Political analysts have always said:
“whenever Bamenda sneezes, Yaounde catches a cold”. Although this cannot be
independently confirmed by The Median newspaper, some salient politico-social, economic,
cultural, and religious events that marked the year 2015 in Bamenda are
believed to have sent shockwaves to the regime in all mighty Yaounde.
Compiled by Douglas A. Achingale and Ndjodzefe
Nestor in Bamenda
Anglophone Lawyers’ ultimatum to Biya
In May 9, 2015 after a confab under the
theme "The Security and Future of the Common Law in Cameroon" over
700 Cameroon Common Law Lawyers issued a memo to government requesting that a
federal system be reinstated in Cameroon whereby both the Common and Civil Law
can function independently, condemned biased practices and opposed the
appointment of notaries in the South West and North West Regions.
The lawyers through the strongly worded
memo gave government six months to look into their concerns or they will be
forced to take more drastic action. It was not surprising therefore that
without convening the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, President Biya sacked
the Francophone Procureur-General of the North West region and replaced him
with an Anglophone. Even though the lawyers said that was not enough they at
once admitted it was a step in the right direction.
Fru Ndi storms Santa toll gate
The National Chairman of the Social
Democratic Front, SDF, Ni John FruNdi, on August 22, stormed the tollgate at
Matazem – the gateway into Bamenda, Northwest Region – and chased away the
tollgate collectors. FruNdi said he was forced to make the “spectacular and
unprecedented move” because the populations of Bamenda had suffered enough on
the very strategic yet almost impassable road linking Mbouda in the West region
and Bamenda in the North West region.
“I
came here because the people have been complaining a lot that the roads are bad
and these fellows keep collecting huge sums of money on a daily basis and the
Government is not investing the money in building the road. Until the road from
Bamenda to Mbouda is tarred, nobody will collect a franc here in the name of
tollgate. People cannot continue to pay money (FCFA 500) every time they cross
this gate, with the bad roads we have here. No!” FruNdi charged.
Understandingly,
the Yaounde regime took FruNdi’s move seriously and since then no collector has
again been seen at the tool gate.
B’da rejects Ebola vaccine trial
On October 30, the Biya regime announced
its intention to test the efficacy of an Ebola virus vaccine on some 400
Cameroonians without any hint of the virus’ presence in the country or even any
threat of its imminent arrival. Bamenda and Yaounde were selected as pioneer
venues for the Ebola experiment.
After
the announcement, a concerned group of civil society organizations, social
workers and members of the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, as well
as pressmen confronted authorities of the Bamenda regional hospital over the
controversial Ebola vaccine trial.
Government
indefinitely suspended the clinical trial of the Ebola vaccine at the Bamenda
Regional Hospital and the Centre Pasteur laboratory in Yaounde. The decision
was broadcast Thursday morning November 19, on state-owned CRTV national station.
Though
the exact reasons for the suspensions were not made known, it emerged that
government was only yielding to pressure from Bamenda civil society activists.
François
Hollande spends 3hrs in Y’de
After spending a couple of days elsewhere
in Africa where he went visiting, the President of France, François Hollande,
made a brief stopover in Yaounde on 3 July 2015. Critics called the visit a
mocking one because of its undisguised brevity. It lasted no more than three
hours.
The
high points of the visit were the speeches the two Presidents made and their
responses to questions asked them by journalists at the Unity Palace. While
Hollande regretted the maltreatment by his country’s officials of Cameroonian
soldiers who fought alongside the French in the First World War, President Paul
Biya told the press indirectly that he was going to run for the 2018
presidential election.
Although
François Hollande did not mention this as a reason for his visit, it could be
understood that one of the things that brought him to Yaounde was the
LydienneEyoum palaver. This Cameroonian born lawyer of French nationality is in
the Douala New Bell prison for the embezzlement of public funds.
This
is the first time a French Head of State is visiting Cameroon since 1999. The
last occupant of the Champs Elysée who did so was Jacques Chirac. It did not
even cross the mind of Hollande’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, to do so probably
because of his resentment for President Biya who has been in power for 33 long
years.
MPs desert parliament during session
The leading opposition outfit in Cameroon,
the Social Democratic Front, SDF, is the lone party that has been known over
the years for walking out of the National Assembly in full session, when its
members are not satisfied with any particular issue raised for deliberation.
However, in the November parliamentary session, the last for 2015, many MPs of
all the seven parties represented in the National Assembly deserted the House.
The
bone of contention centredaround the state budget for 2016. The 180 deputies of
the lower house of parliament were divided into two camps as their opinions on
and understanding of the budget differed in many ways. And the angry ones made
their positions clear on 12 November when the session began.
It
was therefore not surprising that 134 MPs stormed out of the hall during the
question-and-answer session with members of government, leaving behind 46 to
carry on with the exercise. Critics saw in their storming out their lack of
interest in discussions concerning the very people they represent in
parliament.
Boko Haram change tactics
When the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram
started the “war” they are currently fighting against Cameroon, what they did principally
was the abduction of Cameroonians and foreigners living in Cameroon as well as
the looting of property. Later on, they added the killing of innocent
Cameroonians to their agenda.
Boko
Haram decided to change their tactics in 2015 when they realized that some
powerful resistance was coming from the Cameroonian forces of law and order who
have been deployed to the Far North region to ward off the attacks of the
terrorists.
They
deceive ignorant young girls aged between 8 and 14 years to serve as human
bombs, against a phoney reward in heaven. In one of their attacks in December
2015, they also made use of young boys in the same manner. The government had
to create vigilante groups in almost all the localities in the Far North. These
vigilante groups did (and are still doing their all), even at the expense of
their lives, to counter the terrorist group.
Thanks
to the collaboration of the population, the vigilante group and the army, some
young girls with bombs have killed only themselves and not members of the
population they target. And to facilitate their work, President Biya, just
before the close of the year, provided them with vehicles.
Army terrorizing civilians in Far North
Even though the Cameroon army has been
diversely hailed for remarkable successes in checking the Boko Haram
insurgency, some national and international Human Rights Watchdogs say this
success has not been without some unacceptable excesses by the army especially
on civilian populations in areas around the war front. In its 2014 report
published on 03 December 2015, for example, the National Commission on Human
Rights and Freedoms (NCHRF) denounced crimes committed by the army on civilian
populations in the Far North. It decried what it described as “the arbitrary
arrests, molestations, maiming’s, death of persons in detention, disappearance
of some arrested persons and the burning of whole villages” by the Cameroon
army.
The
NCHRF report only confirmed an earlier report by Amnesty International
published on 16 September 2015. In its report Amnesty International talked of
“waves of arrests, illegal homicides, destruction of property, deaths in
detention, disappearance of persons, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial
killings, inhuman and degrading treatments etc.” Intriguingly the Cameroon
government has neither confirmed nor denied any of the allegations contained in
these reports.
Female AFCON shifted to November 2016
Because on-going preparations for the
hosting of the African championship in feminine football in 2016 were not
progressing as expected 2015, the Cameroon government fearing that some of the
structures would not be ready on due time, appealed to the Confederation of
African Football (CAF) to postpone the hosting of the championship by one month
that is, from October 2016 to November 2016. The government gave the alibi of
excessive rainfall that was hindering the progress of construction works. CAF
had no option than to grant the request by Cameroon.
It
should be noted that even though the Chinese companies contracted to build
stadia have since completed the construction of a modern stadium to host some
of the games in Limbe, the government is barely struggling to execute its own
share of the jobs. The construction of access roads, parking lots and
installation of water and electricity have only been progressing at snail’s
pace.
Epileptic energy, water supply
Denizens of Cameroon’s capital city Yaounde
had to cope with dry taps and power outages for days and weeks running, for
most part of 2015. On many occasions the entire city of Yaounde was plunged in
darkness by the energy supply company ENEO. Observers said it is only in
countries like Cameroon and other banana republics that power outages are
common in capital cities. As if to provoke the Cameroonian public even more,
ENEO dared to take out lights in Yaounde and most other cities on 31st December
even when the head of state was delivering his state of the nation address.
Commentators were quick to say, it was a scientific coup d’etat on the
president. It showed that the British company has no respect for republican
institutions in Cameroon. The situation was even worse for towns in the
periphery, some of which had to go for months without electricity. In some
quarters in the city of Douala for example, lights only returned after denizens
took to the streets to protest the situation. Most often ENEO complained of low
water level of the Sanaga River that supplies the Edea Hydro-dam.
Apart
from power cuts, city dwellers in Yaounde and most other towns had to live
without water for days and weeks running. In towns like Buea many quarters are
permanently without pipe borne water.
Yet,
even as the situation worsens government has only continued to pay lip
service.
Impressive growth rate projection
In their forecast on Cameroon’s economic
growth rate made public in August 2015, the country’s development partners,
that is, the Breton Woods institutions and others such as the BM and Standard
and Poor’s put the figure at 5.5%. However, the minister of Finance, AlamineOusmaneMey,
gave a different figure that was more optimistic: 6.4%.
In
the finance law that was tabled at the National Assembly and later promulgated
by the President of the Republic, the figure retained was 6% - an indication
that the economy is not doing as badly as Cameroon’s development partners
wanted the world to believe.
Alamine’s
refusal to toe the line of the said institutions in 2015 was not only seen at
the level of Cameroon’s growth rate issue; on several occasions, he was called
to order by these institutions on aspects of governance as well as reforms. For
this reason, he is not in the very good books of Cameroon’s development
partners.
Camair-Co still grounded
2015 was not a particularly good year for
the national airline company Camair-Co. Its main aircraft, the Dja was
repeatedly blocked from flying owing to security concerns and problems of
maintenance. It also came to the notice of its customers that the quality of
service of Camair-Co was very wanting.
Very
regular therefore were delays and suspensions of flights, the last of which
occurred on 15 December. This particular incident caused a lot of ink to flow
on the woes of Camair-Co as the flights were postponed repeatedly, causing
clients surpassing pain and distress.
On
account of the mire in which Camair-Co wallowed last year, members of
government such as Edgard Alain MebeNgo’o and even Prime Minister Philemon Yang
were obliged o separate occasions to take foreign flights when travelling
abroad. This was sufficient proof that they had lost confidence in the national
airline company.
To
regain this lost confidence, the government desperately announced reforms and
innovations towards the end of the year amongst which is the procurement of
Boeing Dreamliner planes.
Tutu Muna sacked for insubordination
A few years back, Cameroonians saw how
former Art and Culture minister Ama Tutu Muna defied a Supreme Court ruling in
her battle with makossa diva Sam Mbende over the Cameroon Music Corporation,
CMC, affair. And she went away with it. However, that was the tip of an
iceberg. Last year, the daughter of the former speaker of the National Assembly
showed her compatriots a bigger picture of what she could do as far as
insubordination was concerned.
She
ignored the Prime Minister’s instructions on how to go about the distribution
of authors’ rights and simply did what pleased her. Despite insistence from
Philemon young, the 51-year-old lady would not budge. Her wayward behaviour,
observers say, was on account of the alleged opaque manner in which she handled
the special funds meant for artists for all the seven years that she headed
that ministry.
With
recommendations from the PM therefore, President Paul Biya could not tolerate
her anymore. He thus flushed her out in the 2 October cabinet reshuffle, in the
same way as he did former Agriculture and Rural Development minister
EssimiMenye and former Public Works boss Patrice AmbaSalla who were no less
insubordinate.
CPDM excels in travesty
2015 was a year in which the ruling party,
the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, renewed its basic organs. Rather
than be an exemplary event from which opposition parties could copy, the basic
organs renewal exercise, which took place from 1 August to 10 December, came to
unveil serious shortcomings that reveal President Biya’s party as being
imminently on the brink of an implosion.
In
effect, the basic organs renewal exercise consisted in electing new officials
to man the cells, basic committees, sub-sections and sections in all the
divisions of the country and even abroad. But what filtered out of the field?
News of fraud, influence peddling, stuffing of ballot boxes, falsification of
results, etc., all of which violated the provisions of the text of the part as
well as those of the party chairman’s circular governing the exercise.
All
of this, The Median learned, happened with the complicity of many of the party
barons who were appointed to supervise the elections. This newspaper has been
reliably told that even the central committee of the party has been indifferent
to tothesed malpractices, reason why most of the complaints sent there have not
been looked into.
Biya keeps away from war front
In his capacity as Head of State and head
of Cameroon’s armed forces, President Paul Biya it was who publicly declared
war against Boko Haram during a summit in France on 17 May 2014. Since then,
the Nigerian terrorist group multiplied their attacks on Cameroon.
Besides
the different speeches that the President makes and the gifts he sends to the
soldiers fighting against Boko Haram in the Far North region of the country,
Cameroonians would have loved to see him at the war front last year, which is
the year the terrorist group have launched the most attacks on Cameroon.
In fact, observers say his presence at the
war front was imperative for a number of reasons: he has never before taken
part in a ceremony where soldiers who die at the warfront are honoured, the
lower ranked soldiers are sometimes maltreated by their superiors in the field,
and the soldiers sometimes complain that the gifts sent to them do not usually
get there in their entirety.
President
Biya’s visit to the warfront would have thus greatly comforted the security
forces and boosted their morale in no small way. But this was not the case in
2015. That perhaps was why hackers of the presidential website had to post fake
pictures on it showing him presiding at the burial ceremony of a fallen
soldier. A good reminder, isn’t it?
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