Politics

20, September 2022

World in ‘great peril’, UN chief warns, as leaders gather for UN General Assembly meeting ⁰

Warning that the world is in “great peril”, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged world leaders to tackle conflicts, climate catastrophes, increasing poverty, and inequality, as well as address divisions among major powers.

In speeches and remarks leading up to the start of the leaders’ meeting Tuesday, the top UN official said the planet “is literally on fire” and pointed to the “immense” task of saving it and of dealing with the persisting coronavirus pandemic.

Guterres also referred to “a lack of access to finance for developing countries to recover — a crisis not seen in a generation” that has an adverse impact on education, health, and women’s rights.

His remarks come as leaders are meeting in-person for the first time since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guterres also urged world leaders to address divisions among major powers that have widened since Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine in February, which saw Western countries slapping unprecedented sanctions on Moscow.

The raging conflict in Ukraine is expected to top the agenda during the 77th summit of the UN General Assembly, where Guterres will deliver his “state of the world” speech on Tuesday.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said it would be “a sober, substantive and solutions-focused report card” for a world “where geopolitical divides are putting all of us at risk.”

“There will be no sugar-coating in his remarks, but he will outline reasons for hope,” Dujarric told reporters Monday.

Sources

17, September 2022

President Macron picks army general to be French ambassador to Cameroon ⁰

President Emmanuel Macron announced on September 15, 2022 that he has appointed General Thierry Marchand to be the next French ambassador to Cameroon.

Thierry Marchand is a favorite among France-Afrique supporters in Paris who want to see President Biya’s eldest son, Franck Biya succeed the father. As ambassador, he would oversee the Elysée plan.

French President Emmanuel Macron signed a decree on September 15, 2022, making official the appointment of Marchand as ambassador to Cameroon replacing his compatriot Christophe Guilhou.

The appointment of General Thierry Marchand comes at a time when military cooperation between the Francophone dominated Biya government and France is faltering, even though it was renewed in September 2021.

People in the know have opined that Russian presence in the Central African Republic and the recently signed military cooperation agreement with Moscow by the Biya regime has been a difficult pill to swallow for Elysée.

General Thierry Marchand has served the French Republic in Gabon, Central African Republic, Djibouti and Somalia flirting with diplomacy and the military.

By Rita Akana

16, September 2022

Back-to-School: Southern Cameroons lockdown campaign is raging against Yaoundé ⁰

The entire Southern Cameroons territory has been shutdown ever since the government in Yaoundé announced its so-called back-to-school policy. Businesses and government offices remained close as Ambazonians continue to reject the current political status quo with French Cameroun.

An estimated three million Southern Cameroonians have stayed indoors in numerous towns and villages throughout Southern Cameroons and amid a brutal crackdown by Cameroon government army soldiers, the back-to-school lockdown has resulted in the deaths of several people.

“The Ambazonian Interim Government and the people of Southern Cameroons are proving that they have the will to resist and experience in developing networks and taking it upon themselves not to allow the French Cameroun regime to continue to dictate and dominate the political life in Southern Cameroons,” Dabney Yerima, the Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government told journalists recently in Den Hague, Holland.

Since top Cameroon army general Bouba Dobékréo announced he will crush the Southern Cameroons uprising within months, Southern Cameroons restoration groups have carried out a series of deadly ambushes against the Cameroon government military which have been on a bigger scale than anything yet seen since the start of the conflict five years ago. And now, the resistance is being spiced with acts of civil disobedience to denounce French Cameroun’s military presence and atrocious activities in Southern Cameroons.

Five years into the conflict, Southern Cameroons restoration groups have again imposed a successful lockdown in both the South West and the North West regions. Southern Cameroonians have remained defiant and unified on one thing, which is the complete rejection of Biya, Yaoundé and French Cameroun.

Cameroon Concord News London Bureau Chief Isong Asu thinks the unity among Southern Cameroonians today in Ground Zero is growing stronger again and that the complete implementation of the Big Rubbergun Project will be a turning point to mark the beginning of the end of Biya French Cameroun rule in Southern Cameroons.

Members of a ‘think-and-do-tank’ in the UK with strong ties to the Ambazonia Interim Government have urged Vice President Dabney Yerima to mobilize resources for all Amba fighters in Ground Zero.

Anger has been rising since the appointment of General Bouba Dobékréo and it is now further growing as the military creates more victims. Many Southern Cameroons families too have not recovered from atrocities committed by Amba fighters.

Despite violent repression from the Cameroon government military and the paramilitary Rapid Intervention Battalion Forces (BIR), the Southern Cameroons lockdown is raging on against the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé.

Francophone army soldiers have kept up their heavy-handed response and launched sweeping arrests of hundreds of Southern Cameroonians and Ambazonia activists. There are reports of the Cameroon government military going house to house in Kumbo in Bui Division detaining Southern Cameroonians.

Ghost towns and lockdowns have been successful in Southern Cameroons in the past; but this time around they are the two most effective tools the Ambazonia Interim Government has!

The 2022 back-to-school lockdown has taken root in Southern Cameroons with a wide array of participating Ambazonia groups and restoration forces.

In the entire Southern Cameroons, the majority of government and educational institutions have stopped working, and several businesses and banks have remained closed as many people responded to the lockdown calls.

Demands include the complete release of all Southern Cameroons detainees including President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and an end to French Cameroun occupation of the Ambazonia homeland.

Lockdown is an extreme form of peaceful protest in Southern Cameroons to tell those in power in Yaoundé that, if they want to rule, Ambazonians won’t cooperate and they will squeeze French Cameroun economic and political interest in Southern Cameroons dry until their demands are met.

However, the campaign, besides hurting the political and military leadership in Yaoundé, affects Southern Cameroonians in their livelihoods, though many are willing to pay such a price for the greater good down the line.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

10, September 2022

Charles III is formally proclaimed king by Accession Council ⁰

An historic Accession Council proclaimed Charles III as Britain’s new king on Saturday morning following the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II aged 96. In his speech at Saturday’s ceremony at St James’s Palace in London, King Charles III vowed to follow the example of his late mother and said he was “deeply aware of this great inheritance and of the duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty”.

The council, televised for the first time, is a centuries-old formality to recognise the new king’s sovereignty even though he automatically became monarch after Queen Elizabeth II’s passing.

Several hundred privy councillors including current Prime Minister Liz Truss and all of her living predecessors, Charles’s wife Camilla and his eldest son and heir William all attended the ceremony at St James’s Palace, London.

King Charles III said his mother, who died on Thursday in Balmoral aged 96, “gave an example of lifelong love and of selfless service” that he promised to emulate. He added that he was “deeply aware” of the “duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty”.

Source: France 24

6, September 2022

UK: New Prime Minister makes history with non-white top appointments ⁰

The new British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Tuesday selected a cabinet where, for the first time, a white man will not hold one of the country’s four most important ministerial positions.

Truss appointed Kwasi Kwarteng – whose parents came from Ghana in the 1960s – as Britain’s first Black finance minister while James Cleverly is the first Black foreign minister.

Cleverly, whose mother hails from Sierra Leone and whose father is white, has in the past spoken about being bullied as a mixed-race child and has said the party needs to do more to attract Black voters.

Suella Braverman, whose parents came to Britain from Kenya and Mauritius six decades ago, succeeds Priti Patel as the second ethnic minority home secretary, or interior minister, where she will be responsible for police and immigration.

The growing diversity is in part thanks to a push by the Conservative Party in recent years to put forward a more varied set of candidates for parliament.

British governments have until a few decades ago been made up of mostly white men. It took until 2002 for Britain to appoint its first ethnic minority cabinet minister when Paul Boateng was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury.

Rishi Sunak, whose parents came from India, was Kwarteng’s predecessor in the finance job and the runner-up to Truss in the leadership context.

“Politics has set the pace. We now treat it as normal, this diversity,” said Sunder Katwala, director of non-partisan think-tank British Future, which focuses on migration and identity. “The pace of change is extraordinary.”

However, the upper ranks of business, the judiciary, the civil service and army are all still predominately white.

And despite the party’s diversity campaign, only a quarter of Conservative members of parliament are women and 6% from minority backgrounds.

Track record

Nevertheless, the Conservatives have the best track record of political firsts among the main political parties, including appointing the first Jewish prime minister in Benjamin Disraeli in 1868.

This is despite the fact ethnic minority voters are much more likely to back the opposition Labour party and the ruling party has faced accusations of racism, misogyny and Islamophobia.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised in 2019 for describing Muslim women wearing burqas as looking like letter boxes.

The Conservatives have elected all three of Britain’s female prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and now Truss.

The first lawmaker of Asian descent, Mancherjee Bhownaggree in 1895, also came from the Conservatives.

Johnson assembled the youngest and most ethnically diverse Cabinet in history when he elected prime minister in 2019. His three finance ministers included two men of South Asian origin and one of Kurdish background.

The changes followed a years-long effort by former leader and Prime Minister David Cameron.

When he took over in 2005, the party had just two ethnic minority members of parliament out of 196, and he set out to ensure that his party more closely resembled the modern Britain it hoped to lead.

The next year, Cameron introduced a priority list of female and minority candidates to be selected, many for safe seats in the House of Commons. Truss was a beneficiary of this push.

“A key part of ensuring the strength and resilience of any group, including a political party, is the avoidance of everyone thinking and acting in the same way – the avoidance of group-think,” said James Arbuthnot, a member of the party board’s committee on candidates when Cameron introduced the changes.

But Kwarteng has played down the significance of his ethnicity. He has said that, although he experienced racist insults growing up in the eighties, he does not see himself as a symbol of anyone other than his constituents in Spelthorne, which borders London’s south-west suburbs.

“I actually think that it’s not that much of a big deal,” he said after being appointed as the first Black Conservative front-bench minister. “I think once you’ve made the point, I don’t think it’s something that comes up that much.”

Source: Reuters

6, September 2022

Queen Elizabeth appoints Liz Truss as Britain’s prime minister ⁰

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has appointed Liz Truss as the new prime minister a day after the former foreign secretary won the ruling party’s leadership race.

Truss, 47, on Monday won the ruling Conservative Party’s leadership contest, gaining the parliamentary majority to become the country’s next prime minister and replacing her predecessor, who was forced to resign.

“The Queen received in Audience The Right Honorable Elizabeth Truss MP today and requested her to form a new Administration,” a Buckingham Palace statement said.

“Ms. Truss accepted Her Majesty’s offer and kissed hands upon her appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury,” it added.

Truss is set to form a new government, with the country facing skyrocketing inflation, which has caused the worsening cost-of-living crisis in the UK.

The new prime minister, who has promised tax cuts to relieve the burden of a toxic economic situation on people, has said that she is going to set out “immediate action” in her first week on the job to tackle rising energy bills and to increase energy supplies.

The outgoing Boris Johnson, who was forced to resign after a series of scandalous incidents, delivered his farewell speech on Tuesday, vowing support for his successor during a “tough time”.

Source: Presstv

6, September 2022

Yaoundé: Biya will not groom a successor ⁰

89-year-old President Paul Biya, in power since 1982, has reportedly reaffirmed he will retire before the next presidential election and stressed that he is not grooming anyone to succeed him; a well-placed source deep inside the presidency has hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report.

”I have said it before and during my press conference with French President Macron that when my term ends I will retire to my village,” our source quoted the Cameroonian dictator as saying recently inside Etoudi.

Our informant added that the octogenarian leader also pointed out clearly that he will let the new generation choose their next leader.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands Biya told his top aides that he had never indulged in the process of grooming a successor and he will never do that.

Our Yaoundé city reporter covering the head of state said Biya wants his successor to come from the ruling CPDM party and he has always opined that Cameroon opposition parties are disorganized and badly managed.

For many months now, there have been secret discussions at the Unity Palace on who should succeed Paul Biya, Cameroon’s ailing and desperately old President who has been in power for 40 years but has nothing to show for his long stay in power.

As Mr. Biya’s health continues its relentless march towards the tubes, his inner circle is working closely with the French government on the possibility of making Franck Biya, the ruthless dictator’s eldest son, the country’s next president.

According to another source at the Unity Palace who elected anonymity, the plan to hand over power to Franck Biya is now complete and the French have put their seal of approval on the plan they fear could trigger a civil war in the country.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files

5, September 2022

Kenya’s Supreme Court upholds Ruto’s presidential victory over Odinga ⁰

Kenya’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld William Ruto’s victory in the August 9 presidential election, ending weeks of political uncertainty and delivering a blow to challenger Raila Odinga who had alleged fraud in the poll.

“This is a unanimous decision. The petitions are hereby dismissed, as a consequence we declare the first respondent (Ruto) as president-elect,” Chief Justice Martha Koome said.

Deputy President Ruto, 55, scraped to victory by a margin of less than two percentage points in a tightly-fought race against Odinga, a veteran opposition politician now backed by the ruling party.

Odinga filed a petition to Kenya’s top court last month, claiming he had “enough evidence” to show he had in fact won the election, which ranked as one of Africa’s most expensive polls.

Although voting day passed off peacefully, the results sparked angry protests in Odinga strongholds and there are fears that the dispute could fuel violence in a country with a history of post-poll unrest.

Judges spent the last two weeks sifting through boxes of evidence to establish if any irregularities were substantial enough to nullify the election, as was the case with the August 2017 presidential poll, which Odinga also challenged.

Koome began reading out the verdict shortly after midday (0900 GMT), methodically listing the court’s response to the nine issues at the heart of the case.

She said the technology used by the Independent and Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) met the standards of “integrity, verifiability, security and transparency”.

Any “irregularities were not of such magnitude as to affect the final results of the presidential election”, she said, dismissing all the claims made by the petitioners.

Odinga’s 72-page petition alleged hackers broke into IEBC servers and uploaded doctored result forms, but the claim was dismissed by the court.

Both the candidates had pledged to respect the verdict, which sparked celebrations by Ruto supporters.

Cost of living crisis

After 2017’s annulment, the IEBC was under heavy pressure to deliver a clean poll.

But this year’s outcome sparked a rift within the IEBC itself, with four of its seven commissioners accusing chairman Wafula Chebukati of running an “opaque” process.

Chebukati denied the allegations, insisting he carried out his duties according to the law of the land despite facing “intimidation and harassment”.

Since 2002, no presidential poll outcome in Kenya has gone uncontested.

At around 65 percent, turnout was sharply lower than in the August 2017 election, with observers saying it reflected growing disillusionment among citizens.

Odinga, who previously said he was cheated of victory in the 2007, 2013 and 2017 polls, had framed the legal battle as a fight “for democracy and good governance”.

Ruto in turn had urged the court to toss out the petition, accusing Odinga of trying “to have another bite at the cherry through a judicially-forced re-run”.

The 2017 poll saw dozens of protesters killed at the hands of police.

Kenya’s worst electoral violence occurred after the 2007 vote, when more than 1,100 people died in politically motivated clashes involving rival tribes.

Ruto will be sworn in on September 13, becoming Kenya’s fifth president since independence from Britain in 1963 and taking the reins of a country beset by inflation, high unemployment and a crippling drought.

Source: AFP

31, August 2022

Cameroon Anglophone Crisis: Minister Delegate at the Ministry of Justice, Jean de Dieu Momo and his demagogy! ⁰

A few days ago, l was watching some old WhatsApp videos then l came across this one (posted hereabove). In it, Cameroon’s Minister Delegate at the Ministry of Justice, Jean de Dieu Momo is mocking Southern Cameroonians and blaming each an every one of us for the ongoing crisis and suggesting we are all up with arms as terrorists. In fact, loosely translated, he says, “Anglophones have taken up arms (killing themselves). Does that stop me from drinking my palm wine?”

Coming from a government minister? This to my mind is very insensitive, vile, disrespectful, discriminatory and even inflammatory.

Jean de Dieu Momo is a very shamelessly controversial individual. This is the same man who in 2019, justified the holocaust, saying the Jews were arrogantly very proud for their business acumen and successes, which was the thing that attracted their mass termination in gaz chambers by Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler. I remember this caused a diplomatic row until Cameroon’s Minister of External Relations had to apologize to the Israeli Ambassador to Cameroon and all Jews worldwide.

Ever since, I have been thinking … and this reminded me about a story which my grandmom was in the habits of telling us as we grew up as kids. No matter how many times the story was told, each time she sat down to re-tell it, the same sounded as if it was the first time we were listening to her. The story goes viz:

Once upon a time, a farmer suffered lots of loss of his crops to thieves. In order to put an end to this, he set up a mouse trap. Sooner or later, the trap was noticed by a rat. The rat as a matter of urgency ran to the cow to report the case. But the cow moored at the rat saying: “that is none of my concern”. The cow didn’t take the matter seriously because the mouse trap can only catch a mouse and can do nothing to a cow.

The rat informed the goat but the goat didn’t see the matter as a momentous one, so it didn’t put its mind to it.

Then the rat informed the cock and cock crowed in laughter saying “Mr. Ratu, Mr.Ratu, am I supposed to be on the lookout for some trap that has a mouse name attached to it? You and I know that a mouse trap is none of my business.”

The rat went back disappointed that its problem wasn’t taken seriously by the other members of the farm.

When nighttime reached, everyone went to sleep as usual. Suddenly the mouse trap sprang and caught something!

The wife of the farmer went to the trap which was obviously in the dark. But she was bitten by a snake. The mouse trap had caught a snake by the tail. The woman screamed while the farmer came in with a machete to kill the snake. He then rushed his wife to the hospital.

She was discharged from the hospital the next day and was brought back home but with a fever.

Her fever became so severe that she only craved for chicken pepper soup. So the farmer got the cock and slaughtered it for a good pepper soup for the wife. The wife didn’t get better as her health deteriorated. The next day, the farmer killed the goat to entertain those who came to visit his sick wife at home. The farmer’s wife eventually died on the third day and the cow was made to lay down its life for the funeral ceremony of the late farmer’s wife. The rat was perplexed at how events had turned against those who refused to help in times of trouble.

This is the situation of the Cameroons and their citizens. If we do not take each other’s problems as ours, a day will come when we shall all be victimized by the same things we keep sweeping under the rug. We are all walking on broken bottle tops that should not be ignored yet we all pretend not to be seeing them. Right now, any discussion about the Anglophone problem has become a taboo. No matter which side your views tilt towards, someone will find you as a traitor. But my take is that if we continue on this note, a time will come when it will no longer be about who is SAFE but about who is NEXT.

I remember when I was in law school, one morning, when our lecturer for “Introduction to Rights” entered the classroom, the first thing he did was to ask the name of a student who was seated on the first bench: “What is your name?”

“My name is Juan, Sir.”

“Leave the classroom and I don’t want to ever see you in my class. Ever!” screamed the unpleasant lecturer.

Juan was bewildered. When he got hold of his senses, he got up quickly, collected his belongings and left the classroom.

All were scared and angry; however, nobody spoke anything.

“Well, let’s start the class,” said the new lecturer. “What purpose do the enacted laws serve?”

We were afraid, but slowly gained confidence and we began to answer his questions.

“So that there is order in our society.”

“No!” the lecturer shouted.

“So that people pay for their wrong actions?”

“No! Doesn’t anybody here have enough brains to know the answer to this question?!” asked the lecturer, sarcastically.

“So that there is justice,” said a girl timidly.

“At last! One person who is not a complete moron! That’s correct…. so that there is justice. And now, what is the use of justice?”

All of us were extremely uneasy with his rude attitude. However, we continued trying to answer….

“To safeguard human rights.”

“Well, what more?” asked the teacher.

“To differentiate right from wrong and to reward the good.”

“Ok, that’s not bad. However, answer this question: Did I act correctly when expelling Juan from the classroom?”

All were quiet, nobody answered.

“I want a decisive and unanimous answer!” he shouted.

“No!” we all replied in unison.

“Then could you say I committed an injustice?”

“Yes!”

Then his voice softened and he asked, “And why did nobody do anything in that respect? So why do we need rules and laws if we don’t have the necessary will to practice them? Each one of you has an obligation to do something when you witness an injustice. ALL of you! Do not stay quiet, never again! Go and call Juan,” he said staring at me.

On that day, I received the most practical lesson in my law school training and for about two decades that I have practiced and taught law now, this has always been a driving force. When we don’t defend our rights, we lose our dignity, and dignity is not negotiable.

I truly wonder how come I didn’t notice this obnoxious and loathsome video of the Minister’s. I found it in my phone gallery meaning if I had checked, I should have noticed the same.

Most of our leaders in Cameroon have taken impunity to a highly condemnable level. I remember when this crisis just started, another government minister, Atanga Nji said there is no Anglophone problem! How can one deny history? This was even after the President himself Paul Biya, in an interview with Mo Ibrahim, had admitted that French Cameroun has tried to assimilate Southern Cameroons in many ways, but their attempts have yielded no fruits. A few years into the crisis, the same Atanga Nji said the crises are over. Yet many people have been kidnapped by separatist fighters and others killed by government-backed forces. Cameroon is now a country where a legitimate agitator is labeled a terrorist and incarcerated while a confirmed enemy of state is given honours in full view of government officials and celebrated in the company of his co- terrorists and allowed to freely return to base. This administration oozes injustice, nepotism, parochialism, tribalism, intolerance and outright incompetence. It will go down in history as the most divisive government ever, apart from its internationally acclaimed position as the best example of how a government should not be run.

This disgusting display of demagogy from a man who is at the helm of the Justice Ministry in the country is very unwarranted. The same is inadmissible and chroniclers of the sorry situation in Cameroon are not taking this lying down. Mr. Minister, I am even ashamed to say here that you are my colleague, a lawyer. This action of yours is bridling with ignorance, founded on a sheer will to deny being fair. Increasingly, it would appear that in Cameroon, it is a crime to dream, hence your pithy affirmation; that we are “sustained by our dreams”. Here, to dream “is a personal invitation to voluntary self-immolation; an indulgently willful, ill – advised and consequential engagement in a life-threatening enterprise, with predictable and assured disastrous ends. The guaranteed result to such adventure is that, both the dreamer and the dream are soon parted, usually tragically and the dreamer’s audacity to engage in such an exercise as innocuous as dreaming is appropriately recompensed, with decapitation of both. Dream not sir; for as one famed philosopher of yore popularized eons ago;” abandon hope, all ye, who enter here”. Woe betides all Southern Cameroonian dreamers, for they dream in vain and provide unmerited notches for the axe man’s belt.

The late Dr. Bate Besong once made an analogy that stuck in my mind since I heard it. It captures the disconnect between our leaders and the true situation of the common Cameroonian: he said that the titanic was a big ship with many floors. It was so luxurious at the top deck that the first-class passengers could easily believe the story that the ship was unsinkable. The lower decks were packed with lower class people that weren’t even counted when planning for lifeboats.

When the titanic started sinking, water started filling up from under the ship beginning with the lower decks where the lower class people were. While those in the lower floors were struggling and dying, those in the first-class cabins on the higher floors had no idea that their end was nearby, they were making merry in the grand ballroom with champagne and fine dining, still living the lie that their ship was unsinkable. As the ship tilted and made irregular movements amidst the turbulence, they looked around them at all the luxurious fittings and despite all the signs that they were in trouble, they just didn’t get it. By the time they realized the danger they were in, it was too late to save themselves.

Cameroon is sinking; those at the bottom know it, while those at the top think its business as usual. With the kidnapped delegates in Ndian and others still in captivity, the crisis is far from being over and until the government decides to truly listen to the suffering people, the crisis is truly far from being over. Initially, some people thought that bad things in this crisis will happen only to a particular class of people until Chief Moja Moja’s crony was shot dead by government forces. Right now, all of us are susceptible to kidnapping, maiming, arson, murder, etc. and the true question is not who is safe but who is next.

By Samuel Tabi Tanyi-Mbianyor

The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Cameroon Concord News Group

30, August 2022

Cameroon after Biya: The dirty games are under way ⁰

When Emmanuel Macron, the young French President, visited Cameroon a few months ago, many suspected that he was up to no good.

According to a source at the Unity Palace who elected anonymity, the plan to hand over power to Franck Biya is almost complete and the French have put their seal of approval on the plan they fear could trigger a civil war in the country.

However, Cameroonians both at home and abroad are not waiting for this vile plan to be put in place before they can start scrambling desperately for a solution.

In Paris, the country’s Diaspora descended on the French National Assembly today in a bid to nip the plan in the bud.

In a video, which has been trending on social media, thousands of Cameroonians could be heard singing “non au pouvoir gré à gre au Cameroun” which translates as “no to a negotiated transfer of power in Cameroon.”

This situation is embarrassing to the French and many of the country’s lawmakers are calling on their government to distance itself from a collapsing dictatorship which is costing the country tons of money and opportunities.

The French know that in the event of a free and fair election in Cameroon, the country’s population will overtly reject any French leaning government and this could cost the French their vast economic interest.

This is a developing story and more will be yours.

By Chi Prudence Asong