Politics

24, April 2020

US Politics: Joe Biden thinks Trump will try to postpone election ⁰

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has predicted that US President Donald Trump will try to postpone the country’s November election in an attempt to win.

“Mark my words, I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said during an online fundraiser Thursday.

The 77-year-old former vice president said it is “the only way he thinks he can possibly win.”

Six months before US voters head to the polls, Trump’s mind is already in election mode.

But with a pandemic raging and job losses climbing to 26.4 million on Thursday, Trump’s path to victory may be harder than he anticipated.

Biden, highlighting Trump’s recent threat to veto emergency funding for the US Post Office, claimed it was an example of the president’s intention to “do all he can to make it very hard for people to vote.”

While mail-in voting and absentee ballots remain methods many say could help limit voters spreading coronavirus, Trump maintains they create the potential for fraud.

Meanwhile, dozens of US states have postponed their primary races, which will officially determine who will be the presidential nominee.

The 73-year-old Trump has been criticized for turning his daily White House coronavirus briefings into campaign events — rallying his base and taking swipes at his detractors such as Biden, who is sheltering at home.

“We have a sleepy guy in a basement of a house that the press is giving a free pass to, who doesn’t want to do debates because of COVID,” Trump said during the Thursday briefing.

Source: AFP

23, April 2020

Ngarbuh-Ntumbaw Massacre: In the context of war crimes of this magnitude and gravity, the French Cameroun finding is nonsensical ⁰

The communique from the Secretary General in the Presidency of Cameroon on the outcome of the findings of the Government appointed Commission that investigated the Ngarbuh massacres is problematic. In other to ascertain the independence, professionalism, expertise and integrity of the Commission, the Commission itself should have made their findings public in a public event convened for that purpose and in the presence of the surviving victims, families of deceased victims, national and international NGOs, the Bar Association, National and International press.

The Commission should have submitted its findings to public scrutiny and answered questions from the press and stakeholders that include the Bar about its terms of reference, its composition, the expertise of members on forensics, pathology, ballistics and the methodology it used in its investigations or enquiry. The reason why I have raised these wide ranging issues which a competent, informed and credible enquiry and/ or investigation must consider in order to be useful, is based on the recommendations made relating to criminal responsibility and military discipline.

The Commission found the alleged physical perpetrators criminally responsible for the massacres and their superior commander liable for dereliction of duty warranting disciplinary action only. In the context of war crimes of this magnitude and gravity, this finding is nonsensical. There is a distinction between individual criminal responsibility of a commander and superior command responsibility of a commander.

The superior commander, who ordered the operation in a civilian settlement that led to the massacre, bears individual and superior command responsibility for the crimes perpetrated by his subordinates for failing to prevent or to punish his subordinates for the crimes. I am not persuaded by the fact that he was misled by a faulty report submitted by his subordinate that concealed his criminal responsibility for the crimes.

In the face of the persistent outcry from victims, national and international human rights organizations, the civilian and military superior commanders engaged in the cover up, harassment and disappearance of witnesses and disgraceful contradictory explanations or justifications for the crimes, there is a reasonable basis to believe that the report is a cover up.

The alleged cross fire in a civilian settlement fails to meet the proportionality threshold under the Geneva Conventions and should not form part of a credible investigation or enquiry. A professional army should not conduct an armed operation in a civilian settlement.

The alleged suspicious presence of alleged armed combatants in the civilian settlement didnot alters the civilian nature of the settlement. This is one important reason why the superior commanders who ordered the operation must bear individual and superior command responsibility for the crimes committed by their subordinates.

For me, and unless the complete report establishes otherwise, the communiqué of the Secretary General in the Presidency appears to be a damage control effort intended to conceal the crimes of superior commanders rather than establish a credible basis for accountability and justice …

By Chief FUATABONG Charles ACHALEKE TAKU

22, April 2020

Ngarbuh Massacre: Biya regime’s U-turn embarrassing, leaves doubts about the Yaounde version ⁰

A damning admission of guilt in Cameroon where government authorities have admitted that soldiers acting alongside a militia shot dead 13 civilians, including 10 children, in Ngarbuh, the restive north-west of the country in February. Officials had initially denied the army was involved in the killings.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Cameroon’s presidency said three soldiers along with members of a vigilante group had stormed a separatist rebel base killing five people, before “discovering that three women and 10 children were killed” in the firefight. It suggested the deaths were accidental but soldiers tried to cover them up. The February 14 massacre in the village of Ntumbo stirred huge public reactions and condemnation.

The United Nations described it “a shocking episode in the ongoing crisis that has afflicted Cameroon’s North-West and South-West regions for the past three years”. And a tally by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in total, 21 civilians were killed, including 13 children and a pregnant woman. Its version had blamed the attack on at least 10 troops from an elite army unit who were backed by “at least 30 armed Fulani” militiamen.

All of these, the government had denied, particularly that the army was involved. But President Paul Biya responded by ordering an investigation. And now, what do we have? A U-turn for the government, perhaps an embarrassing one, which still leaves doubts about the official version.

Source: Africa News

20, April 2020

Mali: Election runoff tarnished by intimidation and allegations of vote rigging ⁰

Acts of intimidation and allegations of vote buying marred the final round of legislative elections in Mali on Sunday aimed at reviving confidence in embattled institutions despite a bloody jihadist conflict and a virus pandemic.

In central Mali, the president of a voting station was forcibly removed and representatives of the electoral commission “chased away by armed men”, one of the representatives told AFP.

Military sources confirmed the incident.

Elsewhere, voting was cancelled after jihadists threatened to attack voters, witnesses said.

Already on Saturday, unknown assailants had destroyed voting equipment in northern Mali.

And on Sunday, observer umbrella group Synergie said there had been many incidents of vote buying at several voting stations.

The first provisional results are to be announced at the start of the week.

The election had been repeatedly delayed, and the first round on March 29 was disrupted by jihadist attacks as well as the kidnapping of opposition leader Soumaila Cisse.

‘Consolidate our democracy’

“I voted. It is important despite the economic situation. We need new MPs to consolidate our democracy,” Moussa Diakite, a 23-year-old student, told AFP.

Another student, Hamchetou Toure, said she wore a face mask and observed social distancing rules as she voted in the semi-desert country, which has so far recorded 216 cases of the virus including 13 deaths.

Among the measures taken by the government are a night-time curfew, school closures and restrictions on some activities — but people still filled markets, mosques and public transport.

The Synergie said anti-virus protection kits had been distributed to over 96 percent of polling stations that it visited across the former French colony.

It said poll workers wore masks in over 87 percent of the stations visited.

Mali, one of the world’s poorest countries, is struggling with an Islamist revolt that has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Sunday’s runoff in the West African nation of 19 million people is for 147 seats in the National Assembly.

Voting took place in the capital as well as the troubled central town of Mopti and Gao in the north, according to residents.

Delays

It was the country’s first parliamentary poll since 2013 when President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s Rally for Mali party won a big majority.

Turnout in the first round averaged over 35 percent nationwide but was less than 13 percent in the capital Bamako.

On Sunday’s second-round vote, turnout was 23.2 percent, according to Synergie, which had dispatched election observers.

The election had been meant to take place in late 2018 after Keita was returned to office but was postponed several times, mainly because of security concerns.

A “national dialogue” staged last year to discuss Mali’s spiral of violence called for the ballot to be completed by May.

The hope is that the new MPs will endorse changes to the constitution that will promote decentralisation.

That is the key to pushing ahead with the government’s plans for peace. It signed a deal with armed separatists in northern Mali in 2015 but the pact has largely stalled.

Violence in that region began in 2012 and was then fanned by jihadists.

Defying thousands of French and UN troops, the jihadists took their campaign into the centre of the country and now threaten neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Mali’s conflict zones and poor healthcare infrastructure place it in the category of countries that health experts say are at high risk of coronavirus.

Keita, addressing the nation wearing a face mask, said “every health and security” precaution would be “rigorously applied” during Sunday’s vote.

(AFP)

18, April 2020

Blood on his hands: Yang Philemon is French Cameroun’s new Grand Chancellor ⁰

President Biya on Friday the 17^th of April appointed former Prime Minister, Philemon Yang to the post of Grand Chancellor of National Orders.

The Southern Cameroons politician with too much blood on his hands reacted by saying that “I am very pleased, I would like to sincerely thank the Head of State. This gives me another opportunity to serve the President of the Republic and also serve the Cameroonian people.”

Yang who spent 20 years in Canada as Cameroon’s ambassador was recently the Head of the permanent delegation of the Central Committee of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate to the North West Region.

The former Prime Minister also observed that he knows nothing about his new mission.

“I guess these are the big challenges. I think that in the coming days I will be able to learn and know what it is all about and that way I can make my small contribution,” he said.

Thus, less than two years after his exit from government, Philemon Yang rebounded at the Grand Chancellery of National Orders. He replaces Peter Mafany Musonge who spent 13 years in this high office.

By Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap in Glasgow with files from CIN

18, April 2020

US coronavirus crisis takes sharp political turn as Trump slams Democratic governors ⁰

The US coronavirus crisis took a sharp political turn on Friday as President Donald Trump lashed out at four Democratic governors over their handling of the pandemic after having conceded that states bear ultimate control of restrictions to contain the outbreak.

The Republican president targeted three swing states critical to his re-election bid – Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia – where his conservative loyalists have mounted pressure campaigns challenging those governors’ stay-at-home orders.

Amplifying a theme that his supporters have trumpeted this week in street protests at the state capitals of Lansing, St. Paul, and Richmond, Trump issued a series of matching Twitter posts touting the slogans: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA!”

Michigan has become a particular focus of agitation to relax social-distancing rules that rank among the strictest in the nation after Governor Gretchen Whitmer, widely seen as a potential running mate for presumed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, extended them through the end of April.

Protesters defying the restrictions from the steps of the state Capitol on Wednesday shouted “lock her up,” a chant that was a staple of Trump’s campaign rallies and originally referred to his 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

‘When it’s safe’

Whitmer said on Friday she was hopeful her state, which suffered one of the country’s fastest-growing coronavirus infection rates, can begin to restart parts of its economy on May 1. But she urged doing so cautiously to avoid reigniting the outbreak just as it was being brought to heel.

Responding to Trump’s critique later in the day, Whitmer said Michigan will re-engage its economy when it’s safe, adding: “The last thing I want to do is to have a second wave here.”

Trump also took renewed aim at one of his favorite political foils, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, suggesting on Twitter that his state, the US epicenter of the outbreak, had asked for too much assistance that was never fully used.

At his daily news briefing, Cuomo shot back saying Trump should “maybe get up and go to work” instead of watching TV, and accused the president of favoring the airline industry and business cronies in a recent bailout package that left little for the states.

The flare-up in political sparring came as the number of known coronavirus infections in the United States surpassed 700,000, the most of any country. At the same time, the tally of lives lost from COVID-19, the highly contagious lung disease caused by the virus, has soared to more than 35,000. New York state accounts for nearly half those deaths.

While the death toll continued to climb, the rate of hospitalizations and other indicators have been leveling off, a sign that drastic social-distancing restrictions imposed in 42 of the 50 US states were working to curtail the outbreak.

Stay-at-home orders and the closure of non-essential businesses have also strangled US commerce, triggering millions of layoffs and forecasts that America is headed for its deepest recession since the economic collapse of the 1930s.

The result has been mounting pressure to ease the shutdowns, leading to clashes between Trump, who had touted the strength of the US economy as the best case for his re-election in November, and governors in hard-hit states who warned against lifting restrictions too quickly.

Trump, who played down the coronavirus threat in its early stages, had been pressing to restart idled businesses as soon as May 1, at first declaring “total” authority to do so and branding governors who resisted his approach, many of them Democrats, as “mutineers.”

State control and testing

In the end Trump acknowledged it was up to the governors to decide when and how to relax the restrictions they themselves had imposed since last month, presenting new federal guidelines on Thursday as recommendations.

While the guidelines call for a phased-in, science-based strategy in keeping with the advice of leading health experts, the plan hinges on widespread testing to gauge the scope of infections and how many people might have developed immunity to the virus.

At a White House briefing on Friday, Trump’s coronavirus task force members, through statements and graphics, pushed back against criticism from some governors and lawmakers that limited testing ability is impeding the country’s return to normalcy.

“We believe today that we have the capacity in the United States to do a sufficient amount of testing for states to move into phase one in the time and manner that they deem appropriate,” Vice President Mike Pence told reporters.

Cuomo argued earlier that the Trump administration was foisting responsibility for a massive testing program on the states without providing necessary financial resources.

“Is there any funding so I can do these things that you want us to do? No. That is passing the buck without passing the bucks,” Cuomo said.

Even as Cuomo was addressing reporters, Trump immediately took to Twitter in Washington to fire back, saying he “should spend more time ‘doing’ and less time ‘complaining.’”

Trump struck a more conciliatory tone during the White House briefing. Asked about criticism leveled at him earlier in the day by Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat who accused Trump of “fomenting domestic rebellion” with his “LIBERATE” tweets, the president demurred.

Trump denied he was suggesting that Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia lift their stay-at-home orders altogether, but added, “I think elements of what they’ve done are too much.”

Of the protesters, Trump said, “These are people expressing their views.” He added, “They seem to be very responsible to me. … But they’ve been treated a little bit rough.”

(Source: Reuters)

17, April 2020

Yaounde: Maurice Kamto denounces Biya’s silence on coronavirus ⁰

Cameroon’s main opposition leader said he wants a top court to declare a power vacuum because President Paul Biya hasn’t addressed the coronavirus crisis in the country.

Africa’s second-longest serving president has been criticized on social media for his silence amid the rapid spread of the disease. Cameroon diagnosed the first case of the coronavirus on March 6 and is now among the most affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with 855 patients. The 87-year-old was last seen on March 11 after receiving the U.S. ambassador.

“In the face of the unprecedented political situation in which our country finds itself, characterized by the prolonged and unexplained absence of the head of state, I have decided to act,” opposition leader Maurice Kamto said on his Facebook page Wednesday. Kamto called on the speaker of parliament to seize the Constitutional Court.

Known for his secretive leadership style and his frequent, months-long stays in Switzerland, Biya’s silence has also fueled widespread speculation about his health.

Source: Bloomberg

17, April 2020

The mystery of Cameroon’s unusually absent president: ‘Sir, are you alive?’ ⁰

Maybe he was at home. Maybe he was at his favorite Swiss hotel.

It had been 35 days since anyone saw the president of Cameroon — or, at least, since anyone had revealed his whereabouts — and people in the central African country had questions.

“Sir, are you alive?” one man asked on Twitter.

The public absence of Paul Biya — who, at 87, is the oldest leader in Africa — during the coronavirus pandemic fueled outrage, concern and wild theories before the strongman turned up Thursday in a photo with the French ambassador to Cameroon.

“On the menu for our exchange this afternoon: managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Cameroon, France and around the world,” Biya tweeted.

“You have risen?” someone wrote in response.

“We don’t ask you to receive people,” another said. “We ask you to address the nation.”

The photo surfaced one day after Maurice Kamto, the president’s chief political rival, called on Cameroon’s legislature to declare a power vacancy and hold a new election.

The prominent politician, who challenged Biya in the 2018 race, cited the country’s constitution, which dictates that voting must begin within 40 days of a president’s death, resignation or “permanent incapacity.”

“Cameroonians are expecting him to address the nation, to tell them exactly what is going on, to share his vision,” Kamto told The Washington Post. “Whether that photo is real? Authentic? I don’t know.”

Christophe Guilhou, the French ambassador, retweeted the image, which showed the men sitting on separate cream couches.

Neither he nor Biya’s office responded to requests for comment.

Photoshop scandals involving the president have damaged trust in the past, said Doris Toyou, a Cameroonian lawyer in New York.

An obviously manipulated photo of Biya at a funeral for fallen soldiers appeared on the presidential website in 2015. (He was in Europe, not at the event.)

“The photo was illegally modified by someone who managed to hack into the site,” the communications minister told France 24 at the time.

People want more than evidence of a meeting with the French ambassador, Toyou said.

“The question remains the same,” she said. “Is he able and willing to perform presidential function?”

Citizens had been wondering: Is Biya’s hand really signing those presidential decrees? Who is actually behind his Facebook posts?

On social media, Cameroonians demanded to hear him speak about the growing outbreak on their soil. The nation has recorded 848 cases and 14 deaths. The airports are closed. Schools and places of worship have shuttered.

Biya’s ministers have done the talking since the first case emerged on March 6. The top health official tweets daily updates in English and French.

The silence is a stark contrast to other presidential approaches to covid-19.

The Senegalese leader has released a video of himself washing his hands. The Ugandan president posted footage of his indoor workout. The Guinean ruler gave a speech with face masks shielding his microphones.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who spent a week in intensive care with a severe case of the virus, allowed cameras to film him this month in a hospital bed.

“During this pandemic, every single country in the world needs to hear from their head of state,” said Kamto, the Cameroonian opposition leader.

The chances of Cameroon declaring a power vacancy are slim to none. The National Assembly and the Constitutional Council, which handle such matters, are crowded with members of Biya’s party.

They’ve defended him over the decades — Biya took office in 1982 — through allegations of military brutality, rigged elections and an extraordinary amount of time spent on private trips abroad — even as a separatist uprising and Boko Haram attacks have rocked the country.

Biya spent a third of his time overseas in 2006 and 2009, according to one widely shared report from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an international group of investigative journalists.

During some of his stays in Switzerland, Cameroonians in the country protested outside his preferred hotel: the InterContinental Geneva.

Has he been there lately?

“I do not have any information,” a receptionist told The Washington Post before hanging up.

Biya is known for taking long breaks away from the public eye, said Jeff Smith, the founding director of Vanguard Africa, a pro-democracy nonprofit organization.

“It’s not an uncommon refrain to hear Cameroonians lament the fact that they have a ‘ghost president,’ ” he said.

However, Smith added, “his absence is really quite shocking during a time in which Cameroon has experienced the most cases and deaths due to the coronavirus in all of Central Africa.”

Culled from The Washington Post

14, April 2020

Barack Obama endorses his longtime deputy Joe Biden for US president ⁰

Former President Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden in a video on Tuesday, giving the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee a boost from the party’s biggest fundraiser and one of its most popular figures.

“I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now,” Obama said in a nearly 12- minute video, touting him as a “close friend” and lauding him for his perseverance and compassion.

Obama and Biden are close friends from their two terms in the White House, when Biden served as vice president. Biden leaned heavily on his affiliation with the former president throughout the Democratic primary, framing his pitch as an extension of Obama’s presidency. In recent weeks, he has told donors he’s been in touch with Obama about his vice-presidential pick.

The endorsement marks Obama’s return to presidential politics more than three years after leaving the White House. He rarely talks directly about his successor, President Donald Trump, and avoided intervening in the Democratic primary. The field at one point spanned nearly two dozen candidates and Obama offered private counsel to anyone who asked it, but but made no efforts to bolster an individual campaign — including Biden’s.

But Obama has been following the Democratic race closely from the sidelines and is eager to take a more active public role in the campaign. He’s expected to headline fundraisers for Biden and public events in key swing states, if those events can still be held given social distancing guidelines during the pandemic. An Obama adviser said the former president is taking his cues from Biden’s campaign on how he can be most useful as he eases back into a more overtly political role.

The endorsement comes a day after Bernie Sanders also backed Biden. The former vice president now has the support of all of his former Democratic primary rivals except for Elizabeth Warren. The Massachusetts senator is expected to formally throw her support behind Biden soon, according to a person familiar with her plans.

Two other prominent Democrats who have yet to formally endorse Biden are former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the party’s 2016 nominee. Hillary Clinton has been in regular touch with Biden, including several times since Sanders dropped out of the race, according to an aide.

Obama has been an obvious shadow throughout the 2020 Democratic primary. Biden coined the “Obama-Biden administration” moniker when he’d talk about various accomplishments.

But he also tried to insist he was running as his own man, telling anyone who asked that he urged Obama not to endorse him out of the gate or even in the thick of the primary.

Obama’s tenure became a sort of punching bag for some presidential hopefuls in a primary fight that early on was defined by a debate over the need for generational and systemic change versus a return to normalcy after the Trump era.

Julian Castro, 45, pushed Biden repeatedly on whether he argued with Obama privately over deportations overseen by that administration. Pete Buttigieg, 38, and Beto O’Rourke, 47, subtly jabbed Biden – and by extension Obama — by suggesting the party shouldn’t “return to the past.” Sanders and Warren suggested that the 2010 Affordable Care Act hadn’t gone far enough.

But Biden was a staunch defender of the Affordable Care Act and on the trail, often referred to himself as an “Obama-Biden Democrat.” The former vice president called it “bizarre” for Democrats, even faintly, to attack Obama’s record.

The conversation around Obama’s presidency shifted as the primary wore on. By the time voting began, Buttigieg was almost explicitly comparing his youthful bid to Obama’s 2008 campaign and the progressives were framing their health-care proposals as a way to build on Obama’s legacy. Billionaire candidate Mike Bloomberg, meanwhile, featured Obama in his ubiquitous advertising effort, much to Biden’s chagrin.

“You’d think Mike was Barack’s vice president,” Biden once quipped to donors.

For his part, Biden leaned even more heavily into Obama as primary voting began. Aiming at Sanders, the self-described “democratic socialist,” and billionaire Bloomberg, who’d been elected New York City mayor as a Republican, Biden said in a Feb. 21 interview with The Associated Press that “they’re not bad folks. They’re just not Democrats.”

Campaigning before increasingly diverse audiences in Nevada and South Carolina, Biden ramped up his recollections of when Obama tapped him for the ticket in 2008. Biden recalled Inauguration Day 2009, waiting for the train in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, “for a black man to pick me up … for the two of us to be sworn in as president and vice president of the United States.”

Often drawing nods and vocal affirmation from his audiences, Biden said he had thought of that day as a national victory over institutional racism. Now, in the Trump era, Biden calls that conclusion a mistake.

“I thought we could defeat hate,” he said, but, “it never goes away.“

On Feb. 29, Biden took the stage in South Carolina to celebrate a nearly 30-point victory that would propel him past Sanders and everyone.

He dusted off a line he’d used many times before: “I’m a proud Obama-Biden Democrat,” Biden said.

Obama was watching. His sideline approach nearing its end, he called his former vice president that night to congratulate him on his victory.

(AP)

11, April 2020

Why Dr Fontem Neba is a symbol of the Ambazonia Resistance ⁰

The Wedge in our Struggle

My people, there are a number of things the enemy has done to us through these fellows to systematically disrupt our struggle or restoration quest.

1. They killed trust in leadership by propping up dishonest guys in our midst. The act of smearing honest people and making them look untrustworthy is by far the deepest cut. Crooks have become our reference point. No wonder, we no longer trust anyone. Those who can drive this struggle have crumbled under the bullets of unverified calumny. So, when a good idea comes from them, we pull up the smear and use the stench to disqualify its proponent, then the bad guy continues to shout “Feeloo ambazoonians”. No plan on how to move forward except bannings and sowing division. Simple tactic!

2. Disunity among the leadership, so that no constructive action can be taken against LRC. They only agree when the action will not favour us. See the Swiss initiative. They were already exposing our fighters to the Swiss and pushing everyone into their luggage when the plan leaked and the trip by the LGA chairmen to Switzerland was aborted. That was a massive brainwashing scheme that would have brought our liberation struggle crashing. And they were just happy to go and see Switzerland, not knowing that it was a satanic plot.

4. Egotism and the love for money have driven a wedge between us and our goal. Why would someone remind anyone offering to mediate about money owed him by LRC at this time? Why would someone even place a financial precondition for holding talks? Why would someone lie that he has the largest force on the ground and use that to position himself as a power broker before the Swiss? Why would a group of people decide, against expert advice, to sign away to the Swiss their right to a multilateral mediation format? Why would SCian politicians accept Swiss money to go from UK, Canada to the US advertising the Swiss initiative to the exclusion of the European institute for peace (an EU funded organisation)? These questions beg for answers.

4. Disrupting fund raising projects is a major scheme to render the struggle bankrupt, apart from embezzlement. Every time a seemingly viable fundraising initiative is laid out, they too will do theirs and distract the public that is already weary of bickering. They cause the public to transfer their stigma on it, and when the momentum dies down, they abandon theirs. See the bonds, the pins and other financial ideas.

5. Disinformation and Misinformation of the masses. Using their very loud megaphone, they distort every notion of good. Points 1-4 above have been achieved through the alphabet TV and paid social media activists. Some of them puts out their write-ups using the name of some of these activists in exchange for a fee. They deceive the people at home about non-existent diplomatic moves and breakthroughs and distort international relations concepts. It’s like a veil of darkness cast over our people’s heads.

5. The lure of power and the desire to exercise corrupt influence . Even some of the IG converts in the diaspora are easily brainwashed because of the temptation of corruption. Many of them see themselves as an emerging Bulu/Beti clan when we restore our independence. So, they use that to make their communities and families believe that as future ministers and LG chairmen in SC, they will have more benefits and influence than others – greed! Let them show us the blue print or the strategy that will take us to Buea.

6. Killing or disarming our own fighters cannot be excused on any grounds. Is it surprising that we have lost more of our elite soldiers to our own bullets than to LRC? After commissioning Nambere to eliminate some of his peers, it was time to do away with him so that all traces could be wiped. But he preferred to surrender to the enemy than to succumb to the bullets of his own people. He confided his ordeal to those who were ready to listen. This is a familiar scenario which the RFs do not yet understand. Many who sensed danger have fled the resistance because they don’t know when the order for their execution will come. Others have been captured because their position was deliberately leaked to the enemy. Who does that? Does the mass execution of the Bui 23 tell us anything?

In all

I have travelled round this country and have met different people who have complained about the manner in which they were robbed in broad day light and lamented the general state of things. They told me how they were harangued into donating thousands of dollars for diplomatic trips which never happened. In others, Ngwa Irene personally went there and collected $12000 cash and when the community asked for a receipt it became a brawl. Some communities have not recovered from the financially induced coma caused by these buccaneers.

I challenge all those hiding in WhatsApp groups or FB, wearing aliases to come to a public debate to explain their plan for the restoration, if there is any, and stop using subterfuge to deceive our people. If you cannot diagnose a disease, then you cannot treat it.

Denying these facts is denying, like LRC, that our people don’t have any problem. “Any man who does not know, and knows that he does not know is willing to learn; teach him. Any man who does not know, and knows not that he does not know is a fool; shun him”. We should now understand why for two years we have been spinning in the same spot and claiming that we are on course. Having run out if arguments, they claim that it is because some people don’t use the name “Ambazonia” and so it affects the struggle. 😫 Lame excuse! With all what is going on, ask yourselves again, are these people truly taking us to Buea or to Golgotha?

Yours in the struggle

Fontem Neba

Scholar & Freedom Fighter