Activists in Cameroon say there has been a 60% increase in people applying for the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery, also known as the Green Card Lottery. Thousands of people have been lining up at internet cafes to apply for the program, citing a need to escape a poor economy and the country’s separatist conflict.

Twenty-nine-year-old teacher Getrude Tanlaka, who is among those entering the visa lottery at a cafe in Yaounde, says she is searching for better economic opportunities.

“I just want to get out. That is why I am playing the American lottery. My family has suffered a lot and this is the time for me to take care of them,” she said. “In Cameroon, I cannot do that. I work every day from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. and the remuneration is very discouraging, but in America it will be very easy. It is an opportunity to step out and change my life.”

Tanlaka says her mother also signed up for the lottery to increase the chances of them succeeding.

The Digital Rights Coalition, an alliance of civil society groups advocating for online rights and safety, says Cameroon’s estimated 200 cybercafes have seen a 60 percent increase in people applying for the visa lottery this year.

They say this follows a sharp dip in 2021 due to the high number of U.S. deaths from COVID-19. The State Department reports that entries to the American Visa Lottery program from Cameroon dropped to 151,000 last year — about half the number from the year before.

Now, says the coalition, many people are hoping to escape economic hardship caused by high inflation and a separatist conflict in western Cameroon, which has claimed at least 3,500 lives.

Akaba James, the coalition’s coordinator, says his organization is warning people to avoid scammers who charge money for unhelpful lottery advice.

“There are thousands of fake sites, fake people on YouTube providing advice about the DV lottery when they themselves have very little understanding of that process,” James said. “Ensure that wherever you play the lottery, you collect your receipt, and preserve it very well so that by the time the results are out, and you happen to win, then you can proceed with the filling of your visa application form, the DS 260, and then eventually getting your second notification letter and going for an interview and eventually paying your green card fee and traveling to the U.S.”

Police say some scammers have been arrested but are giving no details.

Meanwhile, some cybercafe owners have been charging illegal fees of between $2 and $7 for each electronic entry for the visa lottery.

Applications can be submitted for free at www.state.gov as recommended by the U.S. Department of State.

Jeffrey Presnell, vice consul at the U.S. embassy in Yaounde, said recently on local television channel STV that people enrolling for the Green Card Lottery must have at least a secondary education.

He also advised applicants to closely follow the rules spelled out on the document.

“Another common mistake that we see is that applicants do not include all of the members of their family. It is very sad because sometimes we see applicants that have won the lottery come and they are disqualified because they did not list all the members of their family. If you just have a fiancee, you should not list your partner on that application,” Presnell said.

He advises applicants to only list the names of legal spouses or children who live with them.

Source: VOA

A social worker at South Gloucestershire Council children’s services has been barred from the profession for posting an obscene video involving youngsters on Instagram.

Rodrigue Ekwelle-Nkwelle received a suspended jail term at Bristol Crown Court in April 2021 for distributing an indecent image of a child in the most serious abuse category and possessing extreme porn, which also involved animals.

Social Work England has now removed him from its register following a fitness-to-practise hearing, which bans him from working in the sector.

The regulatory body’s panel ruled he committed serious misconduct that created a risk to the public.

Ekwelle-Nkwelle, 43, also failed to disclose a previous allegation of sexual misconduct from 2013, from a woman with mental health problems, when he applied to employment agency HCL Workforce, the panel’s report said.

In June 2020, while working as a locum social worker for South Gloucestershire Council for nearly three years from October 2017, he uploaded the video involving children to Instagram, Social Work England’s report said.

He pleaded guilty in court to the pornography criminal charges, and a judge last year gave him a two-year jail term, suspended for two years, along with 150 hours’ unpaid work and 30 days’ rehabilitation.

Ekwelle-Nkwelle, whose address at the time of sentencing was given as Broad Street in Staple Hill, was also handed a sexual harm protection order and placed on the sex offenders’ register.

The Social Work England report following last month’s three-day regulatory hearing said: “The panel considered that these were convictions of a very serious nature.

“It was satisfied that children and animals are likely to have been harmed by their involvement in the images which Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle had dealt with.

“It was alarmed at his suggestion that the fact that the images came from Cameroon affected his decision whether to disclose them.”

The report said the crown court judge had rejected his explanations – that he posted the video out of “naivety” – as “manifestly false and unbelievable”.

Ekwelle-Nkwelle, originally an asylum seeker from Cameroon, who did not attend the hearing and was not represented, said in February 2021 in response to the regulatory concerns that the videos were “sent to him randomly and not by his request”, the report said.

“He said that when he had distributed the video it had been to decry some of the ‘ill things’ that were occurring in Africa and Cameroon in particular,” it said.

“Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle expressed his total shame of himself, the shame he had brought on his family and his profession.

“He said that he understood that he ought to have reported the matter to the police.

“He said it was poor judgement, not to have promptly reported the matter, because it was from Cameroon.

“He said that he accepted that his fitness to practise was impaired due to the concerns raised and added ‘but I would like to categorically stress that, I am not a person will hurt any individual, not to talk of a child’.

“Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle stated that he had fled his country and claimed asylum in the UK due to numerous adversities he had faced in Cameroon…He said he knew becoming a social worker was the best way to repay the UK.

“As a result he felt very down about the situation he had put himself in.”

But the panel said that while he had offered some explanation around the distribution conviction, he “had not explained the facts relating to the other conviction for possession of extreme pornography”.

The report said: “The panel considered that it had no demonstration of any insight from Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle regarding the effect that engaging in the distribution and possession of such images has on the subjects of the material.

“The panel concluded that, in the absence of demonstrated insight and remediation, there was a risk of repetition of past behaviour which involved a risk to the public.

“In addition, the panel was of the view that members of the public who were aware of Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle’s convictions and the underlying facts would be extremely shocked if there was no finding of impaired fitness to practise.

“The panel was concerned that there was a potential pattern of rule-breaking by Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle.”

It said the adjudicators ruled that his failure to disclose the previous sexual misconduct allegation “materially hindered the agency in conducting a risk assessment” on his application for employment.

The report said he was accused of making sexual advances towards a service user with mental health problems but police took no further action because she did not wish to support an investigation.

Ekwelle-Nkwelle was temporarily suspended from his social work degree course as a result but was then allowed to complete it in 2015 and got his first job in the profession with Wiltshire Council from March 2016 to October 2017, it said.

“The panel concluded that the conduct underlying the convictions together with the dishonest misconduct was fundamentally incompatible with being registered as a social worker,” it added.

Source: Bristol World

Cameroonian Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute on Monday discussed with visiting German Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Simen Katja Keul about the prospects of returning artifacts that were removed from the Central African country during the colonial era.

“There is a great interest by the German civil society to deal with this past and to work together on it, like for example the restitution of cultural goods,” Keul told reporters after the meeting in the capital, Yaounde. Keul added that the common procedure was being looked at to reinforce cooperation in this regard.

Major museums, auction houses, and private collectors in Germany have faced growing pressure in recent years to repatriate priceless works of art and other antiquities from African nations.

In May, Cameroonian authorities said during a cabinet meeting that they were working with reputed local and international experts and associations to ensure that the art objects abroad are returned “honorably, administratively and safely” to the country.

Source: Xinhuanet

Cameroon says Equatorial Guinea has deported several hundred Cameroonians, some of whom say they were fleeing terrorist and rebel attacks at home. The government of Equatorial Guinea says the deportees were economic migrants and is planning to deport 7,000 Cameroonians in all by the end of the year.

Scores of Cameroonians applauded Monday while welcoming back at least 200 of their citizens who were deported. But the well-wishers are not happy with Equatorial Guinea’s actions. Civilians shouted that by deporting Cameroonians, the oil-rich country is being indifferent to people who have rendered services as mechanics, electricians, bricklayers, miners and other types of workers.

Nguenang Rigobert, one of the deported Cameroonians, says he lost his teaching job in Equatorial Guinea. Nguenang says he, like many Cameroonians in Equatorial Guinea, are victims of what he calls the Cameroon government’s lack of interest in the plight of its citizens outside the country. He says Cameroon should have negotiated for Equatorial Guinea to give Cameroonians more time to acquire resident and work permits.

Nguenang said several dozen of the deported Cameroonians fled their country in part because of its ongoing separatist crisis. Others left because of Boko Haram terrorism in the north.

Some deportees said they were tortured and their property looted in Equatorial Guinea. Others said they spent several nights in detention centers and were freed after agreeing to return to Cameroon unconditionally.

Nouhou Bello, the most senior Cameroon government official in Ocean, the administrative unit where Campo is located, says President Paul Biya asked him to receive the deported civilians and make sure they travel to their towns and villages in peace.

Bello says Cameroonians who have arrived in Campo since Friday have confirmed to government officials that they were in the neighboring state illegally. He says some of the deportees told officials their visas had expired while others acknowledged lacking travel documents when they went to Equatorial Guinea.

Bello called on Cameroonians staying in Equatorial Guinea illegally to return home or risk being locked up.

Earlier in October, the government of Equatorial Guinea said it would embark on a mass deportation of people living illegally in its territory.

Officials said insecurity has mounted due to an influx of about 30,000 economic migrants within the past three years. Equatorial Guinea accused job-seeking youths, especially from Cameroon and Nigeria, of harassment, theft and armed banditry.

Essomba Innocent is an economic analyst at the National University of Equatorial Guinea. He says in January 2020, the country signaled that it did not want illegal economic migrants in its territory and laid the foundation stone for construction of a border wall with Cameroon.

Essomba says in June 2020, Equatorial Guinea agreed to pause the construction of the controversial wall after Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Central African Republic agreed to voluntarily repatriate their citizens living in Equatorial Guinea illegally. He says people who are being deported should not ask the government of Equatorial Guinea for compensation for goods they acquired when their stay was illegal.

Equatorial Guinea is a tiny central African nation of around 1.5 million people. The International Monetary Fund reports that the nation took in approximately $45 billion in oil revenues between 2000 and 2013, catapulting it from one of the world’s poorest countries to the one with the highest per capita income on the African continent.

Source: VOA