Cameroon’s soldiers are currently facing new challenges in Southern Cameroons and some of these challenges could be life-threatening.

The war that has been a nightmare to young army soldiers is gradually morphing into the end of the road for young army soldiers sent to the English-speaking regions without proper training.

From every indication, it is not only the ferocious Amba fighters who have struck fear in the minds of army soldiers that are a problem to Cameroon’s army, the poor state of the roads in that region and poorly maintained military trucks have become the new challenge that might cause more problems to the already stretched military.

Each time the country’s soldiers are sent to Southern Cameroons, many of them head to the jungles of Southern Cameroons with tons of butterflies in their stomach.

Amba fighters have killed thousands of soldiers and the fear of these hastily recruited soldiers can be read on their faces when they cross into former West Cameroons. They want to earn the salary, but are scared of doing their job in a region that has been the graveyard of many of their colleagues.

Yesterday, the bad roads in Manyu delivered bad news to the government. These roads have been impracticable for years and the government’s negligence seems to be catching up with it.

Cameroon government army soldiers on board a military vehicle were seriously injured in a crash late on Friday near Mamfe, the capital of Manyu Division, where the insurgency has always remained a tough challenge to the government.

The Cameroon Concord News Group gathered that the military vehicle slipped off the muddy road and overturned, resulting in 8 soldiers sustaining life-threatening injuries. They are currently in the ill-equipped Mamfe General Hospital which may become their mortuary if they don’t get evacuated.

Though the bad roads could be to blame, many locals told our correspondent in Mamfe that the vehicle was driving at lightning speed going through an area that is still under the control of the dangerous Ambazonia Restoration Forces.

The Francophone Senior Divisional Officer for Manyu whose presence in the Division is very disturbing has been quoted as saying that the Manyu population should remain calm and wait for the outcome of an investigation by the military.

But the population is not buying the administrative officer’s message seriously, especially as the government has been caught on many occasions performing a mincing dance around the truth.

Manyu has remained a hotspot since the fighting started 4 years ago, especially as the Southern Cameroonian President, Julius Ayuk Tabe, hails from this natural resources-rich Division.

The natives of this Division are not going to throw one of theirs under the boss anytime soon and the Amba fighters who have been keeping law and order in the Division have vowed that they will not be downing their tools until Mr. Julius Ayuk Tabe gets released from the East Cameroons dungeons where he has been locked up for more than 2 years.

While Amba fighters are not inflicting more pain on the soldiers, the bad roads are gradually wearing down the war-weary soldiers who have begun questioning the rationale behind this war that could have been avoided.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Over the last couple of weeks, Professor Gervais  Mendo  Ze, the former CRTV General Manager, has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

A video of the former pot-belly supporter of the Yaoundé-based crime syndicate has been trending, portraying him as a bag of bones that is a victim of a vile system he served and propped whole-heartedly for many years.

Mendo Ze has been brought down by the system in which he had unwavering faith and trust.

The most painful part of it is that the “God of Etoudi” that he served and applauded for decades is the one who orchestrated his downfall and possible demise.

Though Mendo Ze had been accused of embezzlement and sentenced to 20 years in the Yaoundé Maximum Security Prison, many actually wonder if his destruction is not the outcome of personal issues he had with his “god”. Could Mendo Ze have challenged his god after he had eaten to his fill?

This question will never be answered as nobody who is in the know of the truth really wants to talk. Many of those who know the truth have eaten, drunk and danced with the evil “God of Etoudi” who is known to be vindictive and they simply want to stay away from trouble. Cameroonians might only know the truth of all the arrests and killings in Cameroon when the “God of Etoudi” bows out.

But while it is appropriate to sympathise, Cameroonians should learn to keep things in their right context. This regime was never bad to Mendo Ze when he enjoyed all the fame and perks that came with the high offices he occupied. This regime was like his oxygen and anybody who held contrary views automatically became Mendo Ze’s enemy.

Today, he has been made to have a taste of the medication he helped the ruling crime syndicate to manufacture for Cameroonians. The best thing would have been to let him stew in his own juice, but human beings will always be human beings and their minds will always be full of human kindness. It is therefore normal to show sympathy even to a man who clearly deserves his unfortunate fate.

After the outrage expressed by Cameroonians across the world and human rights groups after videos of a dying Professor Mendo Ze emerged, his “God of Evil”, Paul Biya, finally accepted to grant him clemency.

The fat and bulky Mendo Ze has been reduced to a bag of bones and he has been let off the hook just for him to go and die at home.

The country’s president, Paul Biya, does not want him to soil the Yaoundé Maximum Security Prison if he dies there. He is not even worth the prison’s jumpsuit in which he will be wrapped if he dies in jail.

He does not want him to extend the list of people who have died because of his cruelty. Biya, a man who was thought to be the savior of Cameroon, has become an ill wind that blows no good to anybody.

Many Cameroonians have died in Cameroon’s jails because of their political beliefs and many are still very sick because of their conditions in jail. Mr. Biya, the Cameroon monarch, seems to enjoy seeing his own people die just because they have political views that do not tie in well with his.

Mendo Ze has been spared because of his illness, but he has very limited time to live. He has been sent home to die surrounded by his loved ones who have seen him melt like snow under very high temperatures.

Mendo Ze was a huge and fat person. Today, he is simply a shadow of his former self. His case simply points to the fact that anybody can lose weight. Those who claim weight runs in their family should hurry up to check with Mendo Ze whose days on earth are numbered.

For those who still trust the ruling crime syndicate and hold that they can only prosper by joining this devilish party, they must know that if a crocodile can eat its own eggs, then it will surely relish the flesh of a frog.

There are huge lessons to be learned here and only those blinded by greed will still not see anything bad in the story of Mendo Ze; a man who had risen to the top, but came down crashing because of the vindictiveness of his own architect.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The former General Manager of the Cameroon Radio and Television, CRTV, extremely weakened by stress and illness has been told to go home from the notorious Yaoundé Central Prison in Kondengui.

However, credible sources have hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report that the President of the Republic, Paul Biya, ordered the release of the man who headed Cameroon Radio and Television for seventeen years, to allow him travel abroad for treatment.

Gervais Mendo Ze former general manager of the Cameroon Radio and Television (Crtv) from 1988 to 2005), was sentenced by the Special Criminal Court to 20 years in prison.

Arrested in November 2014 after he was sacked from the cabinet as Minister Delegate to the Minister of Communication), Gervais Mendo Ze  was prosecuted for several issues which inter alia included fraudulent transport allowances amounting to 39 million FCFA and television tax money.

The Beti Ewondo French Cameroun political elite was also accused of having received a monthly representation bonus of more than 15 million FCFA,  116 million FCFA as home maintenance allowance, 205 million FCFA  as car allowance and 20 million from Cameroon’s audiovisual fee.

Justice also reproached him for misappropriation of 360 million FCFA, constituting part of the GM’s running cost of the state owned radio and television.

Gervais Mendo Ze was prosecuted with fourteen other people (some fleeing and others dead in custody), among them Crtv’s financial service staff and Cameroon’s treasury administration represented by the renowned former Minister of Finance Polycarpe Abah Abah, former mayor Akono Ze Jean Marie and Jean Paul Amang Bitegni all implicated in the 15 billion FCFA television tax scandal

The Mendo Ze acolytes were all sentenced to 18 years in prison and must also pay 15 billion FCFA representing the damage caused to the state and pay a fine of 962 million FCFA.

The Special Criminal Court: President Biya’s Court

Depicting the Special Criminal Court established to prosecute alleged corrupt government officials and the several Alibabas responsible for pilfering from the public treasury as the President’s court is no misnomer.  Cameroon Concord News Group calls it President Biya’s court because it is one instrument of power through which the President is reining in on perceived opponents from within his CPDM power conduit.

 An attribute of a genuine court is the fairness of the trial proceedings in cases which are brought before the court for trial. It is not the number of convictions entered against accused.  A court is legitimate and recognized as such because of its exercise of judicial, executive, legislative and administrative independence.  A court that is independent must be accessible to all citizens after all, is equality before the law, not a constitutionally protected value? The Special Criminal Court is lacking in these attributes of impartiality, judicial independence and accessibility.  It is perceived more as the President’s Court than a Court of Justice.

Establishing this court was President Biya’s way of saving himself the embarrassment of being humiliated during his perennial trips abroad as the President of the most corrupt countries in the world.  This ranking of the country as the most corrupt or one of the most corrupt countries had a potential to hamper President Biya’s personal pecuniary interests far from the borders of Cameroon.  There was therefore a personal interest need to establish the court.  Another personal interest need was to avail himself of a legal tool under his direct control to consolidate absolute power, blackmail potential rebels and competitors within the system and to stifle any form of institutional opposition. He perceived the court as a tool with which to whitewash his more than thirty years of corrupt governance and the rape of the economy.

With the war against Boko Haram, the fight against corruption using the Special Criminal Court has afforded Paul Biya justification contest in the next institutionally flawed elections in order to eternalize power purportedly to direct the war against terror and the war against corruption.  True to the name the President’s Court, the President has exclusive preserve in referring cases to the Special Court and the power to terminate them. He decides who will be arrested, who will be investigated and who will serve time and who will not.

In one instance, he ordered a detained late Minister Bapes Bapes released from remand custody at Kondengui when a warrant was issued for his arrest without the presidential fiat.  Prof Titus Edzoa a former Secretary-General at the Presidency of the Republic benefitted from a purported Presidential pardon whose primary purpose was the release of a French citizen Thiery Atangana from jail.

The fear of a presidential referral to the Special Criminal Court on additional charges of corruption under a practice devolved under the supervision of Paul Biya called “rouleur compresseur” pushed Titus Edzoa   to rejoin the CPDM Party without a public resignation or repudiation of his membership of the party on which he intended to contest presidential elections prior to his incarceration.  Edzoa was a victim of this system of presidential justice when new charges were brought against him when his first imprisonment was about to end in order to maintain him in prison.

Cameroonians want the rule of law to be the guarding principle on which justice is administered in the name of the people.

By Rita Akana, Isong Asu and Soter Agbaw-Ebai

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima has said that the ongoing conflict in the impoverished Federal Republic of Ambazonia will finish immediately when the French Cameroun dictator puts an end to Yaoundé’s aggressive military campaign against British Southern Cameroonians.

“The aggressor and its French ally besiege British Southern Cameroons, attack, invade and occupy our homeland for over 59 years and they are now telling us to stop fighting,” Comrade Dabney Yerima observed during Tuesday’s Ambazonia Interim Government cabinet meeting.

Yerima addressed the French Cameroun regime, saying, “You French Cameroun tyrants stop your aggression against your Southern Cameroons neighbors for the two countries to live in peace.”

Vice President Dabney Yerima also said Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces did not initiate the war in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and demanded that the Biya French Cameroun CEMAC backed coalition should withdraw its forces in order for peace to prevail in Africa’s newest nation.

La Republique du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia really need help but there is no help on the way. When the core is rotten, the body polity will slowly crumble. The two Cameroons have been dragged into a mess and even those who are supposed to check such excesses now look the other way because of Brexit.

The mess is all over the place and since almost everybody including French President Emmanuel Macron, the Commonwealth and Francophonie diplomats have tasted the benefits of corruption, very few people get shocked when Francophone army soldiers kill innocent Southern Cameroonians.

The two Cameroons have been caught between a rock and a hard place. La Republique du Cameroun is run by a bareface crime syndicate that is hellbent on ruining the entire CEMAC region.

Though members of the CPDM crime syndicate are almost dying, they are not repentant and are determined to take the two nations down with them. As long as Biya and his CPDM gang are in power in Yaoundé, corruption – that which blights the lives of the vulnerable and enriches members of the crime syndicate – will continue to take root and make British Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun unattractive to genuine and sustainable foreign investments.

By Isong Asu in London

A combination of deadly attacks by non-state armed groups in the Far North region and growing violence in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions continue to trigger massive but underreported displacement in Cameroon.

Most displacement associated with conflict in Cameroon has historically occurred in the Far North, the poorest region of the country and the one that suffers the most from the Boko Haram insurgency. In 2020, however, seven in ten internally displaced people (IDPs) in Cameroon were forced to flee because of violence in the English-speaking regions.

“Since 2017, UN agencies have been warning of a tragedy in the making in Northwest and Southwest regions,” says IDMC director Alexandra Bilak. “Reports of thousands of new displacements since the beginning of the year and school attacks that have left children dead show that this is now a reality.”

Non-state armed groups fighting to secede from the rest of the country have been targeting schools and teachers they say are sponsored by the central government in French-speaking Yaoundé. Entire families are being forced to flee repeatedly to avoid kidnappings and harassment.

“Many IDPs look for a safe haven in Cameroon’s largest cities. But there they face a new set of challenges in accessing services and employment and often end up displaced again as a result of disasters,” explains Alexandra Bilak. In August 2020, the worst coastal flooding in decades rendered nearly 5,000 people homeless in Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital. Last year, floods also swept through the semi-arid Far North region, where they forced people already displaced from conflict areas to move again.

The total number of new displacements in Cameroon nearly doubled in 2020, compared to 2019. Over one million people are now internally displaced. The country also hosts around 435,000 refugees from Nigeria and the Central African Republic. If displacement continues at this rate and goes unreported, humanitarians will not be able to evaluate people’s needs and deliver effective assistance. “Without evidence, you cannot prevent, respond, or find lasting solutions to this neglected crisis”, warns Alexandra Bilak.

Source: Internal displacement

Two Cameroonian soldiers deployed to Nigeria were killed late yesterday in a Boko Haram attack in northeastern Borno state, two Nigerian military sources said today.

The insurgents, on foot and in several trucks fitted with machine guns, attacked Nigerian soldiers outside the town of Wulgo as well as Cameroonian soldiers deployed from across the border to assist.

“Two CDF (Cameroonian Defence Force) soldiers were killed in the 40-minute gunfight with the Boko Haram terrorists,” a Nigerian military source said.

“Another three CDF soldiers and a Nigerian soldier were injured in the fight,” said the military officer, in an account confirmed by a second Nigerian military source.

An armoured vehicle belonging to the Nigerian army and two Boko Haram trucks were destroyed in the fight while “several” jihadists were “neutralised”, the second military officer said.

The jihadists launched the attack from the nearby Wulgo forest, a known Boko Haram hideout.

Boko Haram and its splinter group ISWAP, the Islamic State West Africa Province, have killed 36,000 people in northeast Nigeria and displaced around two million from their homes since 2009, according to the United Nations.

Earlier this month, ISWAP claimed in a statement that it used two vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, killing and wounding 30 soldiers near Wulgo, a claim that AFP could not independently verify.

Nigeria’s jihadist violence has spread to neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger, prompting a regional military coalition to fight the insurgents.

Source: AFP

The former managing director of the Cameroon Radio and Television Corporation (CRTV), Professor Gervais Mendo Ze, has thanked the head of state, Paul Biya, for helping him lose the excess weight that had become a millstone around his neck.

In a video statement issued on Monday, the ailing professor could been seen demonstrating how grateful he is to the man he served for decades though he was thrown in jail for many years.

A professor of linguistics, Mendo Ze knows how to be sarcastic and understands that sometimes non-verbal communication could be more effective than verbal communication.

The learned Professor wants the world to see how he has been reduced to a bag of bones and helpless. That is why he has released a short video which shows how helpless he has become because of a system that has no regard for human life.

In the video, Mendo Ze is being spoon-fed by a good Samaritan, an image which underscores that a picture is worth more than a thousand words.

But Mendo Ze is not alone in this mess he helped to create. Many others are suffering like him and it is clear that they might never be free.

Inoni Ephraim, a former prime minister, was also reduced to a bag of bones because he was suspected of engaging in corrupt practices while he was the Deputy Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic.

He is today receiving medical attention in France and he has been warned not to open his large mouth else he will be brought back to the Yaounde maximum security facility.

Others like Abah Abah, a former minister of finance; Marafa Amidou Yaya, a former minister of territorial administration and master election rigger; Mebe Ngoh, a former minister of defense and presumed heir to the throne; and Amadou Vamoulke, a former CRTV managing director, are all slowly dying in the Yaounde Maximum Security Facility.

But Cameroonians are not worried about this bunch of hungry individuals who helped to prop a very bad system that is today consuming them and their families.

Under the guise of fighting corruption, the country’s president and those who surround him are doing their best to settle scores and to intimidate those who might one day think of exposing the system or even dreaming of taking over from the ailing president who has ruled the country for 38 years with no good results to show for his long stay in power.

Mendo Ze’s fate is simply a reminder to those who think of becoming senior officials in a system that functions like the Sicilian Mafia.

The only effective rules in the system are those which are unwritten and those rules are dictated by the ailing president.

Cameroon is a dangerous place; a rich country that has been reduced to a bastion of poverty by a president who only thinks of himself.

By the time Biya dies, his government will be considered the worst in the world and the damage Pinochet wreak on his people will be reduced to a dress rehearsal because Biya would have outperformed Pinochet.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai