Cry over spilt milk: France suspends development and budget aid to Burkina Faso

7, August 2023

Cry over spilt milk: France suspends development and budget aid to Burkina Faso 0

France is suspending development aid and budgetary assistance to Burkina Faso, its foreign ministry announced Sunday.

The statement comes days after Burkina Faso and Mali announced that they would consider any military intervention against the new military rulers in Niger as a “declaration of war”.

The West African bloc ECOWAS last Sunday issued Niger’s new rulers with an ultimatum to hand back power to the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum within the week or face possible military intervention.

France’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that it “firmly and resolutely” backed efforts by ECOWAS to reinstate Bazoum.

Source: AFP

ECOWAS playing a ‘dangerous game’ as Niger deadline passes

7, August 2023

ECOWAS playing a ‘dangerous game’ as Niger deadline passes 0

The expiration of the deadline set by ECOWAS for Niger’s junta to return power to the country’s ousted president has clarified the intentions of the country’s new military leadership.

Instead of entering negotiations for a power transfer, the junta aren’t talking to anyone, they are just staying there and bracing for whatever’s going to happen.

France 24‘s Niger expert says ECOWAS are now playing a “dangerous game”. The organisation, which threatened military intervention if its terms were not met, has given no further details of how it plans respond to the expired deadline.

“It’s all about credibility,” he said. “The question is, what do you put on the table to force a junta to step down?”

Elsewhere, President Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast recently met with his chief of staff. He was very clear with president Alassane that Ivorian soldiers will not be able intervene in NIGER

Source: France 24 and Cameroon Concord News

Rev. Fonki: the new scammer in town!

7, August 2023

Rev. Fonki: the new scammer in town! 0

For over two years now, western media and human rights organizations have alluded without convincing evidence that the continuous hosting of entertainment and sporting events in Saudi Arabia is an attempt by the Kingdom to “sportswash” its negative human rights reputation.

While these unproven allegations are being made in the West about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a man in Buea, Cameroon, with a questionable character, has been engaged full-throttle in “imagewash“.

This man is Rev Fonki Samuel Forba, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon who has been burning through money like wild fire.

Rev Fonki has been the moderator of the PCC since 2014 and has just over a year left in his official tenure, and his job description designates him as the spiritual leader of the institution he presides over.

The consensus among PCC Christians is that he has wrecked the church by robbing the institution’s finances with no limits and possesses no fear of God.

He has been accused by those close to him of possessing no iota of spirituality, and he has appointed, without justification, his henchmen to positions they are ill-equipped for.

Cameroon is a country not renowned for keeping statistics on anything. Still, a recent survey of PCC members in the Northwest and Southwest regions of the country returned that the moderator has an approval rating of 9.3%. Even in Akwaya, where he says he comes from, his approval rating was 16.9%.

With such dismal approval ratings, Rev Fonki is working hard to restore respectability to his battered image before he exits the stage next year.

A recent video which went viral on social media with Rev Fonki dancing and spraying cash around like a Nigerian scammer in a Lagos nightclub did not help him.

So, last week, the ‘chief scammer of Buea’ arranged with some like-minded crooks in a mushroom institution which has distinguished itself for shady academic quality to confer on him an honorary PhD.

The Protestant University of Central Africa in Yaoundé is one of Cameroon’s many institutions of higher learning, with lecturers and administrators who know little about academics, honesty, spirituality and humility.

This institution has never had a credible reputation, and it surprises no one with brains that they followed Rev Fonki’s wish to grant him his questionable degree.

The Reverend brought a few clowns to the sham ceremony dressed in Manyu traditional regalia claiming to be notables from Akwaya—a sad joke of a spectacle.

Watching a short clip of the charade unfold on Facebook invokes rage and many other strong emotions.

Apologists for Rev Fonki are now forwarding the video of the shameful commemoration stating that he is now an academic and honorary doctor.

No amount of “imagewash” by a man with no integrity and academic standing will change the facts.

In biblical days, Rev Fonki would have been sentenced by the highest court of the land to death by stoning and would have earned it for his contribution to wrecking the PCC, using exaggerated thievery as a weapon.

Today, people are required to address him as Rev Dr Fonki Samuel Forba. The world has changed for the worse. The “imagewash” Gospel, according to Rev Fonki, is here.Hallelujah!!

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Mexican bus carrying African migrants crashes, killing 17

3, August 2023

Mexican bus carrying African migrants crashes, killing 17 0

At least 17 people were killed and 22 injured Thursday when a bus carrying locals and migrants plummeted into a ravine in northwestern Mexico, authorities said.

Three minors were among those killed, the civil protection agency in Nayarit state reported.

The injured were taken to hospitals in the area, while one passenger escaped unharmed, it said.

The bus was travelling from Mexico City to northwestern Tijuana, which borders San Diego, from where numerous migrants attempt to seek refuge in the United States.

There was no immediate confirmation of the victims’ nationalities, though local media reported that citizens of India and Africa were believed to be among them.

Deadly road accidents are common in Mexico, usually due to high speeds, poor vehicle conditions or driver fatigue.

Such crashes are a leading cause of deaths among migrants making the dangerous journey overland to the United States.

In February, migrants from Venezuela, Colombia, and Central America were involved in a bus crash between the southern state of Oaxaca and central Puebla that left at least 17 dead.

In July, at least 29 people were killed when a passenger bus careened off a mountain road and fell into a ravine in Oaxaca.

Source: AFP

Ambazonia VP says Francophone soldiers must take La Republique interests into account first!

3, August 2023

Ambazonia VP says Francophone soldiers must take La Republique interests into account first! 0

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has censured French interference and support for the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé as the main cause of the war in Ambazonia.

Dabney Yerima made the remarks during a meeting with members of the Interim Government late on Wednesday as he addressed some of the difficulties faced by Southern Cameroons Ground Zero commanders.

“Successive French administrations have supported the 90-year-old French Cameroun dictator providing him with guns and money and such interventionist policy is helping to prolong the war in Southern Cameroons” Yerima noted.

The exiled Southern Cameroons leader went on to denounce the creation of so many restorations groups in the diaspora, emphasizing that the multiplicity of Ambazonia groups only favours the French Cameroun regime and prevents the Ambazonia Interim Government from reaching out to all brave Ambazonia fighters in Ground Zero.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Vice President Dabney Yerima said Paris is directly responsible for the suffering, poverty and underdevelopment in La Republique du Cameroun and that French President Emmanuel Macron has been obstructing any initiative aimed at putting an end to the failed Biya regime and also the war in Southern Cameroons.

Yerima said France is not allowing the construction of hydro-electricity dams in Southern Cameroons.

“The French embassy in Yaoundé forces Francophone authorities to either adopt or abandon certain policies that can bring peace and prosperity to the two Cameroons. Francophone army soldiers like those in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger must take La Republique interests into account first and foremost, and resist the pressure from Paris,” Dabney Yerima said.

By Ewang Miriam Metchane with additional reporting from Chi Prudence Asong

SOBA UK ANNUAL RESIDENTIAL CONVENTION: Every Step of the Way

3, August 2023

SOBA UK ANNUAL RESIDENTIAL CONVENTION: Every Step of the Way 0

This year, precisely from the 20th to 22nd of October 2023, SOBA UK will bring the world together again at Celtic Manor Resort, Newport in Wales.

SOBA UK’s innovation theme has been revealed to both Cameroon Intelligence Report and the Cameroon Concord News.

“Empowering for Success: Unlocking the potential of the boy child” is the theme that will be executed by renowned academics and business leaders. Cameroon Concord News Group is proud to have been invited for this event.

Each year, SOBA UK creates immersive experiences where guests feel like members in the UK House of Lords!!  This particular year, guests will feel like Royals!!

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group understand that the exquisite Celtic Manor Resort, nestled amidst the enchanting Coldra Wood in Newport is a model that engages your senses, surprises you throughout the convention, excites you to interact with hands-on activities, and takes down barriers so guests feel comfortable to network with everyone at the event.

As Chairman and Editor-In-Chief of the Concord Group, I have requested our London Bureau to visit the Celtic Manor Resort!! We’ll give you a hint after the visit!!

To this I put my name:

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Football: Italian legend Gianluigi Buffon retires at 45

2, August 2023

Football: Italian legend Gianluigi Buffon retires at 45 0

Gianluigi Buffon announced his retirement from football on Wednesday, bringing down the curtain on a glorious career as one of the world’s greatest ever goalkeepers.

“That’s all folks! You gave me everything. I gave you everything. We did it together,” he posted in English on social media.

Buffon, 45, hangs up his gloves after two final years at Parma, the club where it all began nearly three decades ago when Italian football was Europe’s gold standard.

He had a contract which ran until next summer with Parma but he will no longer be a part of the Serie B club’s bid to return to the top flight after two years away.

Buffon is a symbol of a halcyon age when the best footballers went to play in Serie A and Italy developed dozens of world class players.

The former Italy captain has a record 176 caps for his country while also holding the record for Serie A matches played – 657, stretching back to 1995.

After bursting onto the scene as a 17-year-old, keeping out the likes of George Weah and Roberto Baggio in his Parma debut against AC Milan, Buffon won 27 major trophies.

The majority came over 19 seasons at Juventus, where he won 10 Serie A titles, five Italian Cups, while he also won the UEFA Cup in 1999 for Parma as part of possibly the best team in the club’s history.

He also won Ligue 1 with Paris Saint-Germain in 2019 before returning to Juve, but he will be most fondly remembered for Italy’s victory at the 2006 World Cup.

Buffon was one of the stars as an Azzurri team battered by the ‘Calciopoli’ match-fixing scandal – which would cost him as Juve keeper two league titles – beat France on penalties after knocking out hosts Germany in the semi-finals.

That was the last hurrah for a generation which had made Italy one of the world’s dominant football nations, and as their fortunes slowly declined he suffered the ignominy of two straight group stage exits before bowing out not long after failure to qualify for the 2018 tournament.

Buffon won his last trophy in his final season with Juve two years ago, lifting the Italian Cup alongside Federico Chiesa, 22 years after he triumphed with Parma alongside his teammate’s father Enrico.

‘I shouldn’t have apologised’

However Buffon’s career has also been plagued by scandal, not least consistent rumours that is, or at least once was, a sympathiser of the far-right.

He drew fierce criticism for choosing the number 88, a neo-Nazi code for ‘Heil Hitler’, on his jersey for the 2000-01 season.

Two years before he wore a t-shirt with the neo-fascist slogan ‘Boia chi molla’, which loosely translated means death before surrender, under his kit for a match against Lazio, who have some of Europe’s most hard-right supporters.

He publicly apologised for the t-shirt, claiming he had no idea of the source of the phrase, but in his 2010 book ‘Number One’ he said that he was still shocked at how he was “crucified”.

Buffon also claimed he chose the number 88 because he wasn’t allowed 00, which he wanted to represent “balls”, as a symbol of his comeback from a period out injured, and that 88 was simply four balls.

He changed his number to 77 but in his book he expressed outrage at the criticism he received from Rome’s Jewish Community, saying his only mistake was “being weak”.

“I shouldn’t have apologised and I should have pushed to keep the number I had already chosen,” he said.

Not long after winning the World Cup he was cleared of illegally betting on Serie A matches, allegations which reared their head at the height of the ‘Calciopoli’ scandal.

Source: AFP

Nigeria cuts electricity to Niger following coup

2, August 2023

Nigeria cuts electricity to Niger following coup 0

Nigeria has cut its electricity supply to Niger after West African neighbours imposed sanctions on the junta that ousted the country’s elected leader last week, a Niger power company source has told AFP.

“Since yesterday, Nigeria has disconnected the high-voltage line transporting electricity to Niger,” a source at Niger’s power company Nigelec said.

Niger depends on Nigeria for 70 percent of its power.

Source: France 24

Pope Francis arrives in Portugal for World Youth Day

2, August 2023

Pope Francis arrives in Portugal for World Youth Day 0

Pope Francis headed to Portugal on Wednesday to open the first post-pandemic edition of World Youth Day, hoping to inspire the next generation of Catholics.

More than 1 million young people from around the world were expected to attend the gathering in Lisbon, which takes place over several days. Busloads of pilgrims started arriving before Tuesday despite temperatures forecast to hit 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) by the weekend’s final papal Mass.

“Stay hydrated!” read a slogan promoted by the Portugal’s General Directorate for Health for the event. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa advised youth day volunteers Monday to keep with them “a lot of water, because it’s very hot, and a hat.”

Cardinal-elect Americo Aguiar, a Lisbon bishop who is organizing the festival, said two years of COVID-19 lockdowns made this year’s edition of World Youth Day unique. He said it was an important encounter for Catholic youths, especially with war raging now in Europe and economic uncertainties around the globe.

“The pope always says this event is the joy and the possibility of coming together, of the culture of coming together,” Aguiar said in an interview. “After such limitations and difficulties, young people from all over the world will be able to meet again, with certain freedom.”

Francis arrives Wednesday and is scheduled to spend the morning meeting with Portuguese officials at the Belem National Palace, the official presidential residence west of Lisbon, from where Portugal’s maritime explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries set sail.

In the afternoon, Francis makes his way to the 16th century Jeronimos Monastery and church, arguably Portugal’s greatest monument. There, he is set to meet with the Portuguese Catholic hierarchy, which recently began the process of reckoning with its legacy of clergy sexual abuse.

Meeting with sex abuse survivors

Francis is widely expected to meet in private with abuse survivors this week and could well refer to the problem in his public remarks, as he has done during past foreign trips. Portuguese bishops were widely criticized for their initial response to the findings of an independent commission, which reported in February that at least 4,815 boys and girls were abused in the country since 1950, most of them ages 10-14.

The bishops long insisted there were only a handful of cases, and they initially balked at suspending active members of the clergy who were named in the commission’s report. They also flip-flopped on paying reparations to victims, at first insisting they would only pay if ordered to by court rulings.

The Portuguese Catholic Church also promised in March to build a memorial to victims that would be unveiled during World Youth Day, but organizers scrapped the plan a few weeks ago.

In its place, victims’ advocates have launched a campaign called “This is our memorial” and plan to put up billboards around Lisbon this week reading “4,800+ Children Abused.”

St. John Paul II launched World Youth Day in the 1980s as a way to invigorate the next generation of Catholics in their faith, and the event is returning to European soil for the first time since 2016.

Ukrainian and Russian youths were expected to attend, and the war in Ukraine will likely take center stage Saturday when Francis visits Fatima, the Catholic shrine which for over a century has been associated with an apocalyptic prophecy about peace and Russia.

“I think World Youth Day brings hope, after the pandemic, after being locked down, not able to live our faith as we were used to, as we wished for,” Alfredo Hernandez, a World Youth Day volunteer from Guatemala, said. “The event gives a ray of hope to get out on the streets again.”

Coping with the heatwave

Hot weather could be an issue during the five-day visit, given temperatures in Lisbon are expected to hit 35 C (95 F) on Sunday. Many young people were expected to camp out in the vast, unshaded Tagus Park starting Saturday afternoon, first to participate in an evening vigil and then to be in place Sunday morning for Francis’ final Mass.

Organizers said they installed 32 water tanks with 640 taps for filling water bottles, while the Lisbon City Council says it doubled the number of drinking fountains in the city to around 400.

Registered participants are receiving reusable water bottles and sunhats in their welcome knapsacks, but some were more worried for Francis, given his weakened condition: The 86-year-old Argentine pope was hospitalized for nine days in June to repair a hernia and remove scar tissue from previous intestinal surgeries.

Francis, who travels with a doctor and nurse on his foreign trips, is likely to refer to the heat given his repeated alarm about climate change, including as recently as last week, when he urged action in the face of wildfires ravaging Greece.

“I’m going to pray that he is going to be OK,” Theresa Guettler, a nurse from Florida who is volunteering at the event, said. She recommended that Francis stay hydrated and follow his medical team’s advice. “I trust that he has good doctors and good people taking care of him.”

Source: AP

US: Trump indicted for efforts to overturn results of 2020 presidential election

2, August 2023

US: Trump indicted for efforts to overturn results of 2020 presidential election 0

Donald Trump was charged Tuesday in a Justice Department investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the US Capitol.

The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States government and witness tampering.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024, follows a long-running federal investigation into schemes by Trump and his allies to subvert the peaceful transfer of power and keep him in office despite a decisive loss to Joe Biden.

Even in a year of rapid-succession legal reckonings for Trump, Tuesday’s criminal case was especially stunning in its allegations that a former president assaulted the underpinnings of democracy in a frantic and ultimately failed effort to cling to power.

Federal prosecutors say Donald Trump was “determined to remain in power” in conspiracies that targeted a “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.” Trump is due in court on Thursday before US District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The criminal case comes while Trump leads the field of Republicans vying to capture their party’s presidential nomination. It is sure to be dismissed by the former president and his supporters – and even some of his rivals – as just another politically motivated prosecution. Yet the charges stem from one of the most serious threats to American democracy in modern history.

Refusal to accept loss

They focus on the turbulent two months after the November 2020 election in which Trump refused to accept his loss and spread lies that victory was stolen from him. The turmoil resulted in the US Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes.

In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen – a notion repeatedly rejected by judges.

The indictment had been expected since Trump said in mid-July that the Justice Department informed him he was a target of its long-running Jan. 6 investigation. A bipartisan House committee that spent months investigating the run-up to the Capitol riot also recommended prosecuting Trump on charges, including aiding an insurrection and obstructing an official proceeding.

The mounting criminal cases against Trump – not to mention multiple civil cases – are unfolding in the heat of the 2024 race. A conviction in this case, or any other, would not prevent Trump from pursuing the White House or serving as president.

In New York, state prosecutors have charged Trump with falsifying business records about a hush money payoff to a porn actor before the 2016 election. The trial begins in late March.

In Florida, the Justice Department has brought more than three dozen felony counts against Trump accusing him of illegally possessing classified documents after leaving the White House and concealing them from the government. The trial begins in late May.

Trial to be held in Washington

The latest federal indictment against Trump focuses heavily on actions taken in Washington, and the trial will be held there, in a courthouse located between the White House he once occupied and the Capitol his supporters once stormed. No trial date has been set.

Prosecutors in Georgia are investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse his election loss to Biden there in 2020. The district attorney of Fulton County is expected to announce a decision on whether to indict the former president in early August.

The investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election was led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. His team of prosecutors has questioned senior Trump administration officials before a grand jury in Washington, including Pence and top lawyers from the Trump White House.

Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who pursued post-election legal challenges, spoke voluntarily to prosecutors as part of a proffer agreement, in which a person’s statements can’t be used against them in any future criminal case that is brought.

Prosecutors also interviewed election officials in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere who came under pressure from Trump and his associates to change voting results in states won by Biden, a Democrat.

Focal points of the Justice Department’s election meddling investigation included the role played by some of Trump’s lawyers, post-election fundraising, a chaotic December 2020 meeting at the White House in which some Trump aides discussed the possibility of seizing voting machines and the enlistment of fake electors to submit certificates to the National Archives and Congress falsely asserting that Trump, not Biden, had won their states’ votes.

For Trump, this is a witch hunt

Trump has been trying to use the mounting legal troubles to his political advantage, claiming without evidence on social media and at public events that the cases are being driven by Democratic prosecutors out to hurt his 2024 election campaign.

The indictments have helped his campaign raise millions of dollars from supporters, though he raised less after the second than the first, raising questions about whether subsequent charges will have the same impact.

A fundraising committee backing Trump’s candidacy began soliciting contributions just hours after the ex-president revealed he was the focus of the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation, casting it as “just another vicious act of Election Interference on behalf of the Deep State to try and stop the Silent Majority from having a voice in your own country.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland last year appointed Smith, an international war crimes prosecutor who also led the Justice Department’s public corruption section, as special counsel to investigate efforts to undo the 2020 election and Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, home, Mar-a-Lago. Although Trump has derided him as “deranged” and suggested that he is politically motivated, Smith’s past experience includes overseeing significant prosecutions against high-profile Democrats.

The Justice Department’s investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election began well before Smith’s appointment, proceeding alongside separate criminal probes into the Jan. 6 rioters themselves.

More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the insurrection, including some with seditious conspiracy.

Source: AP

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