Politics
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What do you think of President Paul Biya’s performance as Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Cameroon in handling the war on Boko Haram terror?
A/ It shows that Biya is an efficient elderly statesman
B/ It can be seen as Biya is fighting to leave a rich legacy
C/ He is loved and respected by the Cameroon military and the Cameroonian people
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- Ngwa Bertrand
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- Boko Haram
The Secretary General of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), Ambassador Ahmad ALLAM-MI held discussions on Wednesday 21 January 2015 with the President of the Republic His Excellency Paul BIYA.
The audience that started at mid-day lasted nearly one hour. Speaking to the press shortly afterwards, Ahmad ALLAM-MI indicated that the aim of his visit was to inform the Head of State of the intention of President Idriss DEBY ITNO, current President of ECCAS, of the total mobilisation of the sub-region to defend the territorial integrity of one its members, Cameroon, which is under vicious attacks from the terrorist movement Boko Haram.
The Chadian born diplomat said that he expected ECCAS member countries to mutualise their forces so as to contain, control and eradicate the advances of Boko Haram. He said it was also necessary to take steps to see that all the measures foreseen by countries of the Lake Chad Basin are implemented so as to wipe out the terrorist organisation.
Culled from the Presidency website
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- Ngwa Bertrand
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- Boko Haram
The Secretary General of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), Ambassador Ahmad ALLAM-MI held discussions on Wednesday 21 January 2015 with the President of the Republic His Excellency Paul BIYA.
The audience that started at mid-day lasted nearly one hour. Speaking to the press shortly afterwards, Ahmad ALLAM-MI indicated that the aim of his visit was to inform the Head of State of the intention of President Idriss DEBY ITNO, current President of ECCAS, of the total mobilisation of the sub-region to defend the territorial integrity of one its members, Cameroon, which is under vicious attacks from the terrorist movement Boko Haram.
The Chadian born diplomat said that he expected ECCAS member countries to mutualise their forces so as to contain, control and eradicate the advances of Boko Haram. He said it was also necessary to take steps to see that all the measures foreseen by countries of the Lake Chad Basin are implemented so as to wipe out the terrorist organisation.
Culled from the Presidency website
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- Ngwa Bertrand
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- Boko Haram
Boko Haram says it is building an Islamic state that will revive the glory days of northern Nigeria's medieval Muslim empires, but for those in its territory life is a litany of killings, kidnappings, hunger and economic collapse. The Islamist group's five-year-old campaign has become one of the deadliest in the world, with around 10,000 people killed last year, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Hundreds, mostly women and children, have been kidnapped. It remains the biggest threat to the stability of Africa's biggest economy ahead of a vote on Feb. 14 in which President Goodluck Jonathan is expected to win. But while it has matched Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in its brutality -- it beheads its enemies on camera -- it has seriously lagged in the more mundane business of state building. "The Islamic state is a figment of their imagination. They are just going into your house and saying they have taken over," said Phineas Elisha, government spokesman for Adamawa state, one of three states under emergency rule to fight the insurgency. Unlike its Middle East counterparts wooing locals with a semblance of administration, villagers trapped by Boko Haram face food shortages, slavery, killing and a lock down on economic activity, those who escaped say.
"(They) have no form of government," noted Elisha, who saw the devastation caused by Boko Haram after government forces recaptured the town of Mubi in November. Boko Haram's leaders talk about reviving one of the West African Islamic empires that for centuries prospered off the Saharan trade in slaves, ivory and gold, but they demonstrate little evidence of state building. In August a man saying he was Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau -- the military says it killed Shekau -- issued a video declaring a "Muslim territory" in Gwoza, by the Cameroon border. There were echoes of Islamic State's proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria two months earlier. Boko Haram controls an area just over 30,000 square km of territory, about the size of Belgium, according to a Reuters calculation based on security sources and government data. But while in Syria, after initially brutal takeovers, Islamic State has tried to win over communities; those who escaped Boko Haram say the rebels do little for them beyond forcing them to adopt their brand of Islam on pain of death. "They provide raw rice to cook, the rice that they stole from the shops. They provide a kettle and ... scarves to cover up the women," said Maryam Peter from Pambla village. "People are going hungry. They are only feeding on corn and squash. No meat, nothing like that. The insurgents are not providing anything else," she added.
Maryam said most daily interactions with the militants involved them questioning villagers on their movements and forbidding them from trying to escape -- a rule she managed to flout when she fled a week ago. A government-run camp in a former school is now her home, along with 1,000 others, where mothers cook on outdoor fires while children run around. Some 1.5 million people have been rendered homeless by the war, Oxfam says. And those the militants kill, they often fail to bury. The first thing the Nigerian Red Cross has to do when a town falls back into government hands is clear the corpses, Aliyu Maikano, a Red Cross official, told Reuters. After the army recaptured Mubi in November, Maikano had to cover his nose to avoid the stench of rotting corpses. Those still alive "were starved for food, water, almost everything there. There's no drinking water because (in) most of the wells there you'll find dead bodies," Maikano said. Many residents looked tattered and malnourished, and some were unable to speak. "They are heartless. ISIS (Islamic State) is a kind of organised group, it's a business. These guys are not."
A former resident of Mubi said the rebels had renamed the town "Madinatul Islam" or "City of Islam". But when government spokesman Phineas Elisha walked into the Emir's palace after its recapture, everything had been looted, even the windows and doors. "Mubi was a ghost town ... Virtually all the shops were looted." he said. It took him hours to find a bottle of water. Sometimes the rebels simply loot the unprotected villages and hide out in bush camps, security sources say. Murna Philip, who escaped the occupied town of Michika five months ago, said a few dozen fighters had occupied an abattoir, a school and a lodge, but little else. To survive under their watch you have to pretend to support them, said Andrew Miyanda, who escaped the rebels last week, walking for days to the Benue River. "They would write Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'Awati Wal-Jihad (Boko Haram's full name) on their trouser legs in marker or the back of their shirts," he said. "You had to turn up your trousers with the marker on to show that you are a member." Buildings were torched and boys were abducted for "training", he said, a practice reminiscent of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Slowly, with the help of traditional hunters armed with home made guns and a reputation for magic powers, government forces have pushed Boko Haram out of some of its southern possessions. Morris Enoch, a leader of the hunters, says they found an arsenal of military weapons: rocket launchers, machine guns, dynamite, anti-aircraft guns and grenades. The rebels rarely leave behind much else.
Culled from Defence web
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- Ngwa Bertrand
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- Boko Haram
Boko Haram says it is building an Islamic state that will revive the glory days of northern Nigeria's medieval Muslim empires, but for those in its territory life is a litany of killings, kidnappings, hunger and economic collapse. The Islamist group's five-year-old campaign has become one of the deadliest in the world, with around 10,000 people killed last year, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Hundreds, mostly women and children, have been kidnapped. It remains the biggest threat to the stability of Africa's biggest economy ahead of a vote on Feb. 14 in which President Goodluck Jonathan is expected to win. But while it has matched Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in its brutality -- it beheads its enemies on camera -- it has seriously lagged in the more mundane business of state building. "The Islamic state is a figment of their imagination. They are just going into your house and saying they have taken over," said Phineas Elisha, government spokesman for Adamawa state, one of three states under emergency rule to fight the insurgency. Unlike its Middle East counterparts wooing locals with a semblance of administration, villagers trapped by Boko Haram face food shortages, slavery, killing and a lock down on economic activity, those who escaped say.
"(They) have no form of government," noted Elisha, who saw the devastation caused by Boko Haram after government forces recaptured the town of Mubi in November. Boko Haram's leaders talk about reviving one of the West African Islamic empires that for centuries prospered off the Saharan trade in slaves, ivory and gold, but they demonstrate little evidence of state building. In August a man saying he was Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau -- the military says it killed Shekau -- issued a video declaring a "Muslim territory" in Gwoza, by the Cameroon border. There were echoes of Islamic State's proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria two months earlier. Boko Haram controls an area just over 30,000 square km of territory, about the size of Belgium, according to a Reuters calculation based on security sources and government data. But while in Syria, after initially brutal takeovers, Islamic State has tried to win over communities; those who escaped Boko Haram say the rebels do little for them beyond forcing them to adopt their brand of Islam on pain of death. "They provide raw rice to cook, the rice that they stole from the shops. They provide a kettle and ... scarves to cover up the women," said Maryam Peter from Pambla village. "People are going hungry. They are only feeding on corn and squash. No meat, nothing like that. The insurgents are not providing anything else," she added.
Maryam said most daily interactions with the militants involved them questioning villagers on their movements and forbidding them from trying to escape -- a rule she managed to flout when she fled a week ago. A government-run camp in a former school is now her home, along with 1,000 others, where mothers cook on outdoor fires while children run around. Some 1.5 million people have been rendered homeless by the war, Oxfam says. And those the militants kill, they often fail to bury. The first thing the Nigerian Red Cross has to do when a town falls back into government hands is clear the corpses, Aliyu Maikano, a Red Cross official, told Reuters. After the army recaptured Mubi in November, Maikano had to cover his nose to avoid the stench of rotting corpses. Those still alive "were starved for food, water, almost everything there. There's no drinking water because (in) most of the wells there you'll find dead bodies," Maikano said. Many residents looked tattered and malnourished, and some were unable to speak. "They are heartless. ISIS (Islamic State) is a kind of organised group, it's a business. These guys are not."
A former resident of Mubi said the rebels had renamed the town "Madinatul Islam" or "City of Islam". But when government spokesman Phineas Elisha walked into the Emir's palace after its recapture, everything had been looted, even the windows and doors. "Mubi was a ghost town ... Virtually all the shops were looted." he said. It took him hours to find a bottle of water. Sometimes the rebels simply loot the unprotected villages and hide out in bush camps, security sources say. Murna Philip, who escaped the occupied town of Michika five months ago, said a few dozen fighters had occupied an abattoir, a school and a lodge, but little else. To survive under their watch you have to pretend to support them, said Andrew Miyanda, who escaped the rebels last week, walking for days to the Benue River. "They would write Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'Awati Wal-Jihad (Boko Haram's full name) on their trouser legs in marker or the back of their shirts," he said. "You had to turn up your trousers with the marker on to show that you are a member." Buildings were torched and boys were abducted for "training", he said, a practice reminiscent of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Slowly, with the help of traditional hunters armed with home made guns and a reputation for magic powers, government forces have pushed Boko Haram out of some of its southern possessions. Morris Enoch, a leader of the hunters, says they found an arsenal of military weapons: rocket launchers, machine guns, dynamite, anti-aircraft guns and grenades. The rebels rarely leave behind much else.
Culled from Defence web
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- Ngwa Bertrand
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- Boko Haram
Nigeria's campaign against Islamist Boko Haram insurgents is being hampered by "cowards" in its armed forces, its presidential security adviser said in a rare public sign of high-level unhappiness with the effort. Boko Haram's bloody uprising to carve out a breakaway Islamic caliphate has seized much of Nigeria's northeast and poses the worst threat to Africa's most populous state and biggest energy producer and at least three of its neighbours. Boko Haram claimed a Jan. 3 attack on the town of Baga that killed scores, possibly hundreds, of civilians and left the jihadists in control of the headquarters of a regional multinational force including troops from Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
But, he stressed, "there is no high-level conspiracy within the army not to end the insurgency." Dasuki denied the army was under-equipped, as critics have asserted, calling this an "excuse." He said of troops from Chad, Niger and Cameroon that were supposed to be stationed there at the time of the attack: "That wasn’t that much of a multinational task force, it was by name (only), because they were all supposed to be physically there," when in fact most were not.
BOKO HARAM LEADER "STILL IN CHARGE"
Dasuki added there was international pressure to set up a multinational task force with headquarters in the Chadian capital N'Djamena, but "Nigerians don’t see what the use is" of the regional force. Returning to the subject during his talk with journalists later, Dasuki said however genuine cooperation between the forces of all four nations was essential to defeat the insurgency. Dasuki said the leader of Boko Haram, a mysterious figure known as Abubakar Shekau whom the Nigerian army have repeatedly claimed to have killed, remained in control of the insurgent group.
A man purporting to be Shekau claimed responsibility in a new video on Tuesday for the attack on Baga. "We believe he is present at every major operation (of Boko Haram)," Dasuki said. Dasuki added Shekau had travelled "all over the world" to receive training from other Islamist extremist groups. He named Pakistan and Mali as training grounds for Shekau and other Boko Haram fighters. He said he estimated Boko Haram had about 5,000 active fighters.
(Reuters)
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# Paul Biya and his regime
Explore the political landscape of Cameroon under the rule of Paul Biya, the longest-serving president in Africa who has been in power since 1982. Our Paul Biya and his regime section examines the policies, actions, and controversies of his government, as well as the opposition movements, civil society groups, and international actors that challenge or support his leadership. You'll also find profiles, interviews, and opinions on the key figures and events that shape the political dynamics of Cameroon.
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.# Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia
Learn more about the history, culture, and politics of Ambazonia, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon that have been seeking self-determination and independence from the Francophone-dominated central government. Our Southern Cameroons section covers the ongoing conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the human rights violations, and the peace efforts in the region. You'll also find stories that highlight the rich and diverse heritage, traditions, and aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian people.
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