Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, has finally succumbed to the inevitable, a source at the country’s presidency has revealed. The source at the Unity Palace, which elected unanimity, has informed Cameroon Concord News Group that everything points to the demise of the 85-year-old dictator who has ruled the Central African country for 35 years with an iron fist.

The source adds that given the way in which government officials have been visiting the Unity Palace over the last twelve hours, it is clear that Mr.Biya is no more. The atmosphere at the presidential palace is tense and government officials have been holding meetings to come up with a common response so as to keep the population in check.

Our source adds that members of the Cameroon strong man’s entourage are working hard to keep the information from the public square in the pious belief that they can change things to suit their intention. He stressed that the Secretary General at the presidency has been holding a series of meetings with some of his collaborators who have been advising him to issue decrees that will usher in constitutional changes on Mr. Biya’s behalf.

But the Secretary General and some of his collaborators are reluctant to undertake such an action as it may create a backlash and attract strong criticism from the international community that is intent on seeing meaningful political change in Cameroon.

Under the country’s current constitution, the constitutional successor is the president of the senate, Marcel Nyat Njifenji, himself 83years old and a collapsing figure who has been involved in the corruption and mismanagement that have become the country’s hallmark. Many Cameroonians hold that if the country has to change significantly, figures like the senate president and national assembly speaker have to disappear from the political scene.

It should be pointed out that Mr.Biya has been out of the spotlight for more than two weeks now and this has fueled rumor that his health situation has deteriorated. Our source, a member of the presidential guard, says he has seen some of the dictator’s closest collaborators leave Unity Palace in tears, while others have been pensive ever since they visited the 85-year-old dictator.

He has been suffering from prostrate cancer and a failing heart over the last decades and this has been exacerbated over the last year by the escalating Anglophone crisis that is threatening to tear the country apart.

It should be recalled that over the last two weeks, there have been rumors that Mr. Biya’s health had deteriorated and that he had been secretly taken out of the country for emergency treatment. However, our source at the presidency had intimated that Mr. Biya could not sit on an airplane for long hours and instead of flying him abroad, a team of cancer experts had been rushed from Switzerland to come and attend to the ailing dictator.

According to our source, ever since the experts arrived in Cameroon, Mr. Biya’s health has been a huge concern. The 85-year old has not been responding to cancer treatment and his failing heart has made it impossible for the experts to properly do their job. This has been compounded by the political situation in the country which has clearly wiped out the dictator’s shaky legacy and demonstrated how ineffective he has been in 35 years.

It is worth recalling that Cameroon Concord News had announced in October 21, 2017, that the ailing dictator who had been hospitalized in Switzerland for many weeks was simply coming home to bid farewell to friends and family based on intelligence obtained from sources in Switzerland.

The government of Mr. Biya, it should be noted, is full of octogenarians who have been in the corridors of power for more than sixty years and are prepared to ruin the country before leaving the world. The country’s economy is on its knees and the unemployment rate is concerning.

But the most challenging issue is the Anglophone problem that has put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Following the declaration of independence on October 1, 2017, by the two Anglophone regions, many Anglophones have been killed at the behest of the country’s president whose methods of governance of choice have been intimidation and corruption. This has caused almost all Anglophones to see secession as the only option that can bring them the peace they need.

Even on October 21, 2017, when Mr. Biya had landed in Yaounde, there were serious concerns about his health. Behind the scenes and numerous cameras that were on hand to welcome the president at the Nsimalen International airport, was the fear that anything might happen anytime as Mr. Biya’s collaborators were aware of his deteriorating health and were scared that he might be back home just to bid farewell to them and his family.

Many analysts knew that the Anglophone problem was a nightmare that would not go away anytime soon and they knew that it would take a toll on the old president’s health. Even before heading to New York in October 2017 where he delivered a speech to an empty hall at the United Nations, Mr. Biya had to stop over in Geneva for him to get a medical boost from his doctors, but the long trip to New York was so demanding on him that he had to return to Switzerland for more medical support that has been costing the country an arm and a leg.

Our source in Geneva had advised at the time that Mr. Biya had been receiving treatment for a malignant cancer that was robbing the dictator of his strength and happiness. The source had added that besides cancer, Mr. Biya was also dealing with high blood pressure and a failing heart that might give up anytime.

In October 2017, Cameroon Concord News had reported that Mr. Biya had hard time alighting from the chartered aircraft that brought him back to the country. Mr. Biya whose real age is not known, has,over the last months, had a hard time sleeping, our source at the presidency said, adding that the “Monarch” has, over the last month, been chewing sedatives like candy, a situation that is concerning to his entourage, especially his wife. It was rumored at that time that the “Monarch” had headed home with an entire pharmacy, with sedatives accounting for about 60% of all the medicines that had been put on the chartered flight.

Other sources close to the government stress that Mr. Biya’shealth had been a problem for many years, but it took a turn for the worse when Anglophones decided to challenge his authority. He had declared in January 2017 that the form of the state was non-negotiable and since January 2017, Anglophones at home and abroad have been working hard to make the Anglophone crisis a millstone around his neck. The government has since tried to take a few cosmetic measures to appease Anglophones, but the English-speaking minority has been resolute and determined to walk away from a union whose foundation is, at best, shaky.

Over the last months, the situation has deteriorated, with armed groups engaging the country’s military in running battles which have resulted in more than 300 army soldiers and more than 400 civilians dying.

Mr. Biya’s death is very likely to lead to some political chaos. For years, he has been working hard to ensure that other leaders do not emerge. While his collaborators continue to seek ways to keep Cameroonians in the dark with the intention of changing the constitution, Cameroonians and the international community are closely watching as things play out.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde with files from Sama Ernest

A tanker with 22 Indian crew members on board has gone missing off West Africa, in waters plagued by piracy, officials said Sunday.

The Panama-registered MT Marine Express, loaded with 13,500 tonnes of petrol, had been anchored off the Benin City of Cotonou before authorities lost contact with the vessel on Thursday.

“Our mission in Abuja (Nigeria) is in touch with the authorities in Benin and Nigeria for their help in locating the ship and is constantly monitoring the situation,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said.

The Hong Kong-based Anglo-Eastern shipping company, which manages the tanker, said the last contact with the crew was made on Thursday.

“Authorities have been alerted and are responding. Our top priority is the safety of the crew, whose families have been contacted,” it said on Twitter.

Local media reports said it was the second ship to go missing from the area in the last month.

In January, MT Barret went missing, but the crew, most of them Indians, were released six days later after reportedly paying a ransom.

Several ships have been targeted by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea, seriously disrupting the international shipping route and costing the global economy billions of dollars.

(Source: AFP)

Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency has said that North Korea has been purchasing parts for its missile program via its embassy in Berlin.

BfV head Hans-Georg Maassen made the announcement in a program to be aired on NDR on Monday. Pyongyang is yet to comment on the matter.

“We determined that procurement activities have been carried out from there that are, in our view, done with a view to the missile program and sometimes also for the nuclear program,” said Maassen in comments released ahead of the broadcast.

He noted that the purchases were usually so-called dual use goods, which can be utilized for military and civilian activates.

Maassen noted that German authorities usually block such activities, but “We can’t guarantee that we can detect and prevent this in all cases.”

Pyongyang has defied years of multilateral and bilateral sanctions in relation to its nuclear and missile programs.

The United States and its allies in the West and in Asia engineered tough UN sanctions on North Korea last year when Pyongyang test-fired two missiles in July and then carried out its most powerful nuclear test in August.

However, many said the sanctions would not deter North Korea from pursuing its nuclear and missile program, which Pyongyang insists is part of its defense policy against the United States. Critics have repeatedly warned that sanctions would more affect North Korean people rather than its military and the government.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has defended a recent recent release of once-classified congressional memo on FBI, saying it “totally vindicates” him in an investigation into his presidential campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia.

The president took to Twitter on Saturday morning to once again deny any such collusion or obstruction.

“This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe,” he wrote. “But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their (sic) was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”

On Friday, he approved the public release of a memo written by House Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes that alleges the FBI abused its surveillance authority.

The release of the four-page document prompted senior Democrats to denounce the controversial memo as an inaccurate and misleading portrait intended to undermine the probe. They warned Trump, in a written statement, not to use it as a “pretext” to fire special counsel Robert Mueller or the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein.

Trump reportedly ordered f Mueller the firing of Mueller in June. Democrats, said in a statement that, the memo release is an attempt to undermine the integrity of Mueller’s investigation, warning that such action could trigger a constitutional crisis not seen since the 1970s, when then President Richard Nixon gave orders to fire justice officials involved in the Watergate scandal.

“We write to inform you that we would consider such an unwarranted action as an attempt to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation,” the statement said.

The memo’s central allegation is that the FBI and US Justice Department had been spying on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

GOP memo release sends ‘terrible message’ to US allies

Former CIA director Leon Panetta also warned that Trump’s approval of the congressional memo sends a “terrible message” to US allies to be worry about sharing classified information with Washington.

Panetta, who was discussing the memo release with the CBS News on Friday, described it as an “unprecedented” move, which could have far-reaching effects on Washington’s foreign policy.

“All of this sends a terrible message to our allies who are going to worry about sharing classified information that is so easily released as part of this political effort,” said the former CIA director.

He also called Trump’s move as “a breakdown in the fundamental trust that is important to the institutions of our democracy.”

There are currently several investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but Trump has consistently denied any ties with Moscow. Analysts, however, say Trump’s attempts to hinder the probe, including his attempts to sack Mueller, suggests that he has something big to hide.

Source: Presstv

The Pentagon has released a new nuclear arms policy that aims to revamp US nuclear arsenal and develop new low-yield atomic weapons.

The latest policy was revealed on Friday in a Pentagon policy statement known as the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

The new thinking, which came largely to counter Russia, effectively ends Obama-era efforts to reduce the size and scope of the US arsenal and minimize the role of nuclear weapons in defense planning.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in an introductory note that the changes reflect a need to “look reality in the eye” and “see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

“This is a response to Russian expansion of their capability and the nature of their strategy and doctrine,” Mattis added.

The Pentagon believes Moscow considers US nuclear weapons as too big to be used, meaning they are no longer an effective deterrent; therefore, developing smaller nukes would challenge that presumption.

Although low-yield weapons are smaller, less powerful bombs with a strength below 20 kilotons, they are still devastating.

Low-yield nuclear weapons known as “tactical” nukes can be as destructive as the bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

The US already has a massive nuclear arsenal which includes 150 B-61 nukes stored across multiple European countries.

Those weapons, which can be configured for low-yield options, would be launchable from submarines or ships, so would not need to be stockpiled in Europe.

“The US and NATO require a wider range of credible low-yield nuclear options to do a very specific thing: to convince the Russian leadership that if they initiate limited nuclear use, in a war with the alliance, our response will deny them the objective they seek and impose costs that far outweigh those benefits they can achieve,” said Greg Weaver, the deputy director of strategic capabilities for the military’s Joint Staff.

The NPR, the first update to the military’s nuclear strategy since 2010, outlines the Pentagon’s nuclear ambitions under President Donald Trump, but marks a sobering break from the vision for America’s atomic future under his predecessor Barack Obama.

“The strategy develops capabilities aimed at making use of nuclear weapons less likely,” Trump said in a statement. “It enhances deterrence of strategic attacks against our Nation, and our allies and partners, that may not come in the form of nuclear weapons.”

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to expand and strengthen US nuclear capabilities, unlike Obama who, during a famous speech in Prague in 2009, called for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Barry Blechman, co-founder of the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan anti-nuclear proliferation think tank in Washington, has warned that the US is “on the cusp of a new era of nuclear proliferation.”

“This is the great nuclear danger raised by the new” nuclear policy, Blechman added.

The US is also considering upgrading its fleet of long-range strategic bombers such as B-2 and B-52 to deploy its arsenal of more than 7,000 nuclear warheads to any target around the world.

Source: Presstv

Cameroon Concord News Group strongly supports the ultimatum issued by the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia giving French Cameroun and Nigeria until Monday 5th February 2018 to prove that our interim president Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and 11 other members of the Interim Government who were abducted in Abuja, Nigeria on January 5, 2018 are alive. Cameroon Concord News Group supports the statement made by the Communication Secretary of the Interim Government, Hon. Chris Anu that past that dateline, if prove that they are alive is not provided, then the reaction that proceeded the genocide in Rwanda will look like a child’s play. For Cameroon Concord News Group, there could hardly be a better way of painting the picture of the potential reaction to the provocation and the international conspiratorial genocide against Ambazonia that has culminated in the abduction of our leaders in a supposed democratic Nigeria.   This abduction in Abuja, the seat of power in Nigeria clarifies at long last, the dubious role played by some members of the Nigerian Government as the God fathers of the international crime cartels that have brought the countries of the African Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea on their knees. This international crime is a stain on the conscience of the supposed democratic Federation of Nigeria. The French slave territory of French Cameroun is the well-known Al Capone crime paradise in the Gulf of Guinea that preys on the blood and sweat of the Southern Cameroons.

Cameroon Concord News Group has read with dismay some timid attempt at condemning this strong statement made by the Interim Government, alleging that it amounted to an apology of genocide. This accusation which the criminal regimes to which the ultimatum has been shying to make is regrettable and unfortunate. Cameroon Concord News Group is tempted to suspect that such a timid statement is intended to benefit the genocidal regime and the abductors of our interim leaders. The statement of the Interim Government delivered by Hon. Chris Anu was not responsible for the genocide in Manyu, Kwakwa and other parts of Ambazonia. The statement was not responsible for the genocide perpetrated on November 22 and October 1, 2017 which was widely celebrated by the government of French Cameroun, members of the CPDM and Members of the Senate and National Assembly of French Cameroun. It was not responsible for the genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that have decimated hundreds of thousands of Southern Cameroons/ Ambazonian citizens for the past fifty-seven years. That statement was not responsible for the widespread and systematic rape of our girls in schools and universities, torching of civilian settlements and deportation of our people from our ancestral lands. It was not responsible for the hundreds of thousands of our refugees in foreign lands.  It is regrettably the absence of statements of this nature and action to implement that provided cattle fodder to the impunity with which these crimes have been committed so far. It is the preplanned genocide of our people and the abduction of our leaders that the ultimatum promises a strong response worse than that occurred under similar genocidal circumstances in Rwanda.

For these reasons we strongly endorse the statement and urges the Interim Government to extend the ultimatum to include the immediate and unconditional release of our leaders if they are alive, the immediate and unconditional halt to the genocide and withdrawal of all French Cameroun’s terrorist forces from our territory, the divestment of French Cameroun’s colonial administrators and all symbols of colonial governance from our territory. That a person laying claims to leadership in the Southern Cameroons struggle should come out in times like these to condemn this strong statement calls for legitimate suspicion. It is regrettable that this individual and others have so far not come out strongly to condemn the genocide in the Southern Cameroons like the Roman Catholic Bishops, the International Crisis Group, Amnesty International and the African Bar Association have boldly done. Rather they have turned their weapons inward to attack and delegitimize every effort to confront the enemy comprehensively and decisively.   We in the Cameroon Concord News Group hold that this strong statement is appropriate in the circumstances. French Cameroun and its corrupt co-conspirators in the Nigerian Government will bear the consequences of the escalation of the genocidal war of choice they have declared against Ambazonia and its consequences in the entire Gulf of Guinea.

We strongly condemn any betrayal of the revolution and its leadership and support the self-defense efforts of Ambazonians at home and abroad. Those who cannot provide a strong response to the ongoing crimes against our people or bold enough to strongly condemn the crimes should spare the people the pains and provocations of timid statements that benefit our adversaries.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman and Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

Three policemen and a civilian were killed on Thursday in separate incidents in a region of Cameroon roiled by separatist violence, three days after dozens of activists were extradited from neighbouring Nigeria, sources said.

Source: The Citizen

The Cameroonian government has refused to respond to communication from a lawyer representing detained separatist leader, Julius Ayuk Tabe. According to lawyer Abdul Oroh, he has been unable to communicate with his client who he says is being illegally held by the government.

Yaounde confirmed early this week that Ayuk Tabe and 46 others had been extradited from Nigeria and that they had been handed over to the judiciary for the necessary processes. Nigeria and Cameroon have no extradition treaty, they do not have that relationship, and these people are not terrorists.

Speaking to the BBC Focus on Africa Radio the lawyer said he has written to several authorities including the national security chief and defense ministers but has yet to get a response.

He also expressed worry that the Nigerian authorities who arrested Tabe and others had also been tight lipped on the matter.

He slammed Cameroon’s Information Minister, Issa Tchiroma-Bakary for referring to the arrested nationals as terrorists in his statement announcing their deportation earlier this week. He has also demanded that his client and the others be released.

Ayuk Tabe is widely referred to as the leader of the Republic of Ambazonia – a group in Cameroon’s Angolphone region, pushing for a breakaway from French-dominant Cameroon. Its defense wing has claimed responsibility for deadly attacks on security officials deployed to the region.

The group said it classified all security personnel – be they soldiers, gendarmes or police as occupiers of their land. Over a dozen officers have been killed in guerilla style attacks especially at checkpoints. Tabe and six others were arrested in a hotel in the Nigerian capital Abuja in early January. Reports differed over whether they were arrested by Cameroonian operatives or Nigerian security.

Nigeria’s Department of State Security is believed to have been behind the raid leading to their arrest. He was one of fifteen others who Cameroon issued an international arrest warrant for in November 2017.

Ayuk, a former businessman who had lived in Nigeria, is seen as a moderate voice in the separatist movement and has in the past promoted dialogue over violence. Nevertheless, he has been the target of Cameroonian authorities as a leading member of a resurgent movement to break away from French-speaking Cameroon.

Source: Africa News