Cameroon’s scandal linked to the mismanagement of Covid-19 funds has considerably damaged relations between Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, the presidency’s secretary-general, and Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute. But it’s not the first time that the two have butted heads.

In early June, Balungeli Confiance Ebune, director of Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute’s cabinet, was interviewed by investigators of the Special Criminal Court, who were charged with shedding light on suspicions of embezzlement, overcharging and misappropriation of funds regarding the purchase of anti-Covid protection and screening equipment. The damage suffered by the state amounts to several tens of billions of CFA francs.

The head of government may well have experienced the humiliation of being interviewed himself. He was cited in a report by the Chamber of Accounts, which states that businessman Mohamadou Dabo, owner of Mediline Medical Cameroon and Moda Holding, was in possession of public contracts that accounted for 94.93% of the funds used.

When questioned on this subject during his hearing on 19 May, health minister Malachie Manaouda told investigators that he had acted on the prime minister’s orders. This was all it took for Ngute’s detractors to demand an explanation from him.

Opposed on everything

According to those close to him, Ngute only encouraged the health minister to choose the most qualified partner, especially to deliver screening tests, which were out of stock at the time. His chief of staff explained to the investigators that he was only responsible for formalising this encouragement in writing.

Of course, there is no question of tracing this back to the prime minister while he is still in office. But Ngute did not back down from the affront. His entourage believes that it is just yet another manoeuvre by Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, who has been the presidency’s secretary-general (SGPR) for 10 years.

This diplomat from the Central region, who speaks fluent French and English, enjoys the confidence of Chantal Biya, the first lady. The president has also delegated power of signature to him, which gives Ngoh a wide range of powers.

Ngoh got along fine with the placid former prime minister Philemon Yang, who had no problem with surrendering his prerogatives to the Palace. But Ngute is quite different. This rising Anglophone star, who was appointed prime minister on 4 January 2019, has quickly made his mark. Made of a different calibre than his predecessor, the 67-year-old lawyer does not hesitate to cross swords with the all-powerful SGPR.

The first disagreement between the two men took place on 13 August 2019, after Ngute asked ministers to propose names of directors general of companies and public institutions to replace those who had reached the end of their term.

Ngoh replied to this demand by writing a scathing memo to the secretary-general of the prime minister’s office. “I have the honour of informing you that the head of state has asked the prime minister, the head of government, to remind the heads of ministerial departments responsible for the technical supervision of public enterprises and establishments, that the power to appoint the social organs of said structures falls within the exclusive competence of the President of the Republic,” he wrote.

He continued: “In this regard, he would like to inform them that, pending several important decisions that the head of state must make, the officials in office should continue to exercise their functions as normal.”

The second dispute was over the organisation of the Major National Dialogue, aimed at resolving the Anglophone crisis. The two men disagreed with each other on almost everything. While Ngoh wanted to calibrate and control everything, Ngute wanted these discussions to be open and inclusive.

On the ground, while the SGPR was coordinating a Swiss mediation initiative, Ngute supervised direct discussions with the secessionist leaders, which were undertaken by Léopold Maxime Eko Eko, head of the special services. In the end, it was the prime minister who defused the anger of the religious leaders within the Anglophone zone, who were disillusioned by Etoudi’s disdainful treatment of Cardinal Christian Wiyghan Tumi’s peace initiatives.

Close to Paul Biya

The prime minister’s attempts at mediation annoy the SGPR to the core, as it feels that Ngute is trying to create a diarchy within Cameroon. However, Ngoh cannot openly criticise Ngute, as he regularly meets face to face with President Paul Biya. Meanwhile, the presidency’s secretary-general only ever receives a small audience.

Finally, the rivalry between the two men has intensified as Ngute – who visited the Groupement Inter-Patronal du Cameroun (Gicam) in mid-May – has made sure to maintain ties with his contacts from within the private sector, where Ngoh has few friends.

This friction will no doubt produce sparks, unless a government reshuffle puts an end to this rivalry within the upper echelons of power.

Source: Africa Report

George Ewane Ngide, associate professor, recently appointed Technical Adviser at the Presidency of the Republic, is a shooting star, and appointment decrees or decisions shoot at him like meteoroids gone crazy in the galaxy.

In three years, since 2018, he has been appointed six times, up, up and further up the ladder. Appointments are obviously in search of worthy individuals and it is Ewane – him and nearly only him – the “best” ones find. Even if mannerism were the only criterion for all these, Ewane would deserve his fair share. He is, anyone can admit, a jolly good fellow, easy going, down to earth and, oh, that charming smile you may only miss in the dark or when you have an vision problem.

He was appointed, June 9, 2021, a couple of days after his sensational ENEMY IN THE HOUSE commentary over CRTV’s Cameroon Calling, in which some guess he might have been protesting against another very recent appointment and/or what he might have considered the gesticulations of regime hypocrites. Well, who the cap fits, let them wear it.

Before this June 9 appointment by presidential decree, Ewane was the beneficiary of a prime ministerial appointment and four CRTV board of directors’ decisions. On June 22, 2018, he was appointed technical adviser No. 4 at CRTV, which brought to an end his over 16 years record run as presidential correspondent, which he closed at the apex as Head of Division (Director) of the unit in charge of coverage of sovereignty affairs. Just over a year later, on June 26, 2020, he was appointed CRTV Radio Central Director. In between all that, he had been promoted to the CRTV professional apex of Editorialist.

His meteoric career progress notwithstanding, Ewane, who apparently found his way into journalism only by accident has been quoted by close friends as saying he has really never practiced journalism proper, as in news reporting because in his job assignments, he has been given more to commentaries.

Armed with a Maitrise in English at the time from the University of Yaounde under the wings of the late Professor John Lambo and the late Professor Gervais Mendo Ze, he found a place in the now scrapped Division 3 of the Advanced School of Mass Communication and, out of there, got recruited into CRTV. Many might have noticed him for the first on-camera when he anchor the live relay of World Cup 1998 matches from the studio in Mballa II alongside Francophone colleagues including Alex Mimbang, Valerie Dikos Oumarou and Emmanuel Mbede.

Ewane’s CRTV whirlwind rise was punctuated by his appointed by Prime Minister Dion Ngute as Spokesperson of the Major National Dialogue of September 30 to October 4, 2019. His appointment as Technical Adviser at the Presidency takes him “back home” where, as presidential correspondent for so long, he created and produced the TV programme “Insight/Inside the Presidency”, which The Guardian Post captures so aptly with the pun in its Sunday, June 13, 2021 edition front cover headline thus: George Ewane now “Inside the Presidency”.

On the academic sphere, the ex-student of GSS Nyassosso obtained a PhD in 2013 and got promoted to the academic rank of Associate Professor in 2020, but those were academic exploits, not appointments. Impressive all the same.

I believe and wish Ewane is or were more a star than a shooting star. They are not the same thing. CoolCosmos.Ipac.Caltech.Edu says, “Shooting stars look like stars that quickly shoot across the sky, but they are not stars. A shooting star is really a small piece of rock or dust [known as a Meteoroid] that hits Earth’s atmosphere from space. It moves so fast that it heats up and glows as it moves through the atmosphere leaving a short-lived trail of light called meteor.”

I should perhaps apologize for using the wrong analogy of a falling star to talk about a rising star; one that only glows briefly for someone who has been in the limelight and promises to remain there for long. In the language of Astrology, surviving meteoroids (falling stars) are paradoxically, those that hit Earth’s surface or simply put, those that fall to the ground, called Meteorites. The rest burn out in “flight” and disappear to nowhere. There is no scientific evidence to the contrary of the obvious, that the “surviving” ones fall to rise no more. At least, they are not known to germinate. But George Ewane is a star and stars shine up above in perpetuity, don’t they?

By Franklin Sone Bayen

*The author of this article, Franklin Sone Bayen, an Alfred Friendly (US) Press Partners Fellow, is a freelance investigative journalist, editorial writer and columnist. He can be reached (direct calls and WhatsApp) at: 656969090 and via email at: frankbayen@gmail.com

Trade deals being negotiated by Britain reveal cynicism, a disregard for public health and a strange sense of priorities.

The UK-Australia trade deal has received attention because of its negative implications for the British livestock business, animal welfare concerns and deforestation caused by industrial-scale cattle ranching Down Under.

But another recent agreement, this time with Cameroon, does not get column inches or airtime, although it sets a regrettable precedent, overlooking the track record of a corrupt, undemocratic and repressive Central African regime.

Both deals indicate the British government is conditioning Parliament to expect no scrutiny or debate, regardless of pressure from Emily Thornberry, the Liberal Democrats, Greens and SNP.

A Liberal Democrat adjournment debate on June 9th will ask why MPs are being denied any say in Britain’s future trading relationships.

But it seems that despite promises to return sovereignty and oversight to Westminster, this is what Brexit and Global Britain looks like.

Bombs and Bananas

In 2019, the UK sold £50 million worth of goods and services to Cameroon, while importing their bananas in return. The total deal is worth £200 million, a rounding error in international trade.

Compare it to the £41 billion we exported to Germany, our formerly biggest market and the customers we have casually shunned because of Brexit, along with the other EU buyers of UK goods and services – Ireland, which purchased £27bn worth, the Netherlands (£24bn), France (£23bn), and Belgium (£13bn).

We have literally sold our souls for a bunch of bananas. 

It may be immoral and distasteful, but there is at least a pragmatic financial argument for overlooking Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and its war in Yemen. In 2020, the UK sold the kingdom £3.59bn worth of goods and services, mainly military and oil industry equipment, along with providing lucrative money-butler-type consultancy.

But why does the UK ingratiate itself with tiny Cameroon? Since 2017, respected human rights watchdogs have condemned the Francophone regime of President Paul Biya, who, at age 88 has been in power since 1982, for persecuting peaceful Anglophone protesters who objected to having the French school curriculum and laws imposed on them.

The UN believes more than 700,000 people have fled into the bush as state security forces burn their villages. Their children have been unable to attend school for four years.

Unarmed civilians are caught between government soldiers and the increasingly violent separatists fighting for an independent country called Ambazonia. Cameroon’s brutal kleptocrats are worthy of targeted smart sanctions, not photo-ops with Foreign Office representatives.

Be Afraid – the facts about US chemicals

The financially insignificant Australian and Cameroon deals, and the neutering of Parliament’s capacity to scrutinise, are a dress rehearsal for the big one – the UK-US negotiations, which began last May.

The British public is already alarmed by the prospect of chlorinated chicken. We should also be concerned about other American consumer standards.

The United States Centers for Disease Control estimates there are more than 48 million cases of food poisoning a year in the USA, which counts for 14.7% of the population. This leads to more than 3,000 deaths annually.

The main culprits are salmonella, clostridium perfringens, campylobacter and staphylococcal, found in raw meat, seafood, fish and poultry.

In the UK, a fifth the size of the US, there are 1 million (1.5% of the population) annual cases of food poisoning and 500 deaths.

In other words, on a per capita basis the US has almost 10 times the number of cases of food poisoning and more deaths from food poisoning as the UK.

The US Department of Food and Agriculture claims it conducts 160 inspections each week. This amounts to 8,400 inspections a year, covering 172,969 food manufacturers. At the current rate, factories will be inspected once every twenty years.

The FDA says it has 8,000 food inspection “positions” but that tells us nothing about how many inspectors are on the road, going into factories.

Thanks to budget cuts, inspectors are under increasing pressure to complete their work rapidly. One inspector who would not give his name admitted he stands by a poultry production line, watching carcasses whiz past, with no time to do more than a rapid visual inspection.

Food safety, and the use of hormones and pesticides banned in Europe are not the only areas of concern. The US allows hundreds of chemicals in cosmetics and household cleaning products that have been curbed in the EU for decades.

The EU bans 1,300 chemicals from cosmetics, while America bans 11, and the US last passed legislation restricting their use in 1938. 

President Biden’s massive infrastructure budget proposal encourages more American self-reliance and less dependence on importing technology or other goods.

Perhaps the British government should also think twice before exposing UK consumers to products coming nowhere near the EU safety standards we have been used to since the 1970s.

We should also be more discerning about our economic partners if we are as serious about human rights as Dominic Raab claims we are.

Source: Leftfootforward.org

A small but growing grassroots peace movement is trying to bring an end to the four-year secessionist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions – an internationally neglected crisis that is becoming increasingly deadly and complex.

Formal attempts to negotiate a settlement between the government and fighters demanding independence for “Ambazonia” have stalled. Internationally led efforts are hamstrung by deep divisions within the separatist movement, and by the refusal of the government – which argues that the conflict is an internal affair – to engage with external mediators.

Spurred by the lack of progress in getting the warring parties around a conference table, a series of grassroots peacebuilding initiatives – launched by private individuals, rights groups, and the Catholic church – have cautiously moved in to negotiate local peace deals in Cameroon’s two anglophone regions.

But these interventions – many led by women – must tread carefully to avoid being labelled as either pro-government or supportive of the armed movements fighting for the independence of the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions.

“Any peace movement that is not approved from the grassroots [of the secessionists] will identify those peace leaders as ‘blacklegs’, as traitors to the anglophone cause; and that will have some implications for personal security,” said a local rights activist who asked not to be named so they could speak freely.

The rural-based conflict has upturned the lives of more than two million people, according to the UN. What began in 2016 as a protest over the two anglophone regions’ marginalisation by the majority French-speaking government has degenerated into increasingly anarchic and indiscriminate violence in which the civilian population is most at risk.

Suspected separatist groups – who number between 2,000 and 4,000 fighters – have abducted, tortured, and killed traditional chiefs, human rights activists, lawyers and journalists. Government forces are accused of similar offenses, including the torching of entire villages.

Sexual and gender-based violence is perpetrated by both sides. Between February and December 2020, the UN documented nearly 2,000 cases of rape and abuse across the two anglophone regions, and nearly 500 cases between January and March 2021, according to documents seen by The New Humanitarian.

A divided opposition

The work of peace activists is made harder by the splintering of the once-unified separatist movement, while the government’s counter-insurgency approach – recruiting and arming local militias – fuels animosity between communities.

“This is a conflict without a head,” said Marc Serna Rius of Reach Out, a humanitarian NGO based in Buea, the capital of the Southwest region. “Dialogue is really complicated, because who do you dialogue with?”

Since 2018, two rival coalitions, known as “Interim Governments” (IGs), have contested leadership of the separatist cause – both accusing the other of being “illegitimate”. One is loyal to Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, who is serving a life sentence on terrorism charges in Yaoundé’s notorious Kondengui Central Prison, and the other is headed by US-based former preacher Samuel Ikome Sako.

But these IGs have only limited influence on the ground. Individual separatist fighters – known locally as the “Amba boys” or simply “the boys” – pronounce themselves “commander” or “general” at will, sparking infighting that in recent months has led to more deaths than clashes with the military, local aid groups say.

Of the dozen separatist fighters The New Humanitarian spoke with, none defined themselves as loyal to a particular IG, and many of them weren’t even aware the movement had split.

“You just go with who has good [military equipment], who comes from your village, who has a [better] camp,” said one separatist, who asked not to be named, explaining how fighters determined which group to join.

“It’s a popularity contest. They go from one [commander’s] camp to another,” said a local rights activist. “There are commanders without soldiers, and soldiers keep changing affiliation.”

In the Northwest region, the conflict has inflamed existing tensions over land and grazing rights between ethnic Fulani pastoralists, known as Mbororos, and local farmers – generally perceived by the government as pro-secessionist.

Separatist fighters have attacked Fulani herders and stolen their cattle. The security forces, in turn, have provided weapons and launched joint attacks with Fulani militia on villages, as was the case in a February 2020 massacre in which at least 21 people were killed.

The violence has escalated as community tensions have deepened. Fulani militia have raided over a dozen villages since February 2021, killing at least 17 civilians and displacing more than 4,000 people, according to the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, a civil liberties group.

Stepping into the vacuum

Local peace activists operate without the political clout or protection afforded to international mediators. But they do have grassroots relevance, and have managed to make some breakthroughs in an otherwise intractable conflict.

“The local civil society organisations are doing a tremendous and enormous job to bring back peace,” said Lilian Atanga of the Coalition for Dialogue and Negotiations, an international NGO working to facilitate dialogue between the Cameroonian government and separatist groups.

“What they do for social cohesion, for healing, for resilience, the humanitarian activities [they are involved in], the psychosocial activities, working on gender-based violence, demobilisation – [these are all important],” she told The New Humanitarian. “It is not just one thing that [will bring] peace.”

The Southwest/Northwest Women’s Task Force, for example, has been key in negotiating with separatists to soften a long-running school boycott and allow children to return to class. They have also worked on reconciling rival separatist leaders, and helped ex-fighters – who have laid down their weapons under a government amnesty – to reintegrate back into the community.

The Justice and Peace Service (JPS), which is connected to the Catholic church, has been instrumental in resolving disputes between Fulani pastoralists and farmers in Nwa, and in other districts in the Northwest region.

Although the Fulani have so far refused to cooperate with the JPS, the church group has been successful in convincing farmers not to carry out retaliatory attacks against Fulani whose cattle wander into their farmland, according to Sister Falie Minkoue, a coordinator with the service.

For the past two years, the JPS has also worked to rebuild traditional village councils, and to train village chiefs to address land conflicts and other civilian disputes rather than having people turn for “justice” to local separatist fighters – whose summary rulings have led to serious rights violations.

“We want to avoid the situation where people bring their cases to ‘the boys’,” said Minkoue. “We are trying to empower the traditional council on how to manage conflict, how to handle cases, how to document the cases that they have handled.”

The dangers of peacemaking

Peacemaking is not without its risks. Priests and other grassroots activists have been arrested and detained by government security forces, and abducted and tortured by separatists.

Due to its deep connection to rural communities, the Cameroonian government has often accused the Catholic church of siding with the secessionists. But the church has also angered separatists by helping fighters who have surrendered, and by voicing its opposition to their revenge attacks against Fulani herdsmen.

“Both sides – the state armed group and the non-state armed group – are expecting the collaboration of the church,” said Minkoue. “They know we have credibility with the community, so both sides want us to collaborate with them… That is the biggest challenge.”

But while local initiatives are working to fill the gap left by stalemated national and international peacebuilding efforts, they cannot address the root causes of the conflict.

“You cannot do without [local peacebuilding], but it alone cannot solve the problem, because the problem is deeper than just the armed boys,” said Atanga of the Coalition for Dialogue and Negotiations.

“It has gone beyond just mere discrimination by the government [against the anglophone regions],” she added. It is now “an ideological problem, an identity problem” with the government widely seen as an occupying power, she explained.

The expanding conflict is also raising questions over what an effective peace process would look like – and who should sit at the negotiating table.

“Who, in the end, needs to be included in a peace process? The Fulani? All the various commanders on the ground, all the IGs?” asked a peace activist linked to the Southwest/Northwest Women’s Task Force who requested anonymity. “How impactful are all these movements going to be if there is a peace process?” asked another.

Esther Omam, the executive director of Reach Out – and a vocal anti-violence campaigner – was categorical: “We need workable solutions to solve this crisis,” she told The New Humanitarian. “We need workable solutions now more than ever.”

Culled from The New Humanitarian