through folk tales.

One of the lessons I took away from these gatherings with numerous senior citizens was that, in African culture, elders are the foundation of knowledge and wisdom, and those who respect great men and women pave the way for their own greatness.

Many in English speaking Cameroon have opined that times have changed and in 2025, values and respect are now elastic concepts. Still, the lack of respect for elders and the contempt for truth within the African structure is now alarming.

In a concerning video circulating on social media by one Joshua Ndip aka Ashu, unfounded allegations were made about a respectable Manyu citizen in the UK.

Dr Mrs Patience Abangma is a Cameroonian woman with solid personal, comprehensive private, academic and social accomplishments achieved over forty years in the United Kingdom.

Cameroon Concord News Group found the videotape unintelligent, incoherent and disturbing. Consequently, we opened an investigation into the motives of the author and those behind the criminal syndicate suspended from Nyene Mawn.

There are more than 30 Manyu women associations in the western world.

MOHWA, Manyu Women UK, Nyene Mawn, Manyu Daughters of Ireland, MOWA, Eyumema just to name a few and in all these assemblies, there are always misunderstandings and differences.

Nyene Mawn, a strong Manyu women’s group founded in 2024 by Dr Mrs Patience Abangma with hundreds of new Manyu generation ladies in Europe has recorded challenges that resulted to a kind of acrimonious relation deep within its ranks.

Breaking up a community meeting is a favourite Manyu pastime and Nyene Mawn is no different. Today, every Manyu village has a registered association in Europe begging Manyus and friends of Manyu for money.

This media house has uncovered that the six Nyene Mawn so-called chapter leaders who were suspended from the association on charges of theft and embezzlement have refused to leave the main group silently and peacefully.

The video on Face Book claims that Dr Mrs Abangma has intellectual property rights for Nyene Mawn. This claim is laughable as it is evident that the presenter presumably a container-loader somewhere in Sweden does not have a mastery of IP laws, patent procedures and the regulations governing the registration of businesses or meetings in Europe. It is obvious from the video that the said Joshua Ndip lacks the requisite intellectual aptitude to deal with the IP topic.

Our investigation found that the disgraced suspended Nyene Mawn members are desperate to keep using the Nyene Mawn brand but because Dr Patience Abangma has registered the group in the European Union already, they are facing enormous difficulties to realise their dodgy goals.

Frankly speaking, Nyene Mawn is a breakaway group from MOHWA. So, why does the breakaway gang from Nyene Mawn not leave peacefully and just create their new group?

A former MOHWA member in the city of Coventry who spoke on condition of anonymity hinted Cameroon Concord News Group that “the suspended Nyene Mawn women cannot organise a successful drinking session in a pub. They have never managed successful households and therefore cannot lead associations. They are loud jokes”

The maxim that starting a meeting is easy and hard to maintain cannot be overemphasised here. The disgraced members of Nyene Mawn saw their vision as an escape route but they have now been caught in the pangs of a monster they themselves created! They thought forming a new group was a cakewalk. None of them in that disgraced camp was raised up in Manyu Division! They are products of the numerous CDC Camps and Mondoni Oil Mill who lack the basic decency of respect for elders that every Manyu child that God in his infinite image created and planted in the Manyu constituency has!

The recruitment of another CDC Manyu social media activist extremely lacking in communication finesse remains shameful, disgusting and disgraceful.

In his video, Joshua Ndip, who is currently eking out a living in Sweden and who speaks all his English in the past tense said Dr Mrs Abangma had not achieved anything in Europe after forty years.

As a Manyu son raised up in Mamfe the chief town in Manyu Division, I want to draw his attention to the fact that Mrs Abangma has five children who are all graduates from Russel Group universities in Britain, with three of them in possession of master’s degrees. While we are at it, this failure of a woman has a daughter who studied at the University of Sorbonne before being called to the Bar Council of England and Wales, and Cameroon. These academic facts mean nothing to Joshua Ndip and his pay mistresses because success to them is the loading of containers and the driving of flashy cars.

Joshua Ndip, a man whose family home in Cameroon is dilapidated and infested with vermin is now in possession of a loudspeaker and a smartphone. He needs to invest time to improve their family home before talking about development in Manyu and Africa.

How has Mrs Abangma stalled development in Manyu? Over the last few months, Eyumema has been to Mamfe and invested in boreholes, a health centre and solar panels, while MOHWA has invested in school materials for needy children. These are all commendable acts from groups interested in Manyu development and empowerment. What is stopping these fraudsters suspended by Nyene Mawn from doing the same? Instead, they are investing their energy in fighting for a name that has already been registered.

Owning a name does not guarantee followers! Joshua Ndip’s pay mistresses know that people will not follow them because they lack the skillset and integrity required for leadership. Consequently, they have resorted to blackmailing a “seventy-something-year-old woman.” The impunity of the breakaway faction in withdrawing 23,500 Euros from the association’s bank account has encouraged them to take this treacherous and illegal course of coercion. But it will not work!

We of the Concord Group are cautioning that the actions of these CDC Camp and Mondoni Oil Mill children are un-Manyu. Their calculated blackmail is bringing damage to their already battered reputation and women with brains know that they will not be trusted in the future. They must stop now!

If this abuse and blackmail of a Manyu elder continues, the lesson will not be lost. So yes, the pay mistresses behind the empty video can look forward to more doom and gloom as their moves may never bring them what they want.

Let Joshua Ndip aka Ashu go back to loading his containers and take a part-time course in the use of the English language because he found it difficult to deliver a script that was written and given to him. Finally, let the suspended so-called six presidents find a new name and leave Dr Mrs Patience Abangma alone. The mouth of an elder may stink but out of it comes wisdom and true Manyu children have respect for their elders.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

26, May 2025

BBC says ‘Nowhere is safe’ in Southern Cameroons as Ambazonians trapped between separatists and soldiers ⁰

Ngabi Dora Tue, consumed by grief, was barely able to stand on her own.

The coffin of her husband, Johnson Mabia, sat amid a crowd of stricken mourners in Limbe in Cameroon’s South-West region – an area that had witnessed scenes like this many times before.

While on a work trip, Johnson – an English-speaking civil servant – and five colleagues were captured by armed separatists.

The militants were – and still are – fighting for the independence of Cameroon’s two anglophone regions in what is a predominantly francophone country. A near-decade-long conflict that has led to thousands of deaths and stunted life in the area.

When he was abducted four years ago, Dora struggled to reach Johnson. When she eventually heard from separatist militants, they asked for a ransom of over $55,000 (£41,500) to be paid within 24 hours in order to secure his release. Dora then received another call from one of Johnson’s relatives.

“He said… that I should take care of the children. That my husband is no more. I didn’t even know what to do. Tuesday he was travelling, and he was kidnapped. Friday he was killed,” says Dora.

The separatists responsible had not just murdered but decapitated Johnson, and left his body on the road.

AFP Demonstrators march during a protest against perceived discrimination in favour of the country's francophone majority on September 22, 2017 in Bamenda — What began as demonstrations in 2016 and 2017 then escalated into a conflict

The roots of the separatist struggle lie in long-standing grievances that stretch back to full independence in 1961, and the formation of a single Cameroonian state in 1972 from former British and French territories.

Since then the English-speaking minority have felt aggrieved at the perceived erosion of rights by the central government. Johnson was just an innocent by-stander, caught up in an increasingly brutal fight for self-determination and the government’s desperate attempts to stamp out the uprising.

The current wave of violence began almost a decade ago.

In late 2016, peaceful protests started against what was perceived to be the creeping use of the francophone legal system in the region’s courtrooms. The French- and English-speaking parts of Cameroon use different judicial systems.

The protests rapidly spread, and led to a call for the closing of shops and institutions.

The response of the security forces was immediate and severe – people were beaten, intimidated and there were mass arrests. The African Union called it “a deadly and disproportionate use of violence”.

Cameroon’s defence ministry did not respond to requests for comment on this or other issues in this article.

Armed groups were set up. And, in late 2017 as tensions escalated, anglophone separatist leaders declared independence for what they called the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

BBC

We used to wake up in the morning to dead bodies on the streets. Or you hear that a house has been set ablaze”Blaise Eyong
Journalist

To date, five million anglophone Cameroonians have been dragged into the conflict – equivalent to one-fifth of the total population. At least 6,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes.

“We used to wake up in the morning to dead bodies on the streets,” says Blaise Eyong, a journalist from Kumba in the English-speaking South-West region of Cameroon, who has produced and presented a documentary on the crisis for BBC Africa Eye, and was forced from his hometown with his family in 2019.

“Or you hear that a house has been set ablaze. Or you hear that someone was kidnapped. People’s body parts chopped off. How do you live in a city where every single morning you’re worried if your relatives are safe?”

There have been a number of national and international attempts to resolve the crisis, including what the government called “a major national dialogue” in 2019.

Although the talks established a special status for the country’s two anglophone regions which acknowledged their unique history, very little was resolved in practical terms.

Felix Agbor Nkongho – a barrister who was one of the leaders of the 2016 protests and was later arrested – says that with both sides now seeming to act with impunity, the moral high ground has disappeared.

“There was a time… where most people felt that, if they needed security, they would go to the separatists,” he tells BBC Africa Eye.

“But over the last two years, I don’t think any reasonable person would think that the separatists would be the ones to protect them. So everybody should die for us to have independence and I ask the question: who are you going to govern?”

But it is not just the separatists who are accused of abuses.

Organisations such as Human Rights Watch have recorded the brutal response of the security forces to the anglophone independence movement. They have documented the burning of villages and the torture, unlawful arrests and extrajudicial killings of people in a war largely unseen by the outside world.

Examples of state-sponsored brutality are not difficult to find.

A photo of John's hands clasped in his lap. You can't see his face — John, who talked to BBC Africa Eye on condition of anonymity, was tortured and forced into signing a document without being allowed to read its content

John (not his real name) and a close friend were taken into custody by Cameroonian military forces, accused of buying weapons for a separatist group.

John recalls that after being incarcerated, they were given a document which they were told to sign without being given the chance to read its contents. When they refused, the torture began.

“That is when they separated us into different rooms,” says John. “They tortured [my friend]. You could just hear them flogging everywhere. I could feel it on my own body [too]. They beat me everywhere. Later they told me he accepted and signed and they allowed him to go.”

But that was not the truth.

A month after his arrest, another man arrived in John’s cell. He told him that his friend had, in fact, died in the room he had been held and tortured in. Months later John’s case was dropped and he was released without charge.

“I just live in fear because I don’t really know where to start from or where it is safe to start from or how,” says John.

Part of the separatists’ strategy to weaken the state and its security forces is to push for a ban on education which they say is a tool of government propaganda.

In October 2020, a school in Kumba was attacked. No-one claimed responsibility for the atrocity but the government blamed separatists. Men armed with machetes and guns killed at least seven children.

The incident sparked, for a brief moment, international outrage and condemnation.

“Nearly half the schools in this region have been shut,” says journalist Eyong.

“A whole generation of kids is missing out on their education. Imagine the impact this will have for our communities and also for our country.”

A man in shorts and a bullet-proof vest walks along a dirt road, lined with houses, with a Cameroon flag behind him. He is with two others similarly dressed. — John Ewome (R) can be seen patrolling the streets of Buea in anglophone Cameroon looking out for separatists

As if the violence between the government forces and the various separatist groups was not enough, an additional front has opened up in the war. Militant groups in the separatist areas have emerged to fight the Ambazonians in an effort to keep Cameroon united.

A leader of one of these groups, John Ewome (known as Moja Moja), regularly led patrols in the town of Buea in search of separatists until he was arrested in May 2024.

He, too, has been accused of human rights violations, of public humiliation and torturing unarmed civilians thought to be separatist sympathisers. He denies the accusations. “I’ve never laid my hands on any civilian. Just the Ambazonians. And I believe the gods of this land are with me,” he told the BBC.

Meanwhile, the cycle of abductions and killings continue.

Joe (not his real name) was – like Johnson – taken hostage by a separatist group, keen to maintain control through fear – and to cash in.

“I walked into the house, and found my children and my wife on the floor while the commander was sitting in my kitchen with his gun very close. All around me, my neighbour had been taken, my landlord had been taken. So when I saw them, I knew it was my turn,” says Joe.

He was led into the forest with 15 other people where he witnessed the execution of two of his fellow captives. But he was eventually freed after the military discovered the camp.

Johnson was not as lucky and, about two years after his funeral took place, news arrived that neither were his five colleagues kidnapped with him. Their bodies had just been found.

More families will now have to try to come to terms with their enormous loss. For Ngabi Dora Tue, sitting with her young child in her lap, the future feels almost overwhelming.

“I have debts I have to settle I don’t even know how to settle,” she says.

“I thought of selling my body for money. And then I Iook at the shame that would come after, I just have to swallow the difficulty and then push forward. I was very young to become a widow.”

The BBC has asked for a response from the Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF), which claims to be the largest separatist force.

It responded that there are a multiplicity of separatist fighters now operating in the anglophone region.

The ADF said it operates within international law and does not attack government workers, schools, journalists or civilians.

Instead it has blamed individuals and fringe entities acting on their own accord who are not members of the ADF for these attacks.

The group also accuses government infiltrators of committing atrocities while claiming to be Ambazonian fighters to turn the local populations against the liberation struggle.

A map of Cameroon showing the English and French-speaking areas.

19, May 2025

A Suit Is Not Leadership: On the Love of Nation ⁰

In a truly patriotic nation, leadership is measured by service, not by status. But in Cameroon today, the reality is heartbreaking.

Walk into many government offices—grand from the outside, but rotting within. You’ll find cracked walls, broken chairs, dusty files piled high, and toilets that haven’t worked in years. The buildings themselves are a metaphor for the state of governance: neglected, mismanaged, abandoned.

And yet, the men and women who inhabit these spaces wear the finest suits and drive the latest luxury vehicles. They are surrounded by aides and convoys, protected by tinted windows and distance. They wear the uniform of power, but not the spirit of leadership.

This is not love for country. This is love for comfort. Love for self.

True love for nation means putting the people first. It means walking into that same office and asking: What do my people need today? It means sacrificing privilege for progress. It means fixing the broken chair before buying the next luxury car. It means listening more than commanding.

Our leaders were not elected or appointed to decorate themselves. They were called to serve. When that service turns into self-enrichment—when public duty becomes private profit—then what we witness is not governance. It is betrayal.

Cameroon is rich in resources and even richer in people. What we lack is not talent, nor capacity. What we lack is leadership rooted in love.

And so we raise our voices—not out of hate, but out of hope. Because to speak out against injustice, decay, and indifference is the greatest form of patriotism. It is because we love this country that we demand better. It is because we believe in her future that we hold her leaders accountable.

A true leader wears the weight of the people before they wear a suit. A true patriot walks with the nation, not above it.

Cameroon deserves no less.

Barrister Agbor Balla

8, May 2025

Canticum Africae – The Case for the First Black Pope ⁰

On Saturday, April 26, 2025, the earth reclaimed a humble servant of God. Pope Francis, the great bridge-builder, the pilgrim of mercy, now rests with the Apostles. His passing leaves the Throne of Peter vacant at a moment when the Church stands, once again, at the crossroads of history. In the hush of the great cathedral, beneath the vaulted frescoed ceilings of the Sistine Chapel; incense rising like a prayer, a silent yearning stirs the Body of Christ. It is a yearning not for novelty, nor for mere symbolism, but for the full consummation of the Church’s universality – a universality long proclaimed, yet never fully embodied. The question before the College of Cardinals now in conclave, is not simply who shall wear the white vestments, but what kind of Church shall rise from this hour of reckoning. And to that sacred inquiry, Providence itself seems to whisper: it is time, it is fitting, it is just; that the next Vicar of Christ be chosen from Africa. The Church must be universal not only in name, but in soul. A pontificate rooted in African soil would remind a weary world that the Gospel is not a relic of the past but the beating heart of humanity’s future. The time has come; indeed, it is long overdue, for a Black Pope, an African Pontiff, to ascend the Throne of Peter. Not as an act of tokenism, nor as a sop to modern sensibilities, but as a recognition of a truth that has stood shimmering, quietly undeniable, across the ages: that Africa, cradle of faith, cradle of humanity, must now, too, be the cradle of leadership.

The Forgotten Cradle of the Faith

Africa is no stranger to the early light of Christianity. Long before the faith crossed the forests of Germania or the icy fields of Britain, the faith that built Rome once flourished in Alexandria, in Carthage, in Hippo and along the Nile. When Peter was yet securing the infant Church in Jerusalem, African theologians were already carving the foundations of Christian thought. Was it not in Africa that Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, penned his Confessions and the City of God, shaping forever the heart of Christian philosophy? Was it not in Alexandria that the Catechetical School first taught the mysteries of faith and reason side by side? It was on African soil that saints like Augustine, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Athanasius – giants of orthodoxy -shaped the very doctrines that the Universal Church holds sacred today. Africa, ancient and enduring, is not a newcomer to the faith, but one of its first and noblest stewards. The Church’s early councils bore African blood and breath; her creeds, her understanding of Christ’s dual nature, were hammered on African anvils. Thus, the notion that Africa is a periphery to Catholicism is a fiction – a calumny against history itself.

Demographics as Destiny

Today, the face of Catholicism is no longer exclusively European. It is brown, and black, and golden. It beats with the drums of Lagos and the hymns of Nairobi.The largest Catholic seminary in the world is Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu, Nigeria, with a capacity of over 1,000 seminarians. According to the latest Vatican statistics, Africa is experiencing the most significant growth in the number of priests, although Europe maintains the highest total number, amid a continuing decline. The global distribution of Catholic priests, shows Europe with 157,577 (- 2,745 from 2022). The Americas -119,145, (-164); Asia – 72,911 (+1,160); Oceania – 4,438 (-69). With 53,659 priests, an increase of 1, 676, Africa now produces the highest number of priests in terms of growth rate. By 2050, according to Pew Research projections, Africa will house over 40% of the world’s Catholics. Priestly vocations are booming in Africa, while they wane across Europe and North America. The seminaries of Abidjan are full; the seminaries of Brussels and Milan are echoingly empty. Shall the mother church ignore where her lifeblood flows most freely? No organization, divine or human, can survive if it refuses to recognize where its heart beats strongest. In ecclesial terms, demography is not just destiny; it is revelation, a sacred whisper of the Holy Spirit, beckoning toward renewal.

The Gifts of the African Church

Today, while secularism nibbles at the roots of faith elsewhere, the African Church blooms with astonishing vitality. It is in the crowded cathedrals of Kinshasa, the vibrant parishes of Nairobi, and the humble chapels of rural Nigeria that the fervor of early Christianity finds its modern echo. Vocations are rising, pews are filled, and hope is alive. Africa offers the Church not merely numbers, but conviction -the deep, muscular faith that the Gospel demands in every age. African Catholicism is not merely growing; it is flourishing with a vibrancy, a sacramentality, and a communal spirituality that many Western parishes have lost. Where Western secularism advances like a cold, sterile tide, African Catholicism remains rich in ritual, in song, in the thick texture of life lived with God. Moreover, African theologians are offering the Church fresh wisdom – voices who understand suffering and resurrection not as abstractions, but as lived realities. Consider the profound witness of Nigerian Catholics who attend mass even under threat of terrorist bombs. Consider the Congolese priests who walk barefoot into villages abandoned by governments but not by grace. Is it not fitting, is it not providential, that from a land so intimately acquainted with the cross should come he who must wear the Fisherman’s Ring?

Obstacles, Real and Perceived

Yes, there are challenges. Skeptics will whisper about “inexperience,” about “cultural divides,” about Africa’s supposed “unreadiness” for the burdens of Peter’s Chair. But these are the same tired arguments once raised against non-Italian Popes, against John Paul II from Poland, against Francis from Argentina. Each time, the Spirit confounded the cautious. Moreover, African cardinals are among the most learned, multilingual, and diplomatically seasoned leaders within the College. Cardinal Peter Turkson (Ghana), Cardinal Robert Sarah (Guinea), Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besengu (DR Congo),and others have long been voices of theological depth and global perspective. If anything, it is precisely an African Pope who knows both suffering and hope, who could speak most authentically to a fractured world. He would understand migration not as a policy debate, but as a brother’s burden. He would see climate change not as an abstract theory, but as a personal lament for the fields and rivers of his youth.

The soul of the Church hangs now in a delicate balance, between a weary past and the fierce winds of an uncertain future. And so, we plead: Lift your eyes toward the rising sun. Look to Africa. Africa – that ancient land baptized by the blood of martyrs long before many parts of Europe knew His name. Africa – where the faith blooms not from nostalgia, but from living waters that spring from the thirsty earth. Africa – where the Gospel is not a weary ritual but a blazing fire that ignites hearts from Lagos to Luanda, from Yaoundé to Dar es Salaam. The Church in Africa sings while others grow silent. She multiplies while others dwindle. She weeps with the poor, wrestles with injustice, dreams new dreams beneath suffering skies. In Africa, the Church is young and vibrant, as the Christ she serves is forever young, forever alive.

The Poetic Fulfillment of Catholic Universality

Imagine then, and Picture it: white smoke curls into the Roman sky. Saint Peter’s Square holds its breath as the announcement is made:”Habemus Papam!”And from the Loggia of Blessings steps forth a Shepherd with skin kissed by the African sun, eyes burning with the fire of Pentecost. Imagine the millions of black boys and girls across the world, from Harlem to Harare, from Soweto to São Paulo, who would see themselves, perhaps for the first time, in the Vicar of Christ. Imagine the world seeing, not a rupture, but the beautiful continuity of a Church finally, fully Catholic: universal, whole, complete. This is not about politics. It is about providence. The Holy Spirit, ever restless, is moving again across the waters. Will the Church, ancient and ever new, listen?

The Throne of Peter cries out for a shepherd who understands both Calvary and Pentecost. A Pope who knows exile and hope, scars and resurrection. A Pope whose very life tells the story of a Church not retreating, but marching forward with joy. Africa offers you such men: Wise as the desert fathers, joyful as the first believers, tested as gold in the furnace of trial. Electing a Pope from Africa would not be a novelty; it would be a return – a return to the universal heart of the Church that beats in every language, every tribe, and every nation under heaven. And it would be a prophecy: that the Church is not dying; she is moving. That the Spirit has not abandoned us; He has gone ahead to Galilee, to Nairobi, to Kinshasa, to Abidjan, to Kampala. Therefore, O Princes of the Church do not seek merely to preserve what was. Dare to proclaim what can be. Breathe deep the Spirit that once shattered the barriers of Babel. Follow not the compass of caution, but the bright and burning star of Providence. The time for a Black Pope is not a political slogan. It is the flowering of history’s long-buried seed. It is time to let Africa give back to Rome the gift she once so freely gave: faith, resilience, and a leadership born not of conquest, but of the Cross.

The hour has come. The call is clear. Africa awaits. Christ awaits.

In filial hope,

By Valerian Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai

30, April 2025

Africa has no resource curse! ⁰

African natural resources have, for decades, triggered huge armed conflicts, giving the impression that there is a massive resource curse on the richest continent in the world.

Many reports on Africa’s unfortunate situation, most of which are written by Westerners, usually avoid pointing out that the resource curse on African countries is fuelled by bad governance, foreign intervention and unpatriotic leadership.

Most of the fighting in Africa is a distraction designed by certain Western countries for them to exploit the continent’s resources without playing by the books.

African countries have been theaters of bloody fighting because of their natural wealth. Resource-rich African countries have spent most of the last century fending off jihadist and terrorist attacks, thereby perpetuating the notion that there is a resource curse on Africa.

No, there is no such curse. Greed and foreign interference are to blame for the armed conflicts which have become the continent’s hallmark.

African governments must take control of their mines to ensure that they do not fall into the hands of terrorists and other illegal miners. Illegal mines are important sources of revenue for terrorists and jihadists.

Securing every illegal mining site will rob the terrorists of the money they need to recruit young, innocent and naive fighters. If terrorism has to be rolled back in Africa, African countries must be intentional in fighting this scourge that is destroying the continent.

African governments must be strong, they must create jobs for their young people and they must be present in every part of their countries.

African countries must stop thinking that a country is safe if the political and economic capitals are safe. Terrorists and jihadists thrive where there is no state authority.

However, African governments must also put in place transparent systems for the management of the resources. Corruption at the highest level only renders a country vulnerable.

Corruption weakens the police; it demoralizes the military and drives the continent’s best and brightest to other parts of the world where they are underpaid and underemployed.

The continent’s decolonization also implies that leaders must be selfless and young people who are conscious and intellectually alert are given a chance to fully participate in their countries’ politics.

A country ruled by old people cannot be innovative. Such a country will stagnate. African youths must be part of their governments. Today’s youths are more informed, tech-savvy, confident and bold enough to help their countries to fly into a bright and beautiful future.

The imaginary resource curse on Africa can be deleted if African leaders rule their countries like real patriots. They must be models to the continent’s youths. Where there is good governance and responsible leadership, hope and peace prevail.

Where leaders prioritize their people’s well-being over their own personal and parochial interests, there is no room for coups d’états. Coups are today being viewed as consequences of maladministration and corruption on the part of civilian leaders who have driven their people to the abyss of poverty. Their presence on the continent today simply speaks to the failure of the pseudo-democracy imposed on Africa by the West.

Source: Dr Joachim Arrey

28, April 2025

Manyu Division: A new path is possible ⁰

Manyu’s underdevelopment has been a major issue and generations of Manyu citizens both at home and abroad have been seeking, albeit individually, to come up with possible solutions.

Manyu needs a facelift. It is long overdue. Its major towns and villages need development projects which will give the Division’s economy the wings it needs to fly into modernity and prosperity.

Though there is a wave of construction in the Division, there is no order in the way construction is taking place in many of the Division’s towns and villages. Town planning is still a foreign concept in Manyu and the Division’s residents are not doing much when it comes to playing by the book. Chaotic construction is playing out in Manyu, robbing the Division of its beauty.

Discipline, a key ingredient in development, is conspicuously absent in the way the people of Manyu do their things. They have embraced development but they have rejected discipline. No initiative succeeds without discipline.

Another issue ruining the Division is the people’s penchant for disagreement. Disagreement, though as old as time, has become the hallmark of the people of Manyu. Most people from this Division seem to have mercurial temperaments and the least disagreement always turns into a civil war, making it hard for any collaborative efforts to succeed. The people of Manyu seem to hold that division is strength while unity is a weakness and this unfortunate thinking is hurting the Division in a big and bad way.

Could this despicable behavior be attributed to the Division’s liberal culture, or is it because of the lack of strong political and cultural leadership? Why is it that the people of Manyu are yet to understand that there is power in numbers?

Can this solo mentality be ascribed to Western education or is it genetic for the people of Manyu Division to be only united when there are drinks and food?

Despite this gloomy picture, there is still some hope on the horizon. It is still possible for the people of Manyu Division to engineer new ways which will enable them to walk away from their solo mentality and the underdevelopment which has been stalking them like a stubborn shadow.

The new generation is different. Young men and women of Manyu descent have understood that things could be done differently. They want to work together. They want to change the Manyu narrative. They want to demonstrate that they have embraced new ways; ways which could give the Division’s economy a shot in the arm. They have seen their peers around the world making giant strides towards economic progress and financial independence. They no longer want to be mere sorry spectators of life and events in their own country. But the need sound and informed leadership which they see as the missing link.

They say the need strong, smart and determined leadership from their economic and political leaders; leaders who are conversant with global financial, economic and development trends. Leaders who can confidently shine the light for them to follow. In their view, this is the missing link which they are currently looking for and from every indication; they are looking for a small needle in a huge haystack.

In their quest for modern and purposeful leadership, young men and women of Manyu descent are looking to the Diaspora for a significant change in their Division.

They hold that with the Diaspora, the Division will be able to walk a new path. In their view, members of the Diaspora do not only have the transformative ideas which are capable of triggering economic and political prosperity, they also have massive financial resources which can create jobs for the Division’s cash strapped youths.

However, despite this optimistic view, it must be pointed out that it will take time for things to actually take shape. The Manyu mindset must change if real transformative change has to be a reality. For the Diaspora to play its investment role effectively, the people of Manyu must start seeing investments by the Diaspora not as opportunities for them to embezzle but opportunities for them rebuild their Division and to regain their confidence.

They must start seeing members of the Diaspora as investment partners and not cows that they must milk to death. A new path is possible but it must be preceded by a new and constructive mindset.

By Dr. Joachim Arrey