At least 10 people were wounded overnight into Monday when an explosion hit a major trade fair in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone region of Southwest, according to local authorities and police.

Police said the improvised explosive device exploded in a crowded place at the trade fair which was being held in Buea, the chief town of the region.

The wounded were receiving treatment in a local hospital and some were in critical conditions, according to the police.

Early Monday, separatist fighters said on social media that they were responsible for the blast.

The Cameroonian army has since 2017 been fighting English-speaking militias seeking to form a breakaway state known as “Ambazonia” in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest.

Source: Xinhuanet

The new Sultan of Bamoun in Cameroon, HRH Nabil Mbombo Njoya, has declined offers of a 14-year-old virgin in marriage as tradition demands.

According to tradition, the wife of a new Sultan must come from the Njim Monchouh family to terminate traditional rites known as “Lah-Kam”.

However, Sultan Njoya refused the 14-year-old girl offered by the family because she is a minor and opted to marry his long time girlfriend instead.

He has however promised to send the girl to school and make sure she completes university and pursue any career of her choice.

Child marriage has been going on in different African countries for years. Despite this legal framework, the prevalence of child marriage in Ghana remains high, and one in five girls marries before her 18th birthday (20.7%) and one in 20 girls (4.9%) marries before her 15th birthday.

Although child marriage can occur among males as well, the prevalence is much lower: only 2.3% of men aged 20 to 24 years are married by age 18 in Ghana. The highest prevalence of child marriage in Ghana occurs in the three Northern regions, where more than one in three girls marry before age 18. In addition, the child marriage rate is higher in rural areas, among the poorest population and among uneducated women. The aggregate rate of marriage before age 18 has been decreasing from 35% in the 1990s to 28% in 2003 and 25% in 2008, but remained stable between 2011 and 2014. However, data from the latest two nationally representative surveys shows that the rate of child marriage increased in the three Northern regions (from 26.4% in 2011 to 33.6% in 2014) and decreased in the other regions (from 20.9 to 18.5% and from 19.2 to 18.5% in the Central and Southern regions respectively), increasing disparities between the North and the rest of the country.

Several human rights activists and stakeholders have been working hard to abolish the child-marriage tradition and allow the kids to go to school until they are ready to marry.

Source: ghbase.com

In the first extradition from the Republic of Cameroon to the United States, a Texas man was extradited to Houston on Friday to serve an 80-year prison sentence he received in absentia four years ago after he pleaded guilty in two separate cases to conspiracy, health care fraud, money laundering, and tax offenses.

According to court documents, in November 2016, Ebong Aloysius Tilong, 57, of Sugar Land, Texas, and his wife, Marie Neba, went to trial on the conspiracy, health care fraud, and money laundering charges. The trial evidence and court documents showed that between 2006 and 2015, Tilong, Neba, and their co-conspirators used Tilong and Neba’s company, Fiango Home Healthcare Inc. (Fiango), to corruptly obtain more than $13 million by submitting false and fraudulent claims to Medicare for home health care services that Fiango’s patients did not need or receive. The trial evidence and court documents also showed that Tilong and Neba paid illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters to refer patients to Fiango, and that Tilong falsified and directed others to falsify medical records to make it appear as though Fiango’s patients met the Medicare qualifications for home health care. Additional evidence demonstrated that Tilong attempted to destroy evidence and blackmail and suborn perjury from witnesses. After the first week of trial, Tilong pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, three counts of health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to pay and receive health care kickbacks, three counts of payment and receipt of health care kickbacks, and one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.

In June 2017, Tilong pleaded guilty in a separate case to two counts of filing fraudulent tax returns. In connection with this guilty plea, Tilong admitted that he created a shell company called Quality Therapy Services (QTS) to limit the amount of tax that he paid to the IRS on the proceeds that he and his co-conspirators stole from Medicare. According to Tilong’s plea agreement, in 2013 and 2014, Tilong wrote almost $1 million in checks from Fiango to QTS for physical-therapy services that QTS never provided to Fiango’s patients and deducted as business expenses. Tilong admitted that his tax fraud scheme caused the IRS a tax loss of approximately $344,452.

In August 2017, Neba was sentenced to 75 years in prison the Medicare fraud scheme at Fiango. The U.S. District Court scheduled Tilong’s sentencing for Oct. 13, 2017, but court records show that on the morning of his sentencing hearing, Tilong removed an ankle bracelet monitoring his location and failed to respond to phone calls from, or appear in, the U.S. District Court for his sentencing. On Dec. 8, 2017, the U.S. District Court sentenced Tilong in absentia to 80 years in prison for his role in the Medicare and tax fraud schemes.

After Tilong absconded, the FBI Houston Field Office located Tilong in Cameroon, and worked collaboratively with the FBI Legal Attaché in Abuja, Nigeria, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Fraud Section, and the Office of the President of the Republic of Cameroon to ensure Tilong’s capture. Prior to his removal from Cameroon, Tilong was wanted by the FBI and listed among HHS-OIG’s Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives. The National Police Force of Cameroon arrested Tilong in January 2019.

In September 2021, the Republic of Cameroon President Paul Biya signed a decree ordering Tilong’s removal to the United States.

On Dec. 10, 2021, U.S. Marshals escorted Tilong from Cameroon to the United States.

The United States is grateful to the Government of Cameroon for its cooperation and support of this extradition request.

“The successful return of Ebong Tilong demonstrates the department’s commitment to working with our international partners to pursue, capture, and return those who try to defraud the American people,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Thanks to the efforts of our law enforcement partners and their counterparts in Cameroon, Ebong Tilong has been returned to the United States and brought to justice.”

“This successful extradition of Ebong Tilong to serve his 80-year prison sentence is an example of the FBI’s collaboration with our federal and international partners that we hope will deter others from fleeing to avoid prosecution or sentencing,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Richard A. Collodi of the FBI Houston Field Office. “These partnerships highlight the FBI’s reach as well as its determination to pursue actors anywhere to administer justice.”

“Convicted fraudster and former fugitive Ebong Tilong has been brought to justice in our country, thanks to the tireless efforts of U.S. law enforcement, including our investigators,” said Special Agent in Charge Miranda L. Bennett of HHS-OIG. “Our agency, together with our law enforcement partners, will continue to aggressively pursue those who steal from federal health care programs, wherever they try to hide.”

“IRS-CI is committed to not only investigating and ultimately seeking convictions of individuals who scheme to defraud Medicare, launder proceeds of their illicit transactions, and evade the IRS in paying their taxes, but we’re also committed to assisting in the apprehension and return of criminals who choose to run and hide upon their conviction and sentencing no matter where they go or how long they’ve been gone,” said Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ramsey E. Covington of the IRS-CI Houston Field Office. “We appreciate the efforts of our law enforcement partners and federal prosecutors in ensuring Tilong ultimately begins serving his 80-year sentence in federal prison.”

The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, the Regional Security Office of the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and the Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy in Yaoundé provided invaluable assistance in supporting the extradition and coordinating the return of Tilong to the United States.

Trial Attorney Jonathan Baum formerly of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section (now with the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section) and Trial Attorney Andrew Pennebaker of the Fraud Section are prosecuting Tilong’s Medicare and tax fraud cases.

The FBI, HHS-OIG, and IRS-CI conducted the investigation under the supervision of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Texas as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force. The interagency team combines the resources of federal, state, and local law enforcement entities to prevent and combat health care fraud, waste, and abuse. Strike Force teams have shut down health care fraud schemes around the country, arrested more than a thousand criminals, and recovered millions of taxpayer dollars.

Source: United States Department of Justice

More than 30,000 people in northern Cameroon have fled to Chad after the violence at the weekend that killed at least 22 people, the United Nations’ refugee agency has said.

Violence broke out in the border village of Ouloumsa on Sunday in a dispute between herders, fishermen and farmers over dwindling water resources, the UNHCR said in a statement on Friday issued from Geneva.

It then spread to neighbouring villages, 10 of which have been burned to the ground.

The clashes have displaced thousands in the country, “forcing more than 30,000 people to flee to neighbouring Chad”, the UNHCR said.

“At least 22 people have been killed and 30 others seriously injured during several days of ongoing fighting.”

The violence is unfolding in Logone-Chari in Cameroon’s Far North Region – the tongue of land that lies between Nigeria to the west and Chad to the east.

The UN figures for those seeking refuge, and the death toll, are far higher than numbers given on Wednesday by other sources.

The Chadian Red Cross had said there were at least 3,000 refugees, although the number was likely to grow, while the Cameroonian authorities said at least four had died.

Almost 80 percent of the new arrivals are women, many of them pregnant, and children, the UNHCR said.

They have found refuge in the Chadian capital N’Djamena and villages along Chad’s bank of the Logone River.

The UNHCR said at least 10,000 have fled to N’Djamena from Kousseri, a town of 200,000 people whose cattle market was destroyed in the fighting.

Chad’s military government leader Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno on Wednesday issued a statement to say the situation was “worrying” and appealed to international donors to help the arrivals.

A bout of fighting between herders and fishermen in August led to 45 deaths and an influx of at least 10,000 people into Chad.

As in the latest incident, the fighting began over management and access to water, the Cameroonian authorities say.

Violent conflict between ethnic groups is relatively rare in Cameroon compared with Chad and Nigeria, where fighting over resources between semi-nomadic herders and sedentary farmers is frequent.

Cameroonian officials say two of the parties in the conflict are fishermen of the Musgum community and ethnic Arab Choa cattlemen.

SOURCE: AFP

Renowned Southern Cameroons academic who also moonlights as a high-ranking official with the Ambazonia Interim Government, Professor Carlson Anyangwe has described the youthful French Cameroun political elites that believe they can stifle the British Southern Cameroons uprising by burning down Ambazonia towns and villages as “idiots”, stressing that the struggle now lives in the bliss of victories.

“There are some French Camerounians who still think that they can weaken the people of Southern Cameroons by destroying their towns, cities and villages, I say unto them that they are idiots” Professor Carlson Anyangwe said in reaction to the burning of several houses in Bamenda recently by Cameroon government soldiers loyal to the French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé.

Carlson Anyangwe added that such Africans don’t read history and don’t know that the secret of Ambazonia strength is in “Our faith and trust in our Creator.”

Elsewhere in his remarks to Cameroon Concord News, Professor Carlson Anyangwe stressed that those who conspired against the struggle are now calling for unity among Southern Cameroons restoration groups. Anyangwe also stressed that Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Ambazonia Interim Government are determined to go on resisting against the French Cameroun enemy.

For close to five years, Cameroon government army soldiers have been burning homes in Southern Cameroons in the hope that the population will submit, but this old and ineffective strategy is not delivering the desired results. Southern Cameroonians are determined to get this problem addressed once and for all and throwing in the towel is not an option.

As many Ambazonians get robbed of their dignity and means of livelihood by the brutal Francophone dominated military through such devilish ways, so too do these Southern Cameroons civilians look for ways to get their ‘pound of flesh’ and there is no better way than joining the ranks of the Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards who are only too willing to see their ranks swell.

The burning of homes did work in the early 1960s when the government of Ahmadou Ahidjo, the country’s first president, was facing a guerrilla warfare against a movement which was fighting the French-imposed government in East Cameroon (French-speaking Cameroon), but that strategy is, without a doubt, the least effective in modern times.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government has stressed the resolve of the people of Southern Cameroons to rid the entire Ambazonia homeland of French Cameroun army soldiers and colonial administrators.

Speaking to Cameroon Intelligence Report late on Friday, the exiled Southern Cameroons leader, said self defense actions throughout the Federal Republic of Ambazonia will continue until the entire Southern Cameroons homeland occupied by La Republique du Cameroun army soldiers is totally liberated.

“The Ambazonia Interim Government affirms that French Cameroun military presence in Southern Cameroons is an occupation which must be resisted by all possible means,” Vice President Yerima added.

Dabney Yerima stressed that the Biya French Cameroun regime has been maintaining its presence on the Ambazonian soil to encourage divisions among the ethnic groups of Southern Cameroons and steal the resources of the people of Ambazonia. Yerima also called on Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards to try and end French Cameroun’s plunder of Southern Cameroons natural resources.

For close to five years, Cameroon government army soldiers have been burning homes in Southern Cameroons in the hope that the population will submit, but this old and ineffective strategy is not delivering the desired results. Southern Cameroonians are determined to get this problem addressed once and for all and throwing in the towel is not an option.

As many Ambazonians get robbed of their dignity and means of livelihood by the brutal Francophone dominated military through such devilish ways, so too do these Southern Cameroons civilians look for ways to get their ‘pound of flesh’ and there is no better way than joining the ranks of the Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards who are only too willing to see their ranks swell.

The burning of homes did work in the early 1960s when the government of Ahmadou Ahidjo, the country’s first president, was facing a guerrilla warfare against a movement which was fighting the French-imposed government in East Cameroon (French-speaking Cameroon), but that strategy is, without a doubt, the least effective in modern times.

By Isong Asu and Soter Agbaw-Ebai

Several thousand people have fled deadly inter-ethnic clashes in northern Cameroon, seeking safety across the border in Chad, the Red Cross said Thursday.

Cameroonian authorities say conflict between fishermen of the Musgum community and ethnic Arab Choa herders around the town of Kousseri has claimed at least four lives.

Thousands of people fleeing the violence have sought refuge by crossing the Chari river into Chad, near the capital N’Djamena.

“There are at least 3,000 refugees, and the number is likely to grow,” Khala Ahmat Senoussi, president of the Red Cross in Chad, told AFP.

A Chadian police source said that “refugees are still arriving, some of them by boat”.

Jean-Lazare Ndongo Ndongo, prefect in Cameroon’s northern Logone-Chari region bordering Chad, told CRTV state television that “despite the security provisions that had been made, a mob managed to enter the town… with around 20 shops looted and four people losing their lives.”

“What we saw was terrible,” said Rahma Ahmat, a 55-year-old woman wearing a black veil who had fled to the Farcha forest outside N’Djamena.

“I saw a person being burned, I was terrified”.

The local official said the Musgum fishermen attacked areas mostly inhabited by Choa Arab herders “from all sides”.

A senior aid worker told AFP that the Musgum used bows and arrows in their attack, drawing violent ripostes from the Arabs.

“I took part in the brawl with the Musgum community,” 35-year-old Hajim said.

“I ran from the fighting because I was soon overwhelmed and I couldn’t track down my child”.

Many refugees have brought only mattresses to wait out the violence in the forest outside N’Djamena, an AFP correspondent saw.

The leader of Chad’s military junta Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said the situation was “worrying” in a statement Wednesday, calling for “solidarity and hospitality” for the refugees but also asking the international community for aid.

During a week in August in Cameroon’s Far North, 32 people were killed and dozens wounded in clashes between Musgum fishermen and Choa Arab herders, the United Nations said.

The authorities said the clashes were sparked by disputes over access to water.

Deadly inter-community clashes are relatively rare in Cameroon, but frequent in Chad and Nigeria — in particular between sedentary farmers and nomadic herders.

Source: AFP

His Majesty Yakum Kevin Teuvih, President of the North-West Fons Conference is reportedly in Amba drag-net, Cameroon Intelligence Report has gathered from security sources in Bamenda.

Fon Yakum Teuvih was arrested by Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards inside his Bambalang Palace at about 5:30 pm on Tuesday, December 7, 2021 and he is currently being interogated over his close ties with the Francophone dominated Cameroon government military deployed to Southern Cameroons.

Bambalang palace spokesperson said Fon Yakum Teuvih was performing some traditional rituals when the Ambazonia Self Defense forces raided the palace.

A senior Ambazonia official hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report that the Fon’s arrest was ordered by “General No Pity” who himself hails from Bambalang.

Fon Yakum Teuvih who also moonlights as Vice President of the North-West Regional Assembly was elected into the North-West House of Chiefs on December 6, 2020 and has ever since been very vocal against the Ambazonia resistant movements.

Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards often carry out detention raids against Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero who continue to represent the interest of the Biya French Cameroun regime.

In French Cameroun, more than 3,000 Southern Cameroonians are reportedly held in jails, Douala, Dschang and Yaounde.  Several Southern Cameroonians have been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention, which allows holding English speaking Cameroonians inmates without trial or charge. Some Southern Cameroons prisoners of concience have been held in administrative detention for up to five years.

By Sama Ernest

Cameroon government army soldiers burned down several houses in Bamenda the chief city in the North West and killed two children on Wednesday 8, December 2021. The soldiers also destroyed many shops around Azire Old Church forcibly displaced hundreds of people in its fight against Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards.

The Francophone dominated Cameroon government army, which has frequently been accused of human rights abuses in its five-year fight against Southern Cameroons Self Defense groups, did not respond to Cameroon Concord News requests for comment.

Five residents interviewed by Cameroon Concord News correspondent in Bamenda confirmed the incident with one of them stressing that the roasting of two kids by the army soldiers should immediately hamper Yaounde’s ability to purchase arms.

Cameroon government troops razed more than 15 houses when they came under attack around Mbengui Road forcing several Bamenda residents to leave their homes.  Several videos and images are currently circulating on social media showing several large fires in the area and almost every structure razed. We gathered that the Francophone soldiers were going house to house and rounding people up.

“We watched our houses go into flames,” a 65-year-old man told Cameroon Concord News. “We all have been crying.”

“The soldiers called us Anglofools and Biafras and set our houses ablaze” one of the residents said.

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima said recently that the people of Ambazonia have managed to wear down the Francophone dominated Cameroon government army. That has left the Cameroon government military on the defensive and the soldiers are now targeting Southern Cameroons civilian population.

By Fon Lawrence in Bamenda

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has raised concern over influx of Cameroonian refugees into Nigeria which has surpassed the benchmark of 70,000 people.

The refugee situation is exacerbated by continuing conflict between secessionist groups and Cameroonian government troops.

Raising the alarm on Monday in Abuja, UNHCR spokesperson Gabriel Adeyemo said the refugees have settled in Nigeria’s Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Benue, Enugu, Cross River and Taraba states are now more than 78,000 and they need urgent international additional support.

Mr Adeyemo said that $97.7 million is needed to respond to the needs of the 78,000 refugees and asylum-seekers of different nationalities and Internally Displayed Persons (IDPs) from Cameroon.

According to UNHCR, the refugees need protection, camps and shelter, and non-food items such as blankets and jerry cans.

“This is not just a number, these are people, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, people just like you and I that have been forced to flee their homes to seek safety and save their lives,” Adeyemo quoted UNHCR Country Representative in Nigeria, Chansa Kapaya.

Source: The East African