Headline News

19, April 2018

Biya leaving a legacy of corruption and chaos ⁰

President Biya’s much anticipated departure is unlikely to alter the political climate of the country he ruined for more than three decades. It is already heading to two years ever since the Southern Cameroons crisis started and none of his fake policies seems to have delivered the expected result.

The appointment of an ardent Southern Cameroon criminal, Paul Atanga Nji as minister of Territorial Administration signals that Biya’s days of absolute and abusive power are over. This is not to say; however, that Biya – the Right Royal President – will quickly be forgotten. How can Cameroon’s impoverished masses forget a man who so cynically plundered Cameroon’s wealth, hiring a string of jets and stashing billions of Euros in Swiss bank accounts.

The bespectacled tyrant and his lavish lifestyle will long be synonymous with the worst excesses of corruption and greed. Having made himself head of state with full executive powers after the 1984 April 6^th coup, Biya and his gang embarked on a course which would quickly reduce Cameroon to a shambles.

In the 1990s and with the support of a Southern Cameroons pro CPDM comedian, Chief Inoni Ephraim, Biya proclaimed a fake anti colonial doctrine and the beautiful city of Victoria was renamed Limbe and Anglophones were urged to adopt a national costume of French Cameroun design. Not being one to hide his light under a bushel, the son of a wretched Roman Catholic Catechist, Paul Biya Bi Mvondo became the father of the Cameroonian nation.

Today, it is evidently clear that what Mr. Biya is actually leaving behind is a country in name only. In both East and West Cameroon, roads, ports, railways, schools, hospitals and public buildings have all been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair that it will take any new regime in French Cameroun many years to fix the mess. Ever since the creation of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate in Bamenda, any pretence at good governance or fiscal accountability was dropped as Biya’s cronies dipped their hands in the public coffers and his political opponents squabbled pointlessly among themselves.

In Mvomeka’a, the village of his birth, he has constructed a gaudy palace, a multimillion dollar golf course with ornamental gardens and a runway long enough to accommodate a Boeing 747, which he often leased from Air France for family shopping sprees in Geneva. His cynical exploitation of Cameroon is made possible by French government support.

In return for providing bases from which the French can control the Central African Sub region, Biya has been able to extract the maximum of US and EU aid and indulgence. The French are on hand helping him to carry out the genocide currently going on in Southern Cameroons.

Biya still has the backing of the French government even though growing anarchy and lawlessness threatens him at home. Few could have predicted that the beginning of his end would be occasioned by an uprising born in the remote areas in Southern Cameroons. Reading from a small piece of dirty paper at the Nsimalen International airport in Yaoundé from a trip that took him to the Ivory Coast, Biya appeared like a man who has lost everything: his health, his family and above all, the respect of his people.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

19, April 2018

Southern Cameroons War: Gov’t forces responsible for civilian deaths in Manyu ⁰

Forces loyal to the Biya regime in Yaoundé and the Rapid Intervention Battalion including a special security outfit fighting the Ambazonian self-defense groups have reportedly killed several civilians in the Manyu County. Our correspondent in the Upper Bayang Sub constituency in Manyu on Thursday confirmed that many civilians lost their lives when they were fired at by Cameroon government forces in Kendem village.

We gathered that during the Kendem attack, the soldiers were able to call for reinforcement from Bamenda which led to the exchange of gunfire between the military and the militants. The regime in Yaoundé has developed a diabolic harsh ploy claiming that there exists an exaggerated speculation on military operations in Manyu involving government troops and suspected Southern Cameroons militants.

A highly placed military official in Mamfe who spoke to our undercover reporter hinted that many soldiers are paying the supreme price for a senseless war declared by the 85 year old President Biya. A rescue team supported by a detachment from the Bamenda mechanized division was dispatched to Eyumojock yesterday to locate and support government troops battling Ambazonian militants.

The onetime beautiful village of Kendem has been deserted. Government forces have mounted a gendarmerie check point near Chief Ako Stanley’s palace. Cameroon Concord News has also gotten information that the Eyumojock attack casualties were heavy.

This item is still developing

By Judith Fon

Cameroon Concord News Group

19, April 2018

Biya regime launches hunt for ghost workers ⁰

Cameroon has launched a mandatory headcount of all government employees in another effort to unmask ghost workers, official said.

Finance minister Louis Paul Motaze, in a statement, said the nationwide census would start from the salary pay-out period of April and end in June.

“The aim of the physical headcount of all civil servants is to identify and expunge irregular workers from the state payroll,” the statement said.

It said further that teams would be deployed to banks, micro-finance institutions and treasury offices, where salaries were paid out.

Fake pensioners

The salaries of workers who would not have been identified within the three months deadline would be suspended, it went on.

Mid last year, President Paul Biya instructed the government to unmask ghost workers and fake pensioners who were defrauding the state of millions of dollars.

However, experts were pessimistic that the latest headcount would succeed as it targets; banks, micro-finance institutions and treasury offices, were the wrong places to monitor real civil servants.

New York based public policy and strategic management consultant Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai, thinks the government will fail “because it is a supply-side approach that does not address the demand-side; to know how the ghost workers entered the payroll in the first place”.

Collect salaries

Mr Ebai, who works with the consulting firm, Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG), advised the Yaoundé administration to instead go for software programs that would purge payrolls of ghost workers.

“You cannot undertake a headcount by focusing on how many people actually collect salaries. How do you, for example, control fraudulent or double identities?

“And who will monitor the monitors, given that in Cameroon, everybody has a price?” Mr Ebai posed.

Cameroon lost about $283,000 (FCFA 150 million) in salaries and other benefits to the ghost workers between 2007 and 2010, according to local newspaper the Kalara.

Source: Today.ng

19, April 2018

US: Trump denies Russia investigation was behind Comey firing ⁰

US President Donald Trump has denied firing FBI director James Comey last year over the agency’s investigation of Russia’s alleged collusion with Trump’s election campaign before the 2016 US presidential election, contradicting the explanation he offered in the days after Comey’s firing was first announced.

“Slippery James Comey, the worst FBI Director in history, was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems)!” Trump said via Twitter early Wednesday.

Trump’s comments follow a new book by Comey which intensifies the allegations that Trump may have engaged in criminal obstruction of justice when Comey was fired in May 2017.

In an interview with NBC News two days after the firing, Trump suggested that the Russia probe was behind the firing.

“Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey,” he said then.

“In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, you know, this thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election.”

In his interview with ABC News that aired Sunday night, Comey suggested Russians have information they could use to blackmail Trump and said there is evidence the president obstructed justice in the ongoing Russia investigation.

Comey’s memoir released on Tuesday, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” includes conversations he had with Trump before he was fired in which he implies the president pressured him over the Russia investigation.

When Comey was fired last year, the former FBI chief quickly became the chief prosecution witness for Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating the Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

In an interview with National Public Radio on Tuesday, Comey said that he did not have the full picture of Mueller’s probe to be able to make that judgement.

Comey’s written records of several troubling encounters with the president are at the heart of Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump sought to obstruct justice in his attempts to shut down the inquiry.

Source: Presstv

18, April 2018

Zimbabwe dismisses thousands of striking nurses ⁰

Zimbabwe has fired all nurses who went on strike to demand higher salaries, in a hardline response by the country’s new leadership to growing labor arrest.

Several thousand nurses were sacked in a terse statement issued on Tuesday evening by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who accused the strikers of being “politically motivated.”

Patients were turned away from major hospitals after the nurses began their industrial action on Monday, shortly after doctors ended their own weeks-long strike earlier in the month.

“Government has decided in the interest of patients and of saving lives to discharge all the striking nurses with immediate effect,” Chiwenga said in a statement.

He said unemployed and retired nurses would be hired to replace those fired.

Chiwenga was the military general who led the ousting of Robert Mugabe in November when the army briefly took control and ushered Emmerson Mnangagwa into the presidency.

Zimbabwe’s Vice President Constantino Chiwenga

Chiwenga described the nurses’ strike as “deplorable and reprehensible” as the government had released $17 million (14 million euros) to boost their pay and allowances.

He said the funds would now be used to employ new nurses.

Zimbabwe’s nurses association said they “noted” Chiwenga’s statement but added that they remained on strike.

After Mugabe’s 37-year rule, Mnangagwa has vowed to revive the country’s moribund economy and attract foreign investment to fund better public services.

“Government has done everything to comply with the demands of the striking nurses,” Mnangagwa said, according to state-owned media. “This leaves us with no option but to dismiss them.”

More than 90 percent of Zimbabwe’s budget is spent on government wages.

Teachers at public schools have threatened to go on strike if their pay is not increased.

Zimbabwe is due to hold elections in July or August, the first since the shock fall of Mugabe, who ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.

Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former deputy, is a veteran loyalist in the ruling ZANU-PF party.

(Source: AFP)

18, April 2018

African athletes keep going missing at global sporting events and it’s only going to get worse ⁰

African athletes at the Commonwealth Games in Australia have been in the news for action on and off the track.

The haul of 34 gold medals won by African athletes has been overshadowed by headlines of at least 13 athletes from Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda and Sierra Leone absconding from team camps. It’s a recurring scenario for hosts of minor to major sporting events held in wealthier nations. For Australia, it happened in 2006 when Melbourne hosted the Commonwealth Games and 2000 when Sydney hosted the Olympics.

The most common reason for this, as with many migrants, is the search for a better life. Even for pro athletes in many African countries, wealthy and more developed countries remain a major draw. Occasionally, athletes make the move to escape political repression back home. The most recent example came at the 2016 Rio Olympics when Feyisa Lilesa, an Ethiopian marathoner, crossed his arms in anti-government protest.

Even though the competition has wrapped up, missing athletes officially have until May 15—when their visas expire—to make plans that allow them to remain in Australia. An obvious option would be to apply for asylum but a successful application will depend on being able to cite valid basis of threat to life in their home countries. Already, a migration agency operating on the Gold Coast says “more than 40 people,” including Commonwealth Games athletes from Africa, have so far come in to discuss potential visa options to allow them remain in Australia.

Another option is to obtain a special skills visa which allows them continue to reside and compete as professional athletes. For example, Ethiopia’s Lilesa was granted special skills visa by the United States after he did not return home given fears of government reprisal after his protest at the Rio Olympics.

The nuclear option would be staying on illegally after the visa expires and, without valid documentation, likely turning to menial jobs to earn money.

For many athletes, applying as part of a team delegation to major sporting events offers a much higher chance of securing visas and traveling safely and for free. Back home, mismanagement, corruption and poor welfare packages as well as sub-par training facilities often means being an athlete is not the most lucrative livelihood. As a result, African athletes, and at times officials, have routinely gone missing at sporting events hosted in more developed nations—21 members of African delegations went missing or claimed asylum after the London Olympics in 2012.

For more talented or high-profile athletes, another option is to switch nationalities and represent countries offering better prospects. It’s a well-exercised option: during the Rio Olympics in 2016, at least 30 Kenyan-born athletes competed for other countries. Indeed, Bahrain’s Olympic track field team was almost entirely made up athletes originally from Africa as half of the men’s team and nearly all of the women’s team hailed from Nigeria, Ethiopia, or Kenya.

Source: Quartz Media

18, April 2018

Regulator to Inspect Cameroon’s Douala Airport Repairs ⁰

The International Civil Aviation Organization will inspect the airport of Cameroon’s port city, Douala, to monitor improvements to the facility.

The inspection will follow after the French Development Agency gave the country a loan of 46 million euro ($57 million) in 2015 to rehabilitate runways and modernize the facility to comply with ICAO directives, the airport authority Aeroports du Cameroun said in a statement Wednesday.

The runway repairs were finalized in 2016, while the airport authority is waiting for the approval of the FDA to proceed with works to the terminal building, it said. The ICAO’s inspection of the facility will take place from April 22 to 27, said the airport authority.

Source: Bloomberg.com

18, April 2018

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Massive Anti-Biya Outpouring Expected in London ⁰

Hundreds of Southern Cameroons protesters from all over Europe and the UK are heading to London for a massive demonstration on Friday against a possible President Biya presence in the Commonwealth heads of government meeting and to show solidarity with the Ambazonian freedom fighters back home. In a global outpouring of anti-Biya sentiment, London and the East Midlands including Belgium and France are expected to record the biggest turnout.

In UK, at least a thousand people will join London city’s biggest Southern Cameroons demonstration ever, Metropolitan Police have said. Organizers are anticipating a sellout crowd with banners exposing the genocide currently going on in Southern Cameroons.

Anti-French Cameroun demonstrators are also expected to pack the streets north of the United Nations headquarters in New York as the situation in Southern Cameroons continues to deteriorate. Echoing the words of Martin Luther King III, the Communications Secretary of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Chris Anu told Cameroon Concord News that “Just because you have the biggest guns does not mean you must use it on innocent Southern Cameroonians.”

Hon. Chris Anu also noted that the time has come for the world to listen to Southern Cameroonians – and Southern Cameroonians are saying, `We want to stay as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.’ Ambazonians have strongly endorsed the policy of their Interim Government and the widely acclaimed statements of Hon Chris Anu, that the preservation of the sanctity of human life must be a sacred commitment of all. In the light of this demonstrable policy which accords with the principles of international law and practices of civilized nations, Cameroon Concord News deems it necessary to once more highlight the history of international criminality on which French Cameroun was founded.

This distinguishing criminal policy clearly defines French Cameroun’s identity and markedly distinguishes it from the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. The perpetual distinction between the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and French Cameroun lies in the premium placed by Ambazonia on the protection of civilians not participating in French Cameroun’s genocide war against Ambazonia and French Cameroun’s policy of cowardly criminal annihilation of armless civilians. For example, while Ambazonia liberation forces arrested, interrogated and released, Professor Leke Tambo, Justice Martin Mbeng and other civilians, French Cameroun and its criminal collaborators like George Tabetando, kidnapped and executed in cold blood seven Ambazonia civilians in Kendem, Manyu County.

In another cowardly act, a very desperate French Cameroun regime faked the abduction of foreign citizens who were controlled, protected and given safe passage by well-disciplined Ambazonia forces hoping to use the blackmail to obtain an adverse European Union resolution against the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and its revolutionary war of liberation. This criminal government network of kidnappers for ransom in French Cameroun and the immediate ethnic inner cycle of the Buhari government in Nigeria masked in the fight against Boko Haram superintended by this network are well documented. The Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has expressly outlawed the abduction of foreign nationals and has consistently condemned the abduction of its President and members of its Interim Government by the criminal network in Nigeria and French Cameroun. The plethora defining and distinctive irreconcilables between French Cameroun and the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, make life together in any form impossible.

One of the virtues of having a functional Interim Government is to enable the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to have a structured government to define, determine and direct our collective and individual actions in a manner that would clearly distinguish us from the brutal criminal enemy from which we have moved away. French Cameroun was built on the blood of its nationalists and citizens who sought true independence from the criminal French colonial empire of despair and death. For fifty-six years, the economy of the Southern Cameroons has been raped, looted, pillaged and devastated to sustain the economy of the French colonial vampire.

By Chi Prudence Asong and Soter Agbaw-Ebai in London

18, April 2018

Why are so many French speaking Cameroonians opposed to Southern Cameroons gaining its independence? ⁰

Why are we asking this question now? Because Southern Cameroons declared itself to be the world’s newest country under the leadership of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe some two decades after President Biya’s dissolution of the United Republic of Cameroon – and after a ghastly cavalcade of gruesome atrocities, forced expulsions and a genocide that has killed some 1000 with no international intervention – the people of Southern Cameroons have declared themselves independent and are now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

For 57 years Southern Cameroonians have lived as a French Cameroun protectorate while its citizens rely on remittance from the Diaspora. When talks broke down between the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium and the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime, the Southern Cameroons Interim government unilaterally declared independence as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Now the creators of the world’s newest independent country were abducted by the Buhari administration in the Federal Republic of Nigeria and extradited to Yaounde. Before this dubious process the Ambazonian Interim Government had sent hundreds of letters to governments around the world seeking formal recognition of their independence.

What do the Francophones think?

They are very unhappy. They regard Southern Cameroons as the heart of their state since the early 60s, even though both territories have two different political settings and history. French Cameroun political elites have described Ambazonia as a “fake country”.

So who’s on what side?

The Nigerian regions harboring Southern Cameroonian refugees fleeing the conflict have in a way recognized Southern Cameroons as an independent state and the much anticipated departure of President Buhari in 2019 will make matters even clearer. So will most of the big African nations – Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Morocco – and the Ecowas countries are moving toward recognising Southern Cameroons, pronouncing developments in line with President Biya’s continued stay in power, the on-going genocide and the Southern Cameroons refugees crisis in Nigeria.

The CEMAC members – Gabon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Congo Brazzaville and the Central African Republic have said they will not. Other countries opposed to an independent Southern Cameroons include France and the Ivory Coast. European states are also divided. Germany and the UK are maintaining a kind of deliberate silence including Belguim and Italy. Other EU states, like Holland and Norway, want Southern Cameroon’s future be decided at the UN.

Where is the international community?

For almost two years, Southern Cameroons has been reduced into a slaughter house with government troops killing innocent citizens as if they were not human beings. In many parts of Southern Cameroons, many young men, many of whom are innocent and have nothing to do with the ugly fighting that is playing out over there, have been arrested and taking to unknown destinations. Many have been buried alive, while others have been used by the country’s trigger-happy soldiers as shooting targets.

A recent video that has gone viral online speaks to the accusation that the Yaounde government is committing gross human rights violations in the country’s English-speaking regions. The video, which has shocked many across the globe, is being documented as evidence of human rights abuse by many rights groups which have been seeking to draw the world’s attention to the genocide that is unfolding in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

A crisis that started as protests by lawyers, teachers and students in Buea and Bamenda was allowed to spiral out of control due to the government’s firm belief in tough and violent means to address issues. The government’s decision to slaughter hundreds of Southern Cameroonians on October 1, 2017, has turned out to be a very bad mistake. Many Southern Cameroonians who have been victims of the government’s marginalization program simply wanted to express their grievances and frustration. But wont to violence and dictatorial ways of doing things, the government resorted to its legendary violence which has transformed an entire region into a huge killing field.

After October 1, 2017, a date many Southern Cameroonians consider as their independence day, the country has been pushed into a spiral of violence. Southern Cameroonians hold that it behooves them to protect themselves as their protector- the government – has decided to mow them down. Many Southern Cameroonians have unfortunately been sent to an early grave and this is what is making any dialogue or reconciliation impossible.

Today, there are many armed groups in the two English-speaking regions of the country. Over the last four months, many innocent civilians have met their death as the government pursues its policy of collective punishment. Many civilians have seen their homes burnt down by government forces which have opted for a “scotch-earth” policy that is hurting many vulnerable people who have nothing to do with the conflict.

What are the arguments?

The European Union, the African Union and the Commonwealth of Nations believe that genuine dialogue by the French Cameroun political leadership is essential for Cameroon to become stable. In reality, a negotiated solution will not be possible if Mr. Paul Biya stays on as Head of State.

The French for their own selfish interest have blocked every Southern Cameroons action deep within the African Union and the United Nations and have countered with high-minded arguments about the inviolability of national sovereignty. The French diplomatic missions in both Nigeria and Cameroon have been quoted as saying that France will not recognize Southern Cameroons because this does not respect international law.

But it is perhaps significant that those countries including Spain, France and Nigeria opposing recognition of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia mostly have problems with their own separatist or secessionist movements. Lawmakers on the tiny French overseas territory of New Caledonia voted recently to hold an independence referendum on November 4 to break from France. Spain is presently in chaos over the crisis in Catalonia and mighty Nigeria is bracing with the Biafra uprising.

There is fear that after South Sudan, Southern Cameroons independence could create an unmanageable precedent in the conduct of international relations and the established global order of sovereign states. But Southern Cameroons is however a unique African situation which deserves a unique response from both the United Nations and the European Union.

What is likely to happen?

There will of course be political upheavals in Nigeria in 2019 and the PDP dominated states and governors will openly support the Ambazonia Interim Government and by extrapolation back Southern Cameroons’s independence. But France and the Fulanis in the APC Buhari administration will not. The CEMAC countries will block all Southern Cameroons moves in the African Union. Chad’s chief diplomat heading the African Union will use all diplomatic means at his disposal to block Southern Cameroon’s recognition – and will probably block Southern Cameroon’s access to the UN and the EU.

The real questions are less glamorous and more profound. Unemployment in Southern Cameroons has reached crisis level, corruption and organized crime orchestrated by the ruling CPDM crime syndicate is bad, and more than 40,000 have fled to Nigeria. The troubles are far from over yet.

Is independence for Southern Cameroons a good thing?

Yes...

* 99 per cent of its people are Anglo-Saxon and democratic in nature and should be allowed to determine their own fate

* French Cameroun has effectively lost Southern Cameroons through its own actions in the atrocities and massive killings going on now for two years

* Southern Cameroons independence is the logical working out of the collapse of a failed French policy in Africa

No…

* Southern Cameroons has formed the heart of the state of French Cameroun since independence in 1961

* It sets a dangerous precedent for other parts of Africa such as the Congo and Uganda where rebels want to break away

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman, Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

18, April 2018

Former US first lady Barbara Bush dies at 92 ⁰

Former US first lady Barbara Bush, the only woman to see her husband and son both sworn in as president, has died at the age of 92.

“A former First Lady of the United States of America and relentless proponent of family literacy, Barbara Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at the age of 92,” the Bush family said in a statement.

She was the wife of the 41st US president, George H.W. Bush, and mother of the 43rd, George W. Bush.

The former first lady was also the mother of Jeb Bush, who served as governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007 and unsuccessfully ran for the White House in 2016.

In this file photo taken on December 11, 2008 US President George W. Bush (R) shakes hands with his father, former President George H.W. Bush (L) before his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush (C), after delivering the commencement address during the Texas A&M University graduation ceremony at Reed Arena in College Station, Texas. (Photo by AFP)

The Bush family had announced earlier in the week that the former US first lady was in failing health and had decided not to seek further medical treatment, focusing instead on “comfort care.”

She had been battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart problems in recent years, according to some media reports.

The US first lady, from 1989 to 1993, was a fierce advocate of civil rights and went against many of her husband’s Republican Party supporters with her liberal views.

In a statement from the White House, US President Donald Trump said, “She will be long remembered for her strong devotion to country and family, both of which she served unfailingly well.”

Source: Presstv