Yerima, IG officials discuss reinforcement of resistance against French Cameroun

29, June 2022

Yerima, IG officials discuss reinforcement of resistance against French Cameroun 0

Senior leaders of Southern Cameroons Interim Government (IG) have met in an undisclosed location in mainland Europe and exchanged views on ways to promote Ground Zero armed resistance against La Republique du Cameroun and thwart the threats posed by Anglophone CPDM officials, Cameroon Intelligence Report has gathered from sources deep within the IG.

Our informant hinted that during the meeting Vice President Dabney Yerima and the frontline leaders discussed the latest developments in Akwaya, Fako, Meme and Mezam including the entire Ambazonia homeland.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands the talks were on issues revolving around reinforcing the armed resistance in addition to the threats Southern Cameroons is facing from Yaoundé.

Our source said Vice President Dabney Yerima stressed the need for cooperation with all restoration groups in all areas of the struggle to serve its primary purpose of promoting the Ambazonian cause against French Cameroun.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Football: Lukaku ‘very happy’ as he arrives in Milan ahead of Inter return

29, June 2022

Football: Lukaku ‘very happy’ as he arrives in Milan ahead of Inter return 0

Romelu Lukaku said he was “very happy” to be back after the Belgian international striker arrived in Milan on Wednesday ahead of his return to Inter Milan on loan from Chelsea.

A beaming Lukaku emerged from Linate airport in the early hours of Wednesday morning and gave his short but delighted response to the handful of reporters awaiting his arrival.

The 29-year-old will undergo a medical later in the day before making his long-awaited Inter comeback official.

Chelsea agreed to a reported deal in which Inter will pay an initial eight million euros ($8.42 million) plus a further potential three million euros in bonuses for the loan.

Lukaku will again lead Inter’s attack as they attempt to regain the Serie A title after taking a pay cut — a reported 8.5 million euros for the coming campaign.

Lukaku leaves London after failing to make an impression for a second time at Chelsea, not meeting high expectations following a £97.5 million move from Inter last summer.

He had made himself a fan favourite over two years at Inter after scoring 64 times in 95 games and driving them to their first Serie A title in over a decade, the 2021 Scudetto ending both an 11-year drought and Juventus’ grip on Italian football.

However the financial problems of Inter’s owners the Suning Group, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic led to coach Antonio Conte leaving the club almost as soon as the title was won.

He claimed the cost cutting required by Inter would have prevented him building the team he wanted to challenge domestically and in Europe.

Lukaku followed Conte out the door after then European champions Chelsea offered a whopping sum which eased some of Inter’s financial issues, and started well on his return to Stamford Bridge.

Coach Thomas Tuchel said “he was the type of guy we were missing” after he netted four times in his first four games, but his next goal didn’t come until early December and injury, Covid-19 and poor form kept him out of the team.

He then infuriated Chelsea fans by conducting an interview with Sky Sport Italia in which he expressed his unhappiness and said he had Inter in his heart and wanted to return.

Those comments also led Inter’s hardcore ultras to say they weren’t interested in having him back, considering his move to Chelsea a betrayal of his claim to love the Milanese club.

They told other fans not to arrive en masse to welcome Lukaku back as he is now “just one of many” after previously being “treated like a king” by supporters.

Lukaku will be critical to coach Simone Inzaghi’s bid to snatch back the league crown from AC Milan after they finished two points behind their local rivals last term.

Source: AFP

German Museum announces return of “Ngonnso” a female figure taken from Bui County

28, June 2022

German Museum announces return of “Ngonnso” a female figure taken from Bui County 0

The board of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), a federal body that oversees 27 museums and cultural organizations in and around Berlin, has agreed to return a number of objects to Cameroon and Namibia. The news is the latest significant restitution from Germany as the country continues to examine its national collections and refine its policy toward colonial-era artworks and objects.

A years-long negotiation with Cameroonian authorities has also concluded with the return of the so-called Ngonnso’, a female figure taken from the historical region of Nso’ (northwestern Cameroon) by colonial officer Curt von Pavel, who gave it to the Ethnological Museum in 1903.

The dialogue around the future of the object was accelerated by the group Bring Back Ngonnso, led by activist Sylvie Njobati. In a December 2021 meeting, scholars and museum officials from Cameroon and Germany agreed that, although the object had not been looted, the presence of von Pavel in the city of Kumbo was an expression of colonial violence.

“The question of returning collection items from colonial contexts is not just a question of a context of injustice,” Parzinger said in a statement. “The special—especially spiritual—significance of an object for its society of origin can also justify its return.”

Source: News.artnet

Ambazonia Virus: Scottish govt announces plans for second independence referendum next October

28, June 2022

Ambazonia Virus: Scottish govt announces plans for second independence referendum next October 0

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Tuesday that the Scottish parliament would publish an independence referendum bill with a planned date for a vote on secession to take place on Oct. 19, 2023.

Sturgeon said she would be writing to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for permission to hold a consultative referendum, saying it was vital the vote was legal. She said the issue would be referred to the UK Supreme Court.

Voters in Scotland, which has a population of around 5.5 million, rejected independence in 2014. But Scotland’s semi-autonomous government says Britain’s departure from the EU, which was opposed by a majority of Scots, means the question must be put to a second vote.

Johnson and his ruling Conservative Party, which is in opposition in Scotland, strongly oppose a referendum, saying the issue was settled in 2014 when Scots voted against independence by 55% to 45%.

He has previously refused to issue a “Section 30” order to allow a referendum to take place.

Source: REUTERS

At a time of political darkness in Cameroon: It’s time for Southern Cameroonians to leave

28, June 2022

At a time of political darkness in Cameroon: It’s time for Southern Cameroonians to leave 0

You may have heard of the Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o scandal, in which at least three prominent Francophone figures were also arrested! To be sure, a deputy director of a bank, a Treasury inspector and an army colonel were all detained alongside the man once tipped to succeed President Biya and charged with diverting public funds and corruption.

When that sprawling con burst into public view, it was easily the biggest financial scandal that ever rocked the ruling CPDM government and only compared to the Albatross Affair. That was bad enough, but today the disgraced former Minister of Defense, Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o appears in court holding a glass of very chilled champagne (See photo attached to this report).

The Francophone political players may be a little different, but the Anglophone basic premise is correct: Reunification was a rigged game. We found this out in the last five years, when Francophone army soldiers were deployed to slaughter innocent Southern Cameroonians while series of related corruption stories spilled out of nearly every government sector in Yaoundé including SONARA, the National Oil Refinery Company. The recent financial scandal facing the National Hydrocarbons Corporation (SNH) is a justification that corruption in Biya’s Cameroon is just about everything.

Journalist Jules Koum Koum, who died in a Cameroon government road accident plot, had in 2010 investigated an alleged over-billing scandal for military uniforms at the defense ministry when Mebe Ngo’o was minister.

A fifth person questioned in the same investigation is nowhere to be found! They are all blood relations to the Head of State President Biya.

It is no surprise to Southern Cameroonians that the Special Criminal Court which deals with major corruption cases now allows criminals to attend hearings with champagne making the legal process a manipulation-on-manipulation situation.

What is happening in French Cameroun is the height of criminality. It’s time for Southern Cameroons to leave.

The Mebe Ngo’o bad news didn’t start at the ministry of defense! Before joining the government, he had led the police force and run the presidency’s civil office. But the biggest shock came out of the defense ministry where he spent six years and also in the ministry of transport.

Biya and his Francophone political elites have made Southern Cameroonians to be living in an era of undisguised, French Cameroun conspiracy, in which the only solution for the people of Southern Cameroons is to get back to Buea and begin all over again.

By Isong Asu

US: Three killed, dozens injured in Amtrak train derailment in Missouri

28, June 2022

US: Three killed, dozens injured in Amtrak train derailment in Missouri 0

A passenger train traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago struck a dump truck and derailed Monday in a remote, rural area of Missouri, killing three people and injuring dozens more, officials said.

Two of the people who died were on the train and one was in the truck, Missouri State Highway Patrol spokesman Cpl. Justin Dunn said. It was not immediately clear exactly how many people were hurt, the patrol said, but hospitals reported receiving more than 40 patients from the crash and were expecting more.

The Southwest Chief was carrying about 243 passengers and 12 crew members when the collision happened near Mendon at a rural intersection on a gravel road with no crossing arms, officials said. Seven cars derailed, the Highway Patrol said.

Helicopter video of the site from KMBC-TV in Kansas City showed rail cars on their side as emergency responders used ladders to climb into one of them. Six medical helicopters parked nearby were waiting to transport patients.

Close to 20 local and state law enforcement agencies, ambulance services, fire department and medical helicopter services responded, Dunn said. The first emergency responders arrived within 20 minutes of receiving a 911 call, he said.

Passenger Robert Nightingale said he was dozing off in his sleeper room when the crash happened.

“Everything started to go in slow motion,” he told CNN, describing how the train rocked before tumbling onto its side.

Nightingale was able to climb out of the side of the car.

“We all just sat there shocked,” he said.

Other passengers on the train included 16 youths and eight adults from two Boy Scout troops who were traveling home to Appleton, Wisconsin, after a backcountry excursion at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, but no one in the group was seriously injured, said Scott Armstrong, director of national media relations for the Boy Scouts of America. The Scouts administered first aid to several injured passengers, including the driver of the dump truck, Armstrong said.

High school students from Pleasant Ridge High School in Easton, Kansas, who were headed to a Future Business Leaders of America conference in Chicago, were also aboard, Superintendent Tim Beying told The Star.

The Southwest Chief takes about two days to travel from Los Angeles to Chicago. Mendon, with a population of about 160, is about 84 miles (135 kilometers) northeast of Kansas City.

Source: AP

Moderator Samuel Fonki should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity

28, June 2022

Moderator Samuel Fonki should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity 0

Fonki Samuel, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, should be tried by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

The Francophone dominated Biya regime in Yaoundé and other Southern Cameroons stake holders should charge Moderator Fonki Samuel with crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.  The Ambazonia Interim Government, after charges are filed, could arrange for the arrest of Moderator Fonki by Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces.

The Ambazonia Interim Government should not take the law into its own hands and unilaterally arrest Moderator Fonki Samuel.  The IG should support the rule of law in Southern Cameroons and see to it that Rev Fonki is charged, arrested and convicted of crimes against humanity for putting the Messaga Ekol and Oliti people of Akwaya Subdivision, Manyu Division at each other’s throat.

Moderator Fonki Samuel comes from a migrant community that moved from the North West and settled in Akwaya Sub Division in Manyu. Two generations successfully amalgamated into what we know today as the Messaga Ekol clan deep within the ancestral home of the Oliti people. The quest for rich farm lands has always placed the Messaga Ekol and the Oliti communities at daggers-drawn positions.

Events recently took a dramatic u-turn following the emergence of a migrant son as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon-and the Messaga Ekol people now have a voice and a powerful religious figure who can make their case heard in Yaoundé and even beyond. His recent press release on the massacre in Akwaya tells it all!!

Moderator Fonki personally signed the communiqué detailing what happened in Akwaya without the consent of the Divisional Officer and the Roman Catholic establishment that virtually controls the majority of the Christian family population in Akwaya Sub Division. It is evidently clear from the press release that Moderator Fonki Samuel Forba (to use his three names) is a stake holder in the land dispute in Akwaya. In the moderator’s own account, “Over 30 people were killed including children, girls, men, women and old people. Some were beheaded. About 5 Nigerians were killed in this attack”.

The International Criminal Court is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.  The Court is located in Den Hague, Netherlands; The Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for conducting investigations and prosecutions. It is headed by the Chief Prosecutor.

According to Human Rights Watch,  “the ICC has one of the most extensive lists of due process guarantees ever written,” including “presumption of innocence; right to counsel ; right to present evidence and to confront witnesses; right to remain silent ; right to be present at trial; right to have charges proved beyond a reasonable doubt; and protection against double jeopardy.”

If Rev Fonki is arrested, there will be no vacuum in the Presbyterian Church.  It will instead present an opportunity to have a decent cleric to run the affairs of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Akwaya: Land dispute turns deadly as two communities resort to arms

28, June 2022

Akwaya: Land dispute turns deadly as two communities resort to arms 0

Contrary to a video circulating on social media that Amba fighters had slaughtered some 30 people in a small locality in Akwaya Sub-Division in Manyu Division, it is gradually emerging that the deaths have been caused by an ignored long-standing land dispute between two communities which have been at each other’s throat for decades.

A Cameroon Concord News source in the Division’s capital has informed the Cameroon Concord News Group’s Editor-in-Chief that the incident which started as a land dispute between the Oliti people and the Messaga Ekol people of Akwaya turned deadly when elements of the Oliti community attacked and killed some Messaga Ekol people on their farms on April 29, 2022.

The current incident caused by the Messaga Ekol community is retaliation, our source has said.

The Olitis have been mobilizing for months, the source pointed out, adding that with the help of some armed men whom they hired, most of whom are suspected of being Nigerians, launched a vicious attack which resulted in the deaths of some 30 Messaga  people.

Their homes were also burned and some people were burned while asleep as the attack took place at night, our source added.The attacks led to the burning down of houses during which some people were burnt in their houses, including children and women, an idea corroborated by a Presbyterian Church press release issued on Monday.

With chaos playing out in many parts of the country, especially in the  two English-speaking regions of the country where the government has lost control of things, many people are using the crisis to settle old scores.

There is no government presence in those communities and with the police and army scared of venturing into such areas, it clear that the violence resulting from land disputes will continue to escalate, our source said.

The Cameroon Concord News Group has asked its correspondents in Mamfe to gather more information in the days ahead with a view to shading more light on an issue which has nothing to do with the Southern Cameroons crisis.

It should be underscored that due to false intelligence following the death of four gendarme officers in Agborkem German in Manyu Division located on the Cameroon side of the Cross River, the Yaoundé government hastily rushed soldiers to the locality, causing the Southern Cameroons crisis to take a violent turn which will take years to check.

The four gendarme officers who were killed were not killed by Southern Cameroonians because of the crisis which was triggered by the torturing of lawyers and teachers by government police officers in Buea and Bamenda.

The gendarme officers were killed by Nigerian smugglers whose goods had been seized by those gendarme officers as it is a practice among Cameroonian police and gendarme officers.

To cover the matter up, the gendarme officers in Eyumojock misled the government in Yaounde and since the government only believes in violence, it immediately rushed soldiers to Agborkem German where the locals were tortured and young men forced to have sex with their mothers and grandmothers.

That was what caused the crisis to escalate. Biya was misled to declare a war at the airport in Yaounde upon his arrival from a summit in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

The government must investigate the issues in Akwaya. It must not let these issues to fester. Government indifference is responsible for most crises in the country and because of the crisis in the two English-speaking regions of the country, government incompetence is now blamed on Amba boys who have nothing to do with the land dispute or the killing of 30 people in Akwaya.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Archbishop Nkea says the Church is in service of peace and reconciliation

27, June 2022

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Archbishop Nkea says the Church is in service of peace and reconciliation 0

The crisis in Cameroon which began five years ago between separatist forces and the government has plunged the English-speaking regions of the country into a deadly conflict that has claimed thousands of lives, displaced millions, destroyed properties and is creating a growing humanitarian crisis.

The immediate origins of the crisis stem from legal and educational grievances in 2016 which rapidly escalated into a secessionist political conflict with separatists calling for the creation of an independent state they call “Ambazonia.”

The violence has taken a heavy toll on the civilian populations in the Northwest and Southwest region of the nation, with attacks against schools, extrajudicial killings, kidnappings and a general sense of insecurity forcing millions of Cameroonians to flee to neighbouring countries. In all this, the Church has been vocal, calling for an end to the violence and for reconciliation between the sides in conflict.

Archbishop Andrew Nkea of Bamenda spoke to Vatican News on the sidelines of the 10th World Meeting of Families taking place in Rome, highlighting the Church’s role in the service of peace and dialogue in the country.

The people are most affected in the crisis

Archbishop Nkea notes that the Church’s major difficulty in its advocacy during the crisis is navigating “the thin line of neutrality” in the sense of not belonging to any side of the conflict between the government and the separatists, while trying to advocate for peace and reconciliation.

In fact, he explains, “sometimes the government thinks we are not condemning the separatists enough, and most of the time the separatists think that we are not taking a tough enough stance against the government.”

However, the Archbishop insists that the focus is “the People of God” – the suffering people, the students out of school and those who have been displaced by the conflict and forced to flee to neighbouring countries including Nigeria. For these people, he insists, “I am ready to give my life – not for separatists, not for the government!”

The Church in service of peace, dialogue

Since the start of the conflict, the Church has channeled her efforts towards restoring peace and reconciliation in the country, explains the Archbishop, who is also the president of the Bishops’ Conference of Cameroon.

These efforts have also been complemented with humanitarian assistance to those affected by the fighting, including medical care backed by aid from international organizations including the WHO and the UN refugee agency.

According to the UN, about 2 million people affected by the crisis in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon need humanitarian assistance and 1.4 million of the most vulnerable are targeted by humanitarian partners for assistance. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says over $139.9 is needed to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable and limited funding has been a major constraint in this regard.

The Archbishop further reiterates the Church’s conviction that “the only way to resolve the conflict in Cameroon is through dialogue” which the Church has been trying to facilitate between the separatists and the government, in spite of challenges.

“We focus on what is right and we go on with what is right even to the point of death. We will talk to both parties and make sure that at some point they are able to dialogue and bring this crisis to an end.”

Violence begets more violence

The crisis in the English-speaking regions has led to the deaths of more than 4,000 civilians and hundreds of members of security forces.

Archbishop Nkea strongly condemns the killings, stressing that we “cannot get peace and justice by killing each other.”

“Let us realize that we are not killing ourselves to arrive at good. We can only kill ourselves and arrive at more killing and more violence.”

Source: Vatican News

Southern Cameroons Crisis: At least 26 killed in attack in Akwaya Sub Division

27, June 2022

Southern Cameroons Crisis: At least 26 killed in attack in Akwaya Sub Division 0

At least 26 villagers were killed in an attack on Saturday in the Akwaya district of Cameroon’s South-West region, where separatist insurgencies have added fuel to long-running inter-ethnic conflicts over land, local sources said on Monday.

The district medical officer, Enow Daniel Kewong, said 26 bodies had been found so far and other people were still missing after the attack on Ballin village, near the border with Nigeria.

Source: Reuters

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