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Biafra-Ambazonia Alliance: IPOB leaders say Cho Ayaba, others are impostors

25, May 2021

Biafra-Ambazonia Alliance: IPOB leaders say Cho Ayaba, others are impostors 0

Barely a month after leaders of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and one of Cameroon’s separatist groups led by Ayaba Cho formed a so-called alliance; internal crisis in both camps is threatening the union.

The Biafran and the Cho Ayaba group are both fractured, and not all factions support the alliance and rising violence.

Spokespeople from the self-proclaimed Interim Government of Ambazonia, the other major Anglophone separatist group, and the Customary Government of IPOB have denounced the alliance and proclaimed that the leaders involved are “impostors.”

The alliance which experts say could ignite more violence and instability in Nigeria, Cameroon and across the West and Central African regions, was formed last month, United States-based Foreign Policy reported.

The move is coming just as violent extremist organisations affiliated with the Islamic State and al Qaeda are establishing a strong foothold in the regions. Cameroon armed separatist groups are fighting to carve out Cameroon’s English-speaking North West and South West regions into a breakaway state called Ambazonia, while IPOB is fighting to create Biafra Republic from Nigeria. Grievances of Anglophone Cameroonians date back to 1961, when the region was granted independence from Britain.

Source: Sunnewsonline with additional editing from Camcordnews

Amba fighters have killed more Cameroon gov’t troops than previously known

25, May 2021

Amba fighters have killed more Cameroon gov’t troops than previously known 0

Cameroon Intelligence Report has been reliably informed that the Ministry of Defense is secretly upping the Biya regime estimate on the number of Cameroon government soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons who were killed by Ambazonia Restoration Forces.

Military officials in Yaoundé recently opined that Amba fighters in all the divisions in Southern Cameroons were linked to the deaths of hundreds of Cameroon government troops.

“That means all Cameroon military combat fatalities in the North West and South West has been attributable to the Ambazonia Interim Government” our source added.

“Ever since the separatists launched what they call Big Rubbergun, our command centers assessed that at least 247 army soldier deaths in the North West alone were from improvised explosive devices,” a senior military officer said in an email to the Minister for Defense.

CIR’s Yaoundé city reporter has gained access to the new report which has to be independently assessed. We understand the new assessment will be given to President Biya but will not be reported to the press.

Most of the deaths occurred during Cameroon government military operations in the rural areas in Southern Cameroons.

By Chi Prudence Asong with files from Rita Akana in Yaoundé

Canadian mother of three trying to raise money to send her Cameroonian husband’s body back home after he was killed in a car crash

23, May 2021

Canadian mother of three trying to raise money to send her Cameroonian husband’s body back home after he was killed in a car crash 0

A mother of three young children is trying to raise money to send her husband’s body back to Cameroon after he was killed earlier this month in a car crash in Arnprior, Ont.

Franck Nana Ngassa, 32, died in hospital after rolling his car near Baskin Drive West on May 13, according to Ontario Provincial Police.

“He was a good father,” said Josie Pichette, his wife. “His kids loved him so much. Everybody, anybody that met him, loved him. He just had one of those personalities.”

The family is trying to raise about $19,000 to send Nana Ngassa’s body home to his central African homeland, so that his family can bury him according to local customs. 

Pichette said she’d discussed with her husband his strong desire to be buried in Cameroon if anything were to happen. 

“All of his ancestors are buried in the same place,” she said. “And that’s where he needs to go.”

‘I couldn’t breathe’

The two met in a grocery store in 2013. 

Pichette said Nana Ngassa, a software engineer who moved to Canada to study at the University of Ottawa and Algonquin College, won her over with his bubbly personality and landed her phone number.

They were married nine months later.

Josie Pichette, left, says she met Nana Ngassa at a grocery store in 2013 and they were married nine months later. (Submitted by Josie Pichette )

A lover of cars, Nana Ngassa had bought one of his dream models, a E550 Mercedes-Benz, two months before the May 13 crash. 

He had purchased the specific make and model for its safety features, Pichette said, but with that car in the shop, he’d taken a loaner out for a spin after she had gone to bed. 

Pichette awoke to police knocking on her door at 1 a.m.

“I couldn’t breathe. I really could not breathe,” she said.

Pichette said it’s been difficult for their three children, Isaac, 6, Ethan, 3 and 11-month-old Makeba, who keep asking where their father is and calling his phone.

She said she’s been warmed by the Arnprior community’s outreach following her husband’s death, hearing from people she wasn’t aware knew Nana Ngassa. 

That love, she said, is especially appreciated as people struggle with their own difficulties due to COVID-19.

Outpouring of support

Pichette is now determined to get her husband home.

While she may not fully understand the burial customs of Cameroon or the Banapeople he belonged to, Pichette said she knows her husband’s family wants to wash the body and prepare him for the afterlife.

With $3,000 raised so far, Pichette said she’s looking at remortgaging her house. She’s also sold some of her possessions, like the treadmill he gave her for Christmas, and said family overseas have also been raising funds to bring him home.

“It’s his last dying wish. That’s what he wanted,” she said. “I can’t not give that to him.”

Source: CBC.CA

Death of Idriss Deby: Buhari invites Biya to Abuja

23, May 2021

Death of Idriss Deby: Buhari invites Biya to Abuja 0

Nigeria’s Minister of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Zubairu Dada met with the 88-year-old President Biya on 21 May 2021 in Yaoundé.

The President Buhari emissary came along with a sealed envelope from Abuja and held a one-hour meeting with the ageing Cameroonian head of state.

Ambassador Zubairu Dada told Cameroon state radio and television that “Apart from the fact that we have these artificial boundaries between us, we are actually the same people. Whatever affects Nigeria affects Cameroon by extension and vice versa.”

The Nigerian diplomat did not actually disclose the purpose of his trip to Yaoundé. But Cameroon Concord News gathered that the Head of State of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, current chairman of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, has invited member countries to an extraordinary summit scheduled for 25 May 2021 in Abuja.

In addition to the Heads of State and Government of Cameroon, Nigeria, CAR, Niger and Chad, the high-level meeting will exceptionally be extended to sub-regional organisations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), as well as friendly countries, notably France, Great Britain and the United States

The main item on the agenda of this upcoming meeting in the Nigerian capital is the consequences of the death of Chad’s Head of State, Marshal Idriss Deby Itno, on 20 April 2021, on security in the countries of the Lake Chad basin and even in the Sahel.

By Rita Akana

Nigeria burries army chief Ibrahim Attahiru after plane crash

23, May 2021

Nigeria burries army chief Ibrahim Attahiru after plane crash 0

A somber day in Nigeria during the funeral of top-ranking army commander Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru on Saturday.

The burial in Abuja comes a day after he and 10 other officers died when their plane crashed in bad weather.

It was the third military air disaster this year and the army posted videos on social networks of the service attended by political and military leaders at the national mosque.

“Yesterday, 21st day of May 2021, was a very sad day for the Armed Forces. One of our finest and best pilots was conveying him along with the entourage,” said Lucky Irabor, Nigeria Chief of Defense Staff.

“After landing at the Kaduna International airport, the cold hands of death which manifested in the stormy weather ended that journey. The war against insecurity must be won, truly must be won. All we ask of you is to keep praying for us.”

The aircraft went down trying to land at the Kaduna International Airport “due to inclement weather”, the armed forces said.

President Muhammadu Buhari did not attend the burial, which was crticised on social media.

Army chief of staff Attahiru was appointed by Buhari last January in a shakeup of the senior command to better fight surging violence and a more than decade-long jihadist insurgency.

Attahiru died as news emerged that Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadist leader Abubakar Shekau had himself been seriously wounded or possibly killed after clashes with a rival Islamic State-allied faction.

Attahiru was in charge of leading the frontline offensive against Shekau in 2017.

Nigeria’s military has been battling an Islamist insurgency in the northeast since 2009, a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 and displaced around two million more.

Attahiru had once been in charge of leading the frontline offensive against Boko Haram’s commander Shekau in the northeast in 2017.

Source: Africa News

Lava halts on edge of DR Congo’s main city after volcanic eruption, thousands flee

23, May 2021

Lava halts on edge of DR Congo’s main city after volcanic eruption, thousands flee 0

A smoking trail of lava from a volcanic eruption appeared to have halted a few hundred metres from the edge of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s main city on Sunday morning, said a Reuters reporter at the scene.

Goma, a lakeside city of about 2 million people, was thrown into panic on Saturday evening as the nearby Mount Nyiragongo erupted, turning the night sky an eerie red. Thousands fled with their belongings on foot, some towards the nearby border with Rwanda.

As the sun rose on Sunday, much of the hillside to the north of the town was burned black and houses had been demolished. The sky was again a cloudy gray.

“Local authorities who have been monitoring the eruption overnight report that the lava flow has lost intensity,” government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said on Twitter on Sunday.

Nyiragongo’s previous eruption in 2002 killed 250 people and left 120,000 homeless. It is one of the world’s most active volcanoes and is considered among the most dangerous. Saturday’s eruption appears to have been caused when fractures opened in the volcano’s side, causing lava flows in various directions.

Experts were worried that the volcanic activity observed in the past five years at Nyiragongo mirrors that in the years preceding eruptions in 1977 and 2002.

The Reuters reporter said the lava flow had stopped short of Goma’s airport and the city limits but that surrounding villages were hit.

Lava crossed a main road out of Goma, cutting if off from cities to the north. Traffic was in gridlock in most places as people tried to leave or return to assess the damage to their homes.

It was not possible to estimate material damage or if anyone had died.

A separate lava flow that headed east over unpopulated terrain towards Rwanda also appeared to have stopped, the reporter said.

Source: REUTERS

Yaoundé: Detained journalist on hunger strike

22, May 2021

Yaoundé: Detained journalist on hunger strike 0

A journalist who has been held in Cameroon for ten months for “propagating false news” has started a hunger strike, a media trade union said Thursday.

Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) and local press unions regularly denounce what they say are arbitrary detentions of journalists critical of Cameroon President Paul Biya and his government.

Emmanuel Mbombog Mbog Matip, director of the Climat Social daily, “is on hunger strike” in a prison in the capital Yaoundé, said Alex Koko, head of the national journalists’ union Synajic.

RSF said another journalist, Paul Chouta, had been jailed for 23 months on Tuesday, but as that sentence was equal to the time he has already spent in detention he was released on Thursday.

The Cameroon authorities did not reply to an AFP request for comment late Thursday,

Cameroon sits a lowly 135th out of 180 nations in RSF’s press freedom index.

Source: AFP

Biya Covid-19 Scandal: Several cabinet ministers implicated, Health officials in police drag net

21, May 2021

Biya Covid-19 Scandal: Several cabinet ministers implicated, Health officials in police drag net 0

There are strong indications of embezzlement against several Biya regime ministers in the context of the management of covid-19 funds.

A report that has just been made public by the Francophone dominated Audit Chamber of the Supreme Court listed 30 cases of mismanagement against the Ministers of Public Health and Scientific Research.

Minister Manaouda Malachie of Public Health is particularly indexed in the report as the supreme culprit. The Minister paid for 16 ambulances that were never delivered.

Another ruling CPDM party criminal cited in the report is Minister Madeleine Tchuenté of the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation.  The Institute of Medicinal Plants which depends on her ministerial department was authorized to produce five million tablets of both Hydroxy Chloroquine and Azitrhomycin.  Madam Madeleine Tchuenté and her gang decided to import these medicines from an Indian company known as “ZANEKA” and had them rebranded and repackaged as “Made in Cameroon”.

Minister Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa of Basic Education and Dr. Taiga in charge of the Ministry of Livestock and Animal Industries could not provide evidence or any documentation on their management of COVID-19 funds. 21 cabinet ministers are under investigation and 19 have so far gone through the Supreme Court audition.

The corruption crisis has already been dubbed “Covid Gate” and is it currently generating a lot of under-the-table talk. Cameroon Concord News understands several highly placed government officials have been questioned at the Special Criminal Court and according to a correspondent with our sister publication Cameroon Intelligence Report a wave of arrests has taken place at the Ministry of Public Health.

It is vital to include in this report that the IMF had ordered Cameroon to provide information on the management of funds allocated to combat the covid-19 pandemic.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde

US, international community hail Egypt-brokered Gaza ceasefire

21, May 2021

US, international community hail Egypt-brokered Gaza ceasefire 0

US, UK, Egyptian and UN leaders on Thursday welcomed a ceasefire announced by Israel and Hamas after 11 days of bombing and rocket strikes that killed nearly 250 people.

“I believe we have a genuine opportunity to make progress and I’m committed to working towards it,” Biden said at the White House, highlighting Egypt’s role in brokering the truce.

He said he had spoken Thursday with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Biden, who has come under criticism from many within his own Democratic party for not pushing US ally Israel more publicly to call a ceasefire, touted his administration’s “quiet, relentless diplomacy”.

Echoing a line taken by the White House throughout the 11-day conflict, Biden indicated that the US goal, involving “incredible efforts”, was above all to limit the duration of the bloodshed.

The aim was “avoiding the sort of prolonged conflict we’ve seen in previous years”, he said.

Biden referred to the casualties on both sides, and said, “Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely and enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity and democracy.”

He also pledged US humanitarian aid, while emphasizing that this would be channeled through the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, not Hamas so that the organisation could not “simply restock its military arsenal”.

Biden put particular weight on a pledge to back “Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks from Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups.”

In a rejection of some Democratic members of Congress who are pushing to stop an imminent US arms sale to Israel, Biden said he had assured Netanyahu of his “full support” in replenishing the Iron Dome anti-missile system used to shoot down Hamas’ projectiles.

Biden also had notable words of thanks for Sisi, whose authoritarian rule has complicated the long close US-Egyptian relationship.

“I extend my sincere gratitude to President al-Sisi and the senior Egyptian officials who have played such a critical role in this diplomacy,” Biden said.

Sisi reciprocated with a series of tweets thanking Biden for his role in making the Egyptian ceasefire initiative succeed.

Sisi said he and President Biden both saw the urgency of managing the conflict between all parties with diplomacy.

‘Unacceptable cycle of violence’

Britain on Thursday welcomed a ceasefire announced by Israel and Hamas and called on all sides to work to make it durable and “end the unacceptable cycle of violence” in the region.

“All sides must work to make the ceasefire durable and end the unacceptable cycle of violence and loss of civilian life,” UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Twitter, adding that Britain supports “efforts to bring about peace”.

United Nations pleads for ‘real national reconciliation’

The ceasefire was also welcomed at the UN, with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres adding a warning.

“I stress that Israeli and Palestinian leaders have a responsibility beyond the restoration of calm to start a serious dialogue to address the root causes of the conflict,” Guterres said.

“Gaza is an integral part of the future Palestinian state and no effort should be spared to bring about real national reconciliation that ends the division.”

UN Middle East Peace Envoy Tor Wennesland wrote on Twitter: “I welcome the ceasefire between #Gaza & #Israel. I extend my deepest condolences to the victims of the violence & their loved ones. I commend #Egypt & #Qatar for the efforts carried out, in close contact w/ the @UN, to help restore calm. The work of building #Palestine can start.”

Israel, Hamas claim victory

Both Israel and Hamas, meanwhile, claimed significant gains from the fighting.

“This is the euphoria of victory,” said Khalil al-Hayya, the second most senior member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip, in a speech to thousands of people celebrating in Gaza City after the ceasefire came into place. He also promised to reconstruct homes destroyed by Israeli air strikes.

Al-Hayya claims Israel failed to destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure, and says the group’s fighters are still “striding proudly” in the underground tunnels.

He did not reveal the terms of the deal.

Separately, another senior Hamas member warned that the group remained ready to take up arms at a moment’s notice.

“It is true the battle ends today but Netanyahu and the whole world should know that our hands are on the trigger and we will continue to grow the capabilities of this resistance,” said Ezzat El-Reshiq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, in an interview with Reuters.

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said on Twitter that the Gaza offensive had yielded “unprecedented military gains”.

Speaking to his US counterpart Lloyd Austin, Gantz said Israel’s defence establishment would “continue to work closely and in full cooperation with the Pentagon and the US administration to stabilise the region”, Gantz’s office said.

Since the fighting began on May 10, health officials in Gaza said 232 Palestinians, including 65 children, had been killed and more than 1,900 wounded in aerial bombardments. Israel said it had killed at least 160 combatants in Gaza.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)

Spain sends more than 6,500 migrants back to Morocco

21, May 2021

Spain sends more than 6,500 migrants back to Morocco 0

More than 6,500 migrants out of the approximately 8,000 who had entered Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta earlier this week have been sent back to Morocco, Spanish Interior Minister  Fernando Grande-Marlaska said on Friday.

Marlaska told the Radio COPE the situation was now “normal” compared with the previous days, and hoped that the recent diplomatic spat with Morocco “will be as short as possible”.

Morocco had appeared to loosen its border controls with Ceuta on Monday as thousands of migrants poured into the enclave, a move widely interpreted as retaliation for Spain’s hosting of Western Sahara independence leader Brahim Ghali.  Ghali has been in a Spanish hospital since last month.

“It is inconceivable that a humanitarian gesture triggers a situation like the crisis in Ceuta,” said the minister.

Source: REUTERS

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