Politics

7, March 2021

Making of Obiang Nguema II: Series of explosions hits military barracks in Equatorial Guinea ⁰

A series of explosions at a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea killed at least 15 people and wounded hundreds of others, state television reported.

TGVE read out a statement from President Teodoro Obiang Nguema which said the explosion was due to the “negligent handling of dynamite” in the military barracks located in the neighborhood of Mondong Nkuantoma in Bata. He said that the explosion occurred at 4 p.m. local time. The president said that impact of the explosion affected buildings across the city.

TVGE said that at least five explosions caused at least 20 deaths and wounded more than 400 others.

There were some discrepancies with the death toll, with TGVE reporting 20 dead, a Health Ministry tweet saying 17 were killed and the president’s statement mentioning 15.

State television showed a huge plume of smoke rising above the explosion site as crowds fled, with many people crying out “we don’t know what happened, but it is all destroyed.”

The health ministry tweeted that its health workers are treating the injured at the site of the tragedy and in medical facilities, but feared people were still missing under the rubble.

Images on local media seen by The Associated Press show people screaming and crying running through the streets amid debris and smoke. Roofs of houses were ripped off and wounded people were being carried into a hospital.

The blasts were a shock for the oil rich Central African nation. A doctor calling into TVGE, who went by his first name, Florentino, said the situation was a “moment of crisis” and that the hospitals were overcrowded. He said a sports center set up for COVID-19 patients would be used to receive minor cases.

Radio station, Radio Macuto, said on Twitter that people were being evacuated within four kilometers of the city because the fumes might be harmful.

Following the blast, the Spanish Embassy in Equatorial Guinea recommended on Twitter that, “Spanish nationals stay in their homes.”

(AP)

7, March 2021

France shifts policy on aid to Africa to counter rising Chinese influence ⁰

France is looking to reform its policy on aid to Africa – making it both more generous and more efficiently targeted – as part of a strategy to counter China’s rising geopolitical influence.

Africa’s booming economies and population have created lucrative opportunities for international players, making the continent a hotbed of geopolitical competition over the past decade. The International Monetary Fund found in 2019 that Africa had become the world’s fastest-growing region, with the World Economic Forum predicting its population would double to around 2.2 billion by 2050.

China is Africa’s biggest bilateral trading partner, having surpassed the US in 2009. Before the coronavirus crisis hit the world economy, the value of Sino-African trade reached €161 billion ($192 bn) in 2019.

“Right now you could say that any big project in African cities that is higher than three floors or roads that are longer than three kilometres are most likely being built and engineered by the Chinese,” Dave Roggeveen, the founder of specialist publication MORE Architecture, told Forbes in 2018.

As well as infrastructure, China has invested massively in media in Africa – with state-run Xinhua News Agency developing the continent’s biggest network of correspondents. Nairobi is at the centre of China’s African media presence, with Xinhua moving one of its headquarters from Paris to the Kenyan capital in 2006.

France is now also seeking to make new inroads on the African continent by tweaking its strategy towards developing nations. Paris has managed to increase its global aid budget even amid the coronavirus crisis, with development spending rising from €10.9 billion in 2019 to €12.8 billion in 2020.

On March 2, French MPs approved a bill increasing France’s aid budget to 0.55 percent of GDP by 2022. President Macron’s government is also stepping up efforts to ensure the aid money is effective. The draft law enshrines five key objectives – “to fight against poverty, to counter climate change, to bolster public health, to expand education services and to achieve gender equality” – focused on Sub-Saharan Africa and also Haiti.

“International solidarity has never been more necessary than it is now,” said Louis-Nicolas Jandeaux, a spokesman for Oxfam France. “The Covid-19 pandemic shows us how so many major challenges – like fighting poverty and protecting public health – are connected. Given that France is a leader on these multilateral issues, and given that French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken so much about boosting international co-operation, France really has to set a good example on issues like aid spending.”

The bill also seeks to give France more bang for its aid buck by merging its two development agencies. The French Development Agency – which bestows loans and grants – will be merged with France Expertise – which focuses on the nitty-gritty of development project logistics. This merger will allow French aid workers to “respond better and more directly to the needs of the countries we’re working in”, said Jérémie Pellet, director of France Expertise.

The law includes a plan to repatriate “ill-gotten” assets the French justice system has confiscated from foreign leaders. France has made efforts to go after corrupt politicians who have stashed millions on French soil. In 2020 a Paris court sentenced Teodorin Obiang, vice president of Equatorial Guinea, to three years in prison and a €30 million fine for laundering money through French properties.

Redirecting illicit money back to the people is also part of a diplomatic strategy to boost France’s image in Africa.

“This aspect seems so morally sound that it’s almost impossible to be against it,” said Magali Chelpi-den Hamer, the head of the humanitarian and development programme at Paris-based think-tank IRIS (the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs). “However, the volume of money concerned will be relatively low.”

Avoiding the debt trap

France has had a long and complicated relationship with Africa. It gained control of vast swaths of the continent – mainly by seizing most of western Africa – in the competitive conquest of the continent launched by European powers from the 17th century.

After a wave of successful independence movements in the 1950s and 1960s, France maintained close relations with many Francophone ex-colonies in a policy that came to be known as Françafrique. Advocates of this approach saw France as a guarantor of stability on the continent, but critics saw France as loath to give up its colonial-era influence and continuing to play a clientelist role.

The French state’s focus on Africa waned in the 1990s as it turned its attention toward European integration. But France has once again set its sights on the continent to counter China’s rising influence.

And this time France seeks to ensure that its activities on the continent do not carry any reminiscence of neo-colonialism, with a new aid policy favouring grants over loans.

Analysts have become increasingly concerned about China creating debt traps with its hefty loans to African countries, for which it is the biggest bilateral lender. Chinese loans to underdeveloped countries are even bigger than indicated by the official figures: around half of them are not reported to the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, a report for German think-tank the Kiel Institute for the World Economy found in 2019.

Until now, France has not had a stellar record on loans either: in 2018, half of its development aid was in loans instead of grants, according to Oxfam. Nevertheless, while “Western countries also use debt to gain influence in African countries, unlike China they’re very keen to avoid setting debt traps,” said IRIS’s Chelpi-den Hamer.

“We’re fighting China in a battle for influence – and a battle over what system of government countries should see as their model,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Inter radio last month.

China’s increasing involvement in Africa threatens to “end up being negative over the medium to long term”, Macron warned at a press conference in Djibouti on his 2019 African tour.

“I wouldn’t want a new generation of international investments to encroach on our historical partners’ sovereignty or weaken their economies,” he added.

France’s aid reform bill now goes to the Senate and is expected to become law this summer.

Source: France 24

4, March 2021

Ivory Coast enters final day of campaigning as all eyes on distant Gbagbo ⁰

Legislative elections take place in Ivory Coast on Saturday overshadowed by a figure in distant Europe – former president Laurent Gbagbo.

Nearly a decade has passed since Gbagbo was forced out of office by today’s president Alassane Ouattara before being flown to The Hague to face war crimes charges.

Acquitted since then but living in Brussels pending an appeal, Gbagbo plans to come home, thanks to an olive branch offered by his erstwhile rival.

His Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party has ended a years-long electoral boycott, becoming the engine behind an alliance battling for seats in the National Assembly.

The elections “mark the return of Laurent Gbagbo and his political organisation in institutional politics,” said Gbagbo’s eldest son, Michel, a university academic running in a constituency in Abidjan.

“It has to be seen as the return to calmer democratic life and lasting peace,” he said optimistically.

Ouattara overture

Ouattara, 79, ignited political unrest last year when he announced he would seek a third term in office – a scheme that critics said sidestepped constitutional limits.

Clashes claimed 87 lives and left nearly 500 people injured, while most of the opposition snubbed the October 31 ballot.

Ouattara won by a landslide – but to his critics, the victory had scant credibility and the country remained deep in crisis.

Seeking a way forward, Ouattara reached out to Gbagbo, signalling his assent for his return home and issuing him with a diplomatic passport.

The runup to Saturday’s vote has seen a jolt run through Ivorian politics as the well-organised FPI strives to get out the vote.

Thousands of supporters wearing T-shirts with Gbagbo’s face took part in a campaign launch rally in Yopougon last Saturday.

“Gbagbo yesterday, Gbagbo today, Gbagbo tomorrow – Gbagbo forever, or else nothing,” were the words on a poster.

The pro-Gbagbo alliance, Together for Democracy and Sovereignty (EDS), is fielding candidates across most of the country.

The left-leaning coalition has forged an unprecedented electoral deal with the biggest centre-right party – the Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast (PDCI) headed by Henri Konan Bedie, a former president and former Ouattara ally.

The self-described goal is to win enough legislative seats to prevent Ouattara and his RHDP party from “consolidating (their) absolute power.”

The RHDP won a thumping majority in the December 2016 legislative elections with 167 out of 255 seats.

“We don’t share the same ideology” with the EDS, said Djedri N’Goran, a senior PDCI official.

“But whether you like it or not, Gbagbo has an aura – there are whole areas, including Abidjan, where it’s ‘Gbagbo or nothing’.”

Outsider

Gbagbo was president from 2000 to 2010, a time of turmoil, division and economic destruction in this major cocoa and coffee producer.

He was ousted by force of arms in April 2011 after a months-long conflict that claimed several thousand lives, sparked by his refusal to accept electoral defeat at Ouattara’s hands.

His long trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague was over charges that he abetted the post-electoral violence.

Despite Gbagbo’s turbulent record, he remains for many Ivorians a plucky and inspirational figure, said political analyst Rodrigue Kone.

He likened Gbagbo’s odyssey to that of “a poor child fighting the bourgeois system represented by leaders from aristocratic families.”

Reconciliation Minister Kouadio Konan Bertin last month paid tribute to Gbagbo, 75, as “a major player” in national politics, “whose views should be taken into account.”

Exactly when Gbagbo will make his return is unclear.

The ICC has authorised him to make foreign trips if the host country accepts him, pending the outcome of the appeal, which is due by March 31.

He previously said he hoped to return in December, but his increasingly frustrated supporters now say it will be in mid-March and have set up a committee to prepare a spectacular welcome.

(AFP)

4, March 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Calls for Vatican to join mediation efforts ⁰

Civil society groups in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon are urging the Vatican to join a Swiss-led peace process, as the security situation in the central African nation deteriorates further. Local activists believe that Pope Francis has more influence over the Cameroon leadership than any other leader or country. Their plea follows a recent visit by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin to Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, and the Anglophone North West and South West.

The International Crisis Group estimates that the Anglophone conflict has claimed 4,000 lives, while local NGOs believe as many as 12,000 civilians have been killed. Attacks by Cameroon armed forces, including the burning of villages, has forcibly displaced an estimated 700,000 people out of an Anglophone population of six million. The violence and a school boycott have kept more than a million children from school for years. The Norwegian Refugee Council has described it as the world’s most neglected conflict for the second year in a row.

Cardinal Parolin met President Biya on January 29th, followed by a visit to the Anglophone region. The Papal envoy celebrated Mass with Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya in the mainly Anglophone Bamenda archdiocese in the North West and South West.

The Cardinal also attended a meeting at which local people described the atrocities being endured by unarmed civilians. He told the audience, “How can the body of Christ be neutral in the midst of injustice?” He conveyed Pope Francis’s concern, offering to mediate negotiations.

Anglophone journalist Mimi Mefo writes, “By this very act, the Holy See has departed from the condemnations made by the international community for the last four years, to take concrete action on the ground.”

The Swiss NGO, Humanitarian Dialogue (Swiss HD), is trying to bring the Yaounde authorities and Anglophone representatives together in peace talks. Initially, Yaounde denied the country was in crisis. More recently, the government has refused to negotiate with armed groups which it labels terrorists. Africa Intelligence reports that officials around Biya continue to believe their military strategy will prevail. Consequently, the government is transferring weapons from the Far North, where Cameroon is fighting Boko Haram, to the Anglophone regions (as reported in Foreign Policy). This policy leaves civilians in the Far North vulnerable to attack by Islamist militants.

Local civil society groups (who must remain anonymous for their own safety) are calling on the Vatican to join and actively support Swiss HD in offering to mediate inclusive peace negotiations. In addition, the Ambazonian Coalition Team has written to the Vatican, urging The Holy See to engage fully with the Swiss HD mediation process.

In 2019, Catholic bishops from around the world lobbied Biya to stop the bloodshed and enter talks. The government has previously declined an offer by local bishops to mediate. According to Anglophone media sources, Christians are no longer free to attend Mass in some mission stations, and all sides are accused of harassing the church and priests. Anglophone priests have been kidnapped, and several have been killed.

Judith Nwana, co-chair of the Coalition for Dialogue and Negotiations, comments, “The Cameroon government has never committed in good faith the willingness to negotiate. They will only accept international mediation and negotiations if pressured by the international community. The Vatican can leverage its influence within the international, political and diplomatic arena to make that happen because the atrocities being committed on Southern Cameroonians is no other than a genocide. The Coalition for Dialogue and Negotiations is hopeful that Southern Cameroonians and armed leaders would accept a multilateral mediation initiative led by the Vatican, the United States, and other allies for a negotiated settlement to be reached, one that is credible, without any pre-conditions and addresses the root cause(s) of the civil war.”

Background to the conflict

The Anglophone area is also known as the former British Southern Cameroons, because of the UK’s colonial legacy. The unrest began in 2016 when the Francophone government tried to impose French law on Anglophone courts practicing English common law. Yaounde officials also sent French-speakers to teach a French curriculum in Anglophone schools which traditionally teach a UK curriculum.

However, Anglophone grievances stretch back to independence, when it is alleged that promises to ensure the British Southern Cameroons remained a separate entity were broken. In a subsequent referendum, English speakers were not given the option of forming a sovereign country. In the 1970s, the Francophone government dissolved the federal system, leaving the Anglophone regions (20% of the population) marginalised.

Research by impartial human rights groups confirms that the Cameroon armed forces are implicated in atrocities, including destroying villages, and killing and torturing civilians, while Anglophone militia are accused of intimidating and killing civilians who defy them. Evidence of the mass rape of twenty women in Ebam by government troops has just been published by Human Rights Watch. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reports that state security forces killed nine people, including children and the elderly, in Mautu in SW, and shot dead four teenagers in Meta Bamenda, in January.

The Biya government’s refusal to engage with moderate English-speaking civil society is thought to have contributed to increasingly violent tactics by Anglophone militias fighting for international recognition of a sovereign nation called Ambazonia. UNOCHA reports allegations that a school principal was killed by non-state armed groups in January, and that schools and teachers continue to be attacked and threatened.

In January, the US Senate passed an unprecedented bipartisan resolution condemning the violence and empowering the Biden administration to apply individually-targeted smart sanctions such as asset freezes and travel bans on those on all side who are implicated in human rights abuses. Despite pressure from Lord Alton, among others, the UK has resisted calls to follow the US Senate lead.

Source: Independent Catholic News

3, March 2021

Joshua Osih-US Congress Affair: The President Biya Connection ⁰

The Southern Cameroons crisis which started in 2016 was a strike by teachers and lawyers, in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. The professionals, supported by citizens of their areas, protested the unfair use of the French language and unjustified appointments of Francophone elites in their territories.

Cameroon has been passing for a bilingual country. By 2017, the situation had spiralled out of control and developed into a fully-fledged separatist war. Both government forces and separatists are now bogged down in a conflict that observers say, can only be resolved through dialogue.

Not long ago, Hon. Joshua Osih of the Social Democratic Front could travel the entire South West and North West with Southern Cameroonians rushing to shake his hand and thank him for the responsible leadership he was providing for the SDF party with many wishing that he could take over from Chairman Ni John Fru Ndi.

This was a man whose steady response to the sufferings of the Southern Cameroons people transcended partisan politics in Yaoundé and transformed him into an Ambazonian hero. Like Fru Ndi whose emergence prompted the making of an Achidi Achu, Joshua Osih’s meteoric rise heralded the coming of a Dion Ngute into the Star Building.

Just four years into the crisis in Southern Cameroons, Joshua Osih is in free fall. The past few days on the national stage have left his reputation in tatters, already marked in history for his participation in the recent French Cameroun MPs letter to US President Biden. He now seems unstable and incoherent, contradicting both himself and the SDF party.

Several prominent members of the consortium of crime syndicates in Yaoundé including senior military officials have become millionaires overnight from the fighting in Southern Cameroons among them is this chartered member of the Social Democratic Front party who also moonlights as a Member of Parliament and presidential candidate.

Joshua Nambangi Osih (to use his three names) is the son of Mami Therese and Reuben Osih. The SDF MP’s father died some two years ago and for him to have him buried in his native Ndian Division, he had to pay huge sums of money to Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces, as the Francophone dominated government could not provide the much- needed security in that part of the country.

Mr. Osih’s recent decision to turn his back on the people of Southern Cameroons has triggered a backlash! But there are reasons why he embarked on his last journey of many dangers.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that the SDF politician recently cornered President Biya via his blood relation Prime Minister Dion Ngute to legalize his security company Camport PLC. A Cameroon Presidential Decree No. 2021/074 of 01/04/2021 authorized the company to operate as a private security company with head office in Douala.

Hon. Joshua Osih’s interest in operating a private security company at these challenging times in the nation’s history cannot be termed accidental!! It is indeed deliberate. The timing of the presidential decree too is key as Southern Cameroons and the entire Far North region is host to multiple armed groups and the security challenges facing the country are growing at catastrophic rapidity.

We have reliable information linking Camport PLC to huge Cameroon government military contracts to provide covert security operations in the Southern Cameroons and potentially carryout undercover missions in the Far North to target regime opponents and Southern Cameroon front line members. The company’s objectives are bold and it plans to be merciless on executing them.

Joshua Osih was quoted as saying that “I’d love to become the person that comes up with a solution to the security situation in South West and North West” shortly after he collected a copy of the signed presidential decree. However, the Oroko politician could not adequately secure himself and other members of his family during his own dad’s funeral.

Osih is said to know little about the modus operandi of a private security company. The pot belly SDF MP has, among other things, locked himself out of his own mobile phone after forgetting the password and failing to get it right more than 20 times and now he is using his office and contacts with the ex-convict Minister Paul Atanga Nji to discuss overseas arm deals and a need to raise some few millions of dollars.

Countless reputations name them: Inoni Ephraim, Mendo Ze, Marafa, Amadou Vamouke, have been sacrificed in the fires of Biya worship, but Joshua Oshii’s decline is remarkable given his once-towering stature in Southern Cameroons. So what happened to Osih? What was he thinking? How did this successful businessman land so far on the wrong side of Southern Cameroons public opinion, history, and possibly Southern Cameroons law? How did he become so completely irrelevant?

The answer is simple: He forgot about Southern Cameroons main political ingredient which is integrity.

By Asu Vera Eyere in London

25, February 2021

French Cameroun MPs Letter: Biya 1-Biden 0 ⁰

On Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 63 members of La Republique du Cameroun’s National Assembly reportedly described senior US Congress men and women as “a few misguided representatives of the US Congress.”

The so-called Francophone lawmakers were responding to a February 17, 2021 letter from over 40 Democratic members of the US Congress to President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking them to “grant temporary protected status to British Southern Cameroonians living in the U.S. by placing an 18-month break in proceedings on their deportations”.

Temporary protected status is given to people already in the United States from countries devastated by conflict or natural disasters with La Republique du Cameroun being no exception.

The 63 French Cameroun MPs who were all handpicked by the ruling CPDM crime syndicate and granted parliamentary portfolios in Yaoundé did maintain a kind of silence of the lamb last year when the Trump administration cut off Cameroon from a trade pact over allegations of human rights violations.

President Donald Trump said the regime in Yaoundé failed to address concerns over its “persistent gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” allegedly committed by security forces.

The US also cut more than $17 million in security aid and support to Cameroon in February 2020 over concerns about its human rights record.

AGOA helps sub-Saharan countries improve trade ties with the US. Eligible countries must meet criteria including a good human rights record to benefit from the trade.

The CPDM gang of 63 pointed out that, “The Cameroon they describe and allude to in their correspondence does not exist and we believe it is a figment of the misinformed views of certain individuals who are determined to cause further destabilization in the whole Central African Region.”

“As legislators, we welcome genuine expression of concern and support for the well-being of the vast majority of Cameroonians. We urge the United States Congressmen to be more vigorously engaged in ensuring the respect of international conventions against transnational crime and criminality to which the United States is a signatory and to ensure that their country is not a refuge for criminal perpetrators and financiers of acts of extreme violence and terrorism on the people of Cameroon,” the Francophone MPs furthered.

The President Biya praise singers also noted that they were “appalled by the falsehood, distorted opinion, and the extremely negative characterization” of Cameroon by the members of the US Congress.

“As legislators in Cameroon, we seek not to interfere in the decision-making processes of the Immigration Enforcement System of the United States government in dealing with its challenges, but we reject the views perpetrated by these Congressmen on the prevailing situation in Cameroon,” they said. “We consider these remarks on Cameroon as most unfriendly, derogatory, and smacks of an attempt to tarnish our image, respectability in seeking to mislead public opinion, create confusion to justify the securing of TPS and DED status from some groups defending the rights of immigrants in the USA.”

Reacting to the French Cameroun recent maneuvers’ in the US, the Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government Dabney Yerima observed that “The US government remains deeply concerned about persistent gross violations of human rights being committed by the Cameroonian government against the people of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia.”

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

22, February 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: VP Yerima hold press conference to slam Biya French Cameroun regime ⁰

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government Dabney Yerima held a press conference with Media2Africa aimed at expressing the faith of British Southern Cameroonians in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

The conference comes as the French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé is struggling to change the narrative of the Southern Cameroons quest for independence by pushing a vicious agenda that there world seems overwhelmed with the seeming infighting between different factions and particularly within the Southern Cameroons Interim Government with the disgraced Dr Sako Ikome claiming to be the President of one of the IG.

Vice President Dabney Yerima told Media2Africa that there is only one Southern Cameroons Interim Government with President Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe as the leader and that is the Ambazonia Interim Government he represents as Vice President.

“The abduction and incarceration of Sisiku Ayuk Tabe did not in any way invalidate his role as the leader and face of the revolution. Anyone fronting out here that he is the leader of the revolution is not credible,” Yerima added.

A sea of Southern Cameroons leaders, activists and journalists watched the interview live as the exiled Ambazonian leader stressed that no deal can bring peace to the two Cameroons without the United Nations involvement.

Responding to a question on whether Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is auto piloting the revolution from jail? Vice President Yerima wondered aloud “How could anyone even rule or govern from jail. The conspiracies were meant to discredit and undermine Sisiku Ayuk Tabe. The Interim government is run by the leadership out of detention.”

Vice President Dabney Yerima pointed out that African journalists and activists have a significant role in conveying the true image of the inhuman French Cameroun regime and its genocidal campaign in British Southern Cameroons.

This is a war that could have been clearly avoided if the Francophone dominated government in French Cameroun had used known instruments of conflict management and resolution. Genuine dialogue, a key thrust of conflict resolution, was clearly ignored and to deceive the people of Southern Cameroons and the international community, the despicable Yaoundé government organized a semblance of dialogue wherein it chose who had to participate in it, which issues had to be discussed and what resolutions and conclusions had to be reached by the participants; an idea which only caused the conflict to escalate by multiple notches.

The roasting of a baby in Batibo is no accident and let nobody be deceived by whatever the French Cameroun government would say. The Yaoundé regime is in the business of winning an argument and it will stop at nothing to prove its point. As usual, it will order an investigation, the findings of which will remain a dead letter like most of the other investigations conducted over the last 39 years by a government that has been conducting itself like a crime syndicate made in the same mould as the Sicilian Mafia.

By Isong Asu in London

21, February 2021

Yaoundé: President Biya’s son is dressed for succession ⁰

The idea of seeing Franck Biya succeed his father President Paul Biya at the head of Cameroon has been making its way for several months in the circles of power in the nation’s capital Yaounde. Recently, the debate has gained more momentum.

A political group created by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo gang known as the Movement of Citizens for Franck Biya for Peace and Unity in Cameroon is now calling for Franck Biya to replace his father in 2025.

In a statement made public by the leadership of the group over state radio and television, the so-called Movement of citizens for Franck Biya revealed that “We have come to propose to the new Cameroon someone who is politically virgin, who has never participated in machinations and low maneuvers.”

The press release that was signed by Alain Fidèle Owona, national coordinator of the movement with strong ties to the Unity Palace noted that Franck Biya will bring a solution to the thorny problem of political transition in Cameroon.

Apart from the Citizen Movement of the Franckists, several other small groups have emerged in recent weeks and all are advocating the candidacy of Franck Biya.

A Cameroon Intelligence Report source deep within the Cameroon military hinted that the Franck Biya issue is no longer a kind of under-the-table talk but it is a great power manoeuvre that is developing several scenarios for the post-Biya period.

The Cameroonian constitution is clear, if the Head of State was no longer able to exercise his functions, a procedure would be opened which would lead to an early presidential election.

Franck Emmanuel Biya 50 years old, is the first son of President Paul Biya. Officially, he does not hold any political office. However, he is regularly presented by the local media as his father’s most influential adviser.

Franck Emmanuel Biya is the friend of many heavyweights in the ruling CPDM crime syndicate, including Alamine Ousmane Mey, the Minister of Economy, Planning and Land Development (Minepat).

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that, Franck Biya, the “kingmaker” was behind the appointment of Alamine Ousmane Mey to this prestigious and lucrative post.

According to Cameroonian law, candidates for the office of President of the Republic must enjoy full civil rights and be 35 years old at the date of the election.

They may be either invested by a political party or independent provided they are presented as candidates for the election of the President of the Republic by at least 300 personalities from all regions, 30 from each region, and who are members of parliament or a consular chamber, regional or municipal councilors or first class traditional chiefs.

Candidates from parties not represented in parliament or in a regional or municipal council must also meet this condition applicable to independent candidates.

For the time being, Franck Emmanuel Biya is not yet at the head of a political party.

By Rita Akana with files

19, February 2021

Cameroon: Corruption is a cancer ⁰

Corruption has given Cameroon a bad name for more than three decades, but for years, many people have been thinking that this cankerworm will not reach certain institutions of the country like the Presidency of the Republic.

A country’s presidency is supposed to be a well respected institution and those who work there are supposed to be seen as reincarnations of decency and discipline.

But this image associated with the country’s highest institution has been slowly crumbling, especially as the country’s president, Paul Biya, and his wife, Chantal Biya who is noted for her flaming red hair, have engaged in many acts of corruption and dishonesty on many occasions.

Embezzling money is not an act of decency. Misusing taxpayers’ money cannot be considered as an act of responsibility even among lower animals. Rigging elections will never give anybody a good name and Biya has been charged with this crime on many occasions and he is guilty as charged.

If a leader sees corruption as the only means for him to sustain himself in power, then he has simply institutionalized this cancer and it will spread like wildfire.

And financial and moral cancer can affect anybody, especially when the victim lacks a will and discipline of steel and is financially insecure.

This explains why corruption has taken over the Presidency of the Republic. Poverty, especially moral poverty, can disarm even the strongest military in the world and this explains why workers at the Unity Palace have clearly lost their moral compass.

Sometimes, financial poverty might be to blame, but in many cases, moral recklessness and indiscipline may be the drivers.

Cameroon really needs help but there is no help on the way. When the core is rotten, the body polity will slowly crumble and this is the disease that has affected many if not all the employees of the Presidency of the Republic who are using indecent and irresponsible methods to line their pockets.

They have successful established and maintained an important smuggling network of alcoholic beverages from the presidential cellar which is causing a lot of sensation in the highest institution of the land.

For years, champagne has been the Presidency’s flagship “poison” which is clearly beyond the reach of the ordinary taxpayer and the ordinary Cameroonian will be happy to have a taste of the chemicals which have quietly transformed the country’s president into a false ‘chemist’ because of his penchant for mixing liquors before drinking.

Normally, whenever the presidential palace needs to stock up on this ‘elite poisons’, those involved in the procurement process take advantage of the opportunity to divert hundreds of boxes of these precious liquids which they then sell on the black market for peanuts.

These agents and angels of corruption have been in their dubious trade for so long that they no longer worry about being caught.

The entire country has been dragged into the mess and even those who are supposed to check such excesses now look the other way while these presidential smugglers ply their trade.

The mess is all over the place and since almost everybody has tasted the benefits of corruption, very few people get shocked when such operations play out in plain sight.

Today, it is common to see wines and liquors imported for the presidency on the streets in cities such as Yaounde, Douala, Ebolowa and Sangmelima.

Worst of all, the criminals have been emboldened by the massive corruption and its acceptance by the public to the point where they no longer even take the time to remove the stamps of the Presidency of the Republic when they go to resell their fraudulently acquired products.

In Bastos, the chic and glamorous corner of Cameroon’s political capital where a large majority of luxury shopping areas are concentrated, a tour of the shelves of the cellar of these wine shops clearly reveals the different flavours of kings – Billecart Salomon brut rosé, brut blanc, brut reserve and brut sous-bois – most of which have been imported with the taxpayer’s hard-earned money.

According to a Cameroon Concord News Group source, the 75 cl bottle of Billecart Salomon brut rosé delivered by elements of the presidential guard is resold for CFAF 45,000.

Questioned by a Cameroon Concord News Group undercover agent in Yaounde, most of the sellers tactically and carefully dodged the question about the origin of these products, but ended up revealing after insistence that those products were actually being delivered by the presidential guards.

Furthermore, the sales agents refused to give the Cameroon Concord News Group agent the prices at which the Etoudi guards were delivering those wines and liquors to them.

Though they tried to justify their business plan and model, they made sure they did not give away any information related to the vast and unholy profits they were making because of the unfair practices they were employing to sustain themselves in business.

But a little research on the website of the French-based company, Billecart Salmon, which produces this brand of champagnes, lifted the veil on the prices of these liquids that have gone a long way in ruining Mr. Biya’s health.

The prices vary from EUR 43 to EUR 64 depending on the flavour, that is, CFAF 41,700 and CFAF 28,071 respectively for a 75 cl bottle.

This illicit trade must be particularly juicy, especially as it has been reported that in 2019, Cameroon imported 170,297 bottles of wine and champagne of 75 cl, for a total of CFAF 2.9 billion.

If the Presidency is decay, how will the national treasury, the ministry of finance, the customs department, the taxation office and other government institutions look like?

For many years, the government has given the impression that it is fighting corruption, but the results on the ground speak to the government’s total indifference and wilful participation in this game that is robbing the country of its precious financial resources.

The greatest frustration and annoyance comes from the fact that those who get appointed to fight corruption are exactly those who are stoking corruption in government departments and services.

Cameroon has been caught between a rock and a hard place. The country is run by a bareface crime syndicate that is hellbent on ruining the country.

Though members of the crime syndicate are almost dying, they are not repentant and are determined to take the country down with them. As long as they are in power, corruption – that which blights the lives of the vulnerable and enriches members of the crime syndicate – will continue to take root and make Cameroon unattractive to genuine and sustainable foreign investments.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

19, February 2021

US says it is ready to join talks with Iran, Europe to restore nuclear deal ⁰

The Biden administration said Thursday it’s ready to join talks with Iran and world powers to discuss a return to the 2015 nuclear deal. It’s also reversed the Trump administration’s determination that all U.N. sanctions against Iran had been restored and eased stringent restrictions on the domestic U.S. travel of Iranian diplomats posted to the United Nations.

The State Department said the U.S. would accept an invitation from the European Union to attend a meeting of the participants in the original agreement. The U.S. has not participated in a meeting of those participants since former President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.

“The United States would accept an invitation from the European Union High Representative to attend a meeting of the P5+1 and Iran to discuss a diplomatic way forward on Iran’s nuclear program,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

Such an invitation has not yet been issued but one is expected shortly, following discussions earlier Thursday between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his British, French and German counterparts.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations, the administration notified the Security Council that it had withdrawn Trump’s September 2020 invocation of the so-called “snapback” mechanism under which it maintained that all U.N. sanctions against Iran had been re-imposed. That determination had been vigorously disputed by nearly all other U.N. members and had left the U.S. isolated at the world body.

In another move, officials said the administration has eased extremely strict limits on the travel of Iranian diplomats accredited to the United Nations. The Trump administration had imposed the severe restrictions, which essentially confined them to their U.N. mission and the U.N. headquarters building in New York.

Earlier Thursday, Blinken and the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France urged Iran to allow continued United Nations nuclear inspections and stop nuclear activities that have no credible civilian use. They warned that Iran’s actions could threaten delicate efforts to bring the U.S. back into the 2015 deal and end sanctions damaging Iran’s economy.

Iran is “playing with fire,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who took part in the talks Thursday in Paris with his British and French counterparts. Blinken had joined via videoconference.

Iran has said it will stop part of International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of its nuclear facilities next week if the West doesn’t implement its own commitments under the 2015 deal. The accord has been unraveling since Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement.

Blinken reiterated that “if Iran comes back into strict compliance with its commitments … the United States will do the same,” according to a joint statement after Thursday’s meeting that reflected closer trans-Atlantic positions on Iran since President Joe Biden took office.

The diplomats noted “the dangerous nature of a decision to limit IAEA access, and urge Iran to consider the consequences of such grave action, particularly at this time of renewed diplomatic opportunity.”

They said Iran’s decision to produce uranium enriched up to 20% and uranium metal has “no credible” civilian use.

The 2015 accord is aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it is seeking such an arsenal.

“We are the ones who have kept this agreement alive in recent years, and now it’s about supporting the United States in taking the road back into the agreement,” Maas told reporters in Paris.

“The measures that have been taken in Tehran and may be taken in the coming days are anything but helpful. They endanger the Americans’ path back into this agreement. The more pressure that is exerted, the more politically difficult it will be to find a solution,” he said.

Iran’s threats are “very worrying,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, stressing the need “to re-engage diplomatically in order to restrain Iran, but also bring it back into compliance.”

The diplomats also expressed concern about human rights violations in Iran and its ballistic missile program.

In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani expressed hope Thursday that the Biden administration will rejoin the accord and lift the U.S. sanctions that Washington re-imposed under Trump, according to state television.

Tehran has been using its violations of the nuclear deal to put pressure on the remaining signatories — France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China — to provide more incentives to Iran to offset the crippling sanctions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the president of the European Council spoke with Rouhani this week to try to end the diplomatic standoff. The head of the IAEA is scheduled to travel to Iran this weekend to find a solution that allows the agency to continue inspections.

(AP)