The Roman Catholic Church in Kumbo says hundreds of supporters assembled at the cathedral Friday calling for the immediate release of Cardinal Christian Tumi and the chief of the Nso people, Sehm Mbinglo.

The church says the 90-year-old cardinal and the chief, known as the Fon, were abducted Thursday night with their delegation just south of the town.

“These are authorities that have been ordained by God and placed there to look over his people and so it is high time all the population, not only the Nso man but everybody should go out today and let the Fon and the Cardinal be released. This is something outrageous,”  Genesis Lukong, the secretary general of the Catholic Men’s Association, told VOA via telephone from Kumbo, in Cameroon’s Northwest.

Administrative officials in Kumbo’s Bui administrative unit confirmed the attack and blamed anglophone rebels. 

The cardinal was released Friday morning, but Mbinglo remains captive.

Sub-Chief of the Nso people Fidelis Chin says Mbinglo’s health has been waning and he needs regular medical care.  

“Any struggle that touches the Fon of Nso, that touches our tradition, that touches religion, is against the Nso people,” Chin said. “I call on all Nso elite, wherever they are, to come out.  Let’s tell these Amba boys that enough is enough.”

It’s not the first time that separatists have abducted Mbinglo.  

Mbinglo fled the area three years ago after rebels abducted him three times and killed two of his sons. The rebels accused him of collaborating with the central government.  

Tumi led talks with the rebels each time to secure the chief’s safe return.

Catholic Lawrence Nsahbinla was part of the negotiations.  

“It is not normal to abduct a man of God at his age,” Nsahbinla said. “And then they abducted him with his royal highness the Fon of Nso who was coming back to be reinstated in his dynasty. Two important personalities for the Christians and for the Nso man. This is something that the Christians and the Nso man have to take seriously and put an end to all these devilish actions.”

Teachers abducted

The abduction of the chief and the cardinal is the second such incident in Kumbo this week.  

On Tuesday, gunmen attacked a Presbyterian school and abducted 11 teachers.  

The teachers were released Thursday unharmed.  

The rebels have been fighting in western Cameroon since 2017 to carve out an English-speaking state from the majority French-speaking nation.  

The United Nations says the ongoing violence has claimed more than 3,000 lives and displaced more than 530,000 people.

Source: VOA 

Authorities in Cameroon say schools in rebel areas that reopened for the first time in four years are again being abandoned due to lack of security. Separatist forces are blamed for recent attacks that killed at least six teachers and seven schoolchildren.

In a video shared on Cameroon social media, seven armed rebels order teachers at the Kulu Memorial College in the southwestern town of Limbe to strip naked.

Teachers and students are shown crying for help as the teachers are humiliated then ordered to close the school and to leave.

Cameroon authorities confirmed the school on Wednesday was attacked.

Limbe teacher Lesslie Tabot refuses to instruct class until the government fulfils its promise to protect schools.

“The government assured parents and stakeholders of education that this time around maximum security has been put in place to ensure the smooth functioning of schools in the Northwest and Southwest regions. But what do we get every day? Students being attacked left and right, teachers also being victims.”

Cameroon’s Anglophone rebels have been fighting since 2017 to create an independent state for English-speakers, separate from French-speaking-majority Cameroon.

Last month, 140 schools in the troubled Northwest and Southwest regions reopened for the first time in four years after Cameroon’s government said those areas were secure.

But the military acknowledges that in the past three weeks, rebels have killed at least six teachers and seven children, abducted 23 teachers, and set three schools on fire.

The governor of Cameroon’s Northwest region, Deben Tchoffo, says about 20 of the schools that reopened in October have closed once again. And he admits several thousand students and teachers at other schools in the region are too scared to attend, despite added troops, which the governor called a “special security device.”

“It is not possible for security men to be behind every student.  We are asking them to continue going for classes because after the sad incidents, a special security device has been set up by the generals in charge of security at the level of the headquarters of the region and in the other divisions to accompany the students.”

Separatist groups have demanded that schools in the Northwest and Southwest remain closed until the government withdraws troops from what the rebels call their territory.

Despite the threats, president of the Cameroon Union of Parents and Teachers Peter Ndikum urged students and teachers to brave the attacks.

“We want to encourage our kids, despite their ages, they have a responsibility to write their own history. They are living within a period of consternation within the Anglophone sub system. The only way for them to make history is not to abandon the classroom. The first element is that of courage. To the parents, they should be able to realize that this call for independence is a sterile struggle.”

But the risk for teachers, parents, and students was underscored Thursday as a funeral was held for the seven schoolchildren killed October 24 by suspected rebels.

The attack on a private school in the Southwest town of Kumba was condemned internationally as a massacre and a grim reminder of the conflict’s toll on children.

Source: VOA

Prime Minister Dion Ngute Joseph represented his French Cameroun paymaster President Paul Biya at the funeral of the school children killed in Kumba Thursday, November 5, 2020.

The so-called head of government took part in the inter-faith prayers in honour of the kids at the Amusement Park in Kumba which was also attended by members of government, the French Cameroun SDO for Meme and Bafaw traditional rulers.

Mr Ngute laid a wreath reportedly from Mr. Biya who four years ago declared a war against the people of Southern Cameroons.

A Biya kinsman who also moonlights as the French Cameroun governor of the South West, Okalia Bilai Bernard read a Cameroon government condolence message.

For his administrative part, PM Dion Ngute conveyed Biya’s condolence message to the bereaved families and handed over a brown envelop from the butcher in Yaounde to the families of the children brutally murdered on that fateful day.

It is vital to include in this report that on Saturday, October 24, 2020, gunmen attacked Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy Fiango, Kumba and killed at least seven (six girls and a boy). The Southern Cameroons Interim Government blamed the attack on French Cameroun army soldiers stationed in the Meme County.

The students killed included Nzakame Rhema (10 years), Nguemene Princess (11 years), Anangim Jenifer (11 years), Ngwane Renny Munge (12 years), Victory Ngamenyi Camibon (12 years), Scheygnia Cindi (14 years), and Che Thellma Nchangwi (15 years).

By Kingsley Betek

Biya is ill and is being treated at his private presidential palace in Mvomeka’a, Cameroon Intelligence Report can authoritatively reveal.

The 87 year old French Cameroun monarchical president has a life threatening infection which has drastically reduced his outings in Yaoundé.

With age telling on him, Biya is avoiding senior members of his spy network and tribal governing council due to the Covid-19 pandemic and routinely complains of severe pains.

Mr. Biya had on two recent occasions cancelled trips to Yaoundé due to poor health and he is now represented at every event by his kinsman and Minister Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.

Last week Ngoh Ngoh again received Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister who had reportedly booked a meeting long before his arrival in Cameroon with Biya.

Prime Minister Dion Ngute like his other Southern Cameroons predecessors is now a simple errand boy within the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo government.  

Multiple sources in the so-called Unity Palace told Cameroon Intelligence Report this week that the French Cameroun dictator already smells his last days on earth.

CIR sources also said apart from his family, no other high profile government officials are aware of Biya’s deteriorating health situation.

By Isong Asu with files from Rita Akana in Yaounde

Members of the pro Yaounde armed militia popularly known as the Atanga Nji Boys have kidnapped 90-year-old Cardinal Christian Tumi and Fon Sehm Mbinglo II, the Fon of Nso.

Our correspondent in the Bui County reported that the Atanga Nji Boys backed by members of the Rapid Intervention Battalion were ferried from Baba, Babessi subdivision in Ngoketunji County today Thursday, November 5, 2020 and ordered to stage the action against the two Southern Cameroons prominent figures in order to sabotage the Ambazonia struggle.

There has been conflicting reports from pro French Cameroun media houses on the incident with some claiming that the Cardinal and the Fon disappeared at Cane Chair, in Baba, on the Bamenda-Kumbo main road in the company of the Queen mother and some Nso notables.

The giant of the Roman Catholic Church Cardinal Tumi and Fon Sehm Mbinglo were en route to Nso two years after the Fon was airlifted from his palace for medical reasons.

Cardinal Tumi has for more than two decades been in the bad books of the regime in Yaoundé. A decision to name the Douala International airport in his honour that was reached in 1997 has till this day not been implemented.

French Cameroun media houses have openly accused an Ambazonian fighter known by the name ‘General’ Shao Mao of being behind the crime. However, Southern Cameroons Interim Government sources in Ground Zero are all pointing fingers at Minister Paul Atanga Nji and his criminal gang.

By Fon Lawrence