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Some 34 military personnel are reportedly missing after their vessel capsized off the coast of Debuncha on Sunday at about 6am local time. The vessel,dubbed "Le 'Mendumba'"of the Rapid Intervention Battalion, was on a supply mission to Bakassi, according to official sources. Three of the men have been rescued, reports say.

According to a communiqué from the Minister delegate at the Presidency in Charge of Defence, there were 37 people including the crew on board the vessel. The cause of the incident is still unclear. However, the same communiqué states that the vessel had become "abruptly agitated". After losing contact with the vessel, the control entre raised an alarm.

Search teams were immediately dispatched to the area. A military helicopter helped spot traces of fuel from the sinking vessel. The area likely to lodge the vessel has been mapped out. The search continues while an investigation is underway. A "crisis cell" has also been created to handle the tragedy.

Top officials in the military have already met in Yaoundé. This comes at a time when Nigeria is investigating claims that Cameroon killed about 97 Nigerian fishermen in the Bakassi peninsula some days ago. The tragedy is believed to have been sparked by a fishing levy by Cameroon on the fishermen.

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Rita Akana

17.Jul.2017

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The registrar of the GCE Board has confirmed rumours that more than 200  scripts were stolen at the Franky Comprehensive High School in Yaoundé, capital of La Republique du Cameroun.
Humphrey  Ekema Monono was speaking to Cameroon Calling on the CRTV on Sunday.
Monono said the scripts disappeared barely two days into the exams.
After consulting hierarchy, the students were given another set of questions, he said.
The boss of the GCE Board revealed that they "suspected  the authorities around the school" for the theft, given that the main door "was never broken into".
The marking of what has been termed "political GCE" is underway.
Humphrey believes that the  results could be  released during the second week of August.
Due to the unrest in West Cameroon, the General Certificate of Education examinations have faced unprecedented problems in recent years.
Some students have been killed while many others have received life-time injuries.

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Rita Akana

16.Jul.2017

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An incident involving a junior Gendarme officer and his Boss has led to 4 deaths in Kousseri-Northern part of Cameroon.

Not only civilians and innocent demonstrators are victims of the trigger-happy nature of Biya's brutal forces. Sometimes, they also suffer from their own penchant for indiscriminate shooting.

Junior Gendarme officer, Mbechu Jude Woumessi on Friday afternoon  sprayed bullets on his Boss, killing him alongside three others at the Gendarmarie Company Brigade  Kousseri .

Amongst the death are:

Ondoua (Brigade commander),

Ndengue Carole (officer),

Mah Bébé (officer) and a civilian by name Ms. Ibrahim.

At the time of writing this news story, we are reliably informed that authorities are yet to establish the actual motivation behind the  killings. The killer cop has  offered himself to the authorities.

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Rita Akana

14.Jul.2017

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Nigerian lower house of  parliament is currently investigating claims that Cameroonian gendarme officers have killed about 97 Nigerian fishermen in the Bakassi peninsula.
The incident reportedly happened last week.
The victims are believed to have failed to pay a $ 300 fishing levy.
Cameroon is yet to react.
Nigeria's interior minister is set to meet Cameroon, the BBC reports.
Survivors of the attack have been arriving back in Nigeria with injuries, reports the BBC.
The same minister has accused Cameroon of breaching an agreement to protect its citizens, says the BBC.
A survivor of the alleged attack says they were given a week to comply.

Nigeria ceded Bakassi to Cameroon in 2005 after a ruling from the International Court of Justice.
War almost broke out between both nations when tension rose to its  apogee.
Nigeria earlier this week summoned the Cameroonian ambassador to lodge a formal protest note, reports the BBC.
A five-year UN-backed transition period was put in place exempting the area's residents, many of them Nigerian fishermen, from paying tax, the BBC relates.

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Rita Akana

14.Jul.2017

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Bastille Day celebrations have begun under tight security. President Donald Trump is on hand as the guest of honor to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the US's entry into World War I.

On his first Bastille Day as president, Emmanuel Macron attended the French capital's military parade alongside his US counterpart, Donald Trump. Fearing attacks, police emptied the famed Champs-Elysees two hours before the parade began, along with the Place de la Concorde, the largest square in Paris, at the avenue's eastern end.

"This is a wonderful national celebration," Trump had said during his joint news conference with Macron on Thursday. "We look very much forward to it," he added. "Spectacular."

This year's parade commemorates the centenary of the US's entry into World War I and features military aircraft and soldiers from both countries to stress the continued Franco-American martial cooperation in the Middle East and elsewhere.

DW

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Rita Akana

14.Jul.2017

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In a warehouse on the sprawling country estate of Gambia's exiled former leader, Yahya Jammeh, silver platters pile up beside dusty crates of empty champagne bottles with labels commemorating his 1994 coup.

A bailiff picks through the boxes and scribbles down notes - the start of what the new government says is a search for tens of millions of dollars of looted assets, an investigation that Jammeh's supporters have dismissed as a witch-hunt.

A U.S. official in Banjul said Washington was planning to help and government staff say they are counting on World Bank assistance. The size of the Kanilai estate - just a fraction of Jammeh's holdings according to the government official leading the tour - shows the scale of the task ahead.

    "We suspect most of the things were taken away before he left - the treasure, possibly weapons and most of the vehicles," said the bailiff from Gambia's high court, Modou Moussa Ceesay, taking an inventory of Jammeh's possessions.

The former president - accused by opponents and rights groups of widespread violations and corruption - fled Gambia in January as regional forces descended on the capital Banjul to enforce the results of an election he lost. [nL5N1FC0MZ]

He has not commented on the investigation from his new base in Equatorial Guinea. [nL5N1FE7HO] His still strong band of supporters left behind in the tiny West African state have called the plunder hunt a case of victor's justice.

Tanks, Zebras, Camels

Kanilai was Jammeh's birthplace and is now his most elaborate estate - complete with farm, mosque, tanks, multiple residences, jungle warfare training camp and vast private safari park housing exotic parrots, zebras, hyenas and camels.

Building materials lie next to an unfinished new palace, near a billboard of a smiling Jammeh embracing his family.

The justice ministry team inspected it all under the gaze of a group of Jammeh's relatives and supporters, all wearing the green T-shirts of his APRC party. One of them stuck up his middle finger at the visiting delegation.

APRC head, Fabakary Tombong Jatta, later told Reuters he had no knowledge of any embezzlement of state funds or foreign assets owned by Jammeh.

"These people just want anything with any link to Jammeh and that's not fair," he said, calling the investigation "witch-hunting".

New President Adama Barrow took office in January and set up a task force to track down Jammeh's assets in May. "Most of the paper trails are available," Gambia's Solicitor General Cherno Marenah said. [nL5N1GN4WN]

But following those paper trails is proving time consuming. Investigators only made their first visit to the heavily fortified estate this month.

Finance minister Amadou Sanneh last month said $100 million - more than a third of the annual budget - had been siphoned from state firms, in the riverside nation, nearly half of whose 1.8 million people live in poverty.

A list of Jammeh assets temporarily seized by the government pending a court order showed 14 businesses in everything from media, insurance to farming. [nL8N1IO5B6]

Sanneh said the government planned to sell four of Jammeh's presidential planes.

"Too Much for One Man"

Marenah said investigators were also looking into assets in Morocco and the United States, where one U.S. official told Reuters Jammeh owned property in Potomac, Maryland, a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. 

An official in the U.S. embassy in Banjul confirmed that they were collaborating with the Gambian government on how to assist with the recovery efforts.

The World Bank would help Gambia through its Stolen Assets Recovery Programme, Marenah said, though the bank declined to comment.

Back at Kanilai, once a small village near the border with Senegal, soldiers lead a tour of Jammeh's main residences.

The screeches of three of his abandoned parrots echo inside an empty ballroom hanging with crystal chandeliers.

One of the pictures hanging on the wall shows a young Jammeh holding a staff some Gambians thought gave him mystical powers - he long said he had developed a secret cure for AIDS.

A pile of paperwork including an old business document from a visiting Royal Dutch Shell delegation sits near a bookshelf holding Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's memoir, "The Downing Street Years".

At the entrance to another residence, soldiers swap jokes and take turns playing on a grand piano and shooting pool next to a fake Christmas tree.

"It's too much for one man," mutters one of them as the delegation tours the rooms.

Reuters

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Rita Akana

14.Jul.2017

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