Events that marked the year 2015 in Bamenda

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.

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 centred around 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 allowed 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 these malpractices, the 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 war front 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 war front 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?