CI-NEWS

The Ordeals in Boyo.

2019-07-23

No: 437

The Ordeals in Boyo.

Thirty people trapped by separatist fighters in Belo Sub Division of the North West region of Cameroon regain freedom. Yuh Manigha R. reports:

Boyo Division has become one of the epicenters of the Anglophone crisis. The population in the division have suffered untold losses, both in terms of human life and material damages. On this score, the protagonists are engage in the blame game, while the population remain at their mercy.

According to one of the victims Solange Nih, she left Fundong in a 14-seater bus and was heading to Bamenda chief town of the North West Region. “When we reached Belo the amba boys (separatist fighters) just ordered us out of the bus alongside our driver, took us to their camp and we were there for close to a week” . She adds that while in the camp the number of victims was increasing by the day while they feared to ask questions from the stern-looking separatist fighters. “They asked us if we support what our children and brothers from the Abuh Camp have done but we did not know what they meant, we just answered ‘ No’” , added Solange.

The Horizon gathered that the camp in Belo waited to receive fighting materials from somewhere out of the country. The materials are said to have arrived in Boyo through a village known as Munjainjai-Ngwa in Fundong Sub Division and was being transported to Belo were diverted by another group of fighters from a village known as Abuh. Findings have also revealed that the thirty people were being detained as punishment for having children or brothers and sisters (separatist fighters in Abuh) who can impound war weapons destined to their fellow brothers (separatist fighters in Belo). Ground reports say after many failed attempts to get the weapons from Abuh, “soldiers” from the Belo camp laid siege to the Abuh camp at 3am of July 17 arresting the camp’s commander and many others some of whom were later freed in the Ijim forest as they were being ferried to Belo. At press time, the commander of the Abuh camp was still being questioned in the Belo camp. It is only after this action that the thirty people got their freedom.

The people of Boyo in general have had hard times travelling to Bamenda since tensions escalated in the two English-speaking regions in early 2017. They are sometimes bound to take the 67.2km distance from Fundong on foot if they have emergencies to carry out in Bamenda and are victimized by repeated ghost towns which forbid any economic activity or simple movement of persons from one town to the other.

Belo in Boyo and the crisis

Boyo Division is one of the areas whose reputed culture, traditions and myths have played a significant role in bringing Cameroon to the fore in the international scene. The famous story of the theft of AFO-AKOM (a carved wooden object that was stolen from the Kom palace and sold off to America but was later repatriated to Cameroon due to its mystery). The culture of the people does not allow for women to dig graves but because of the protracted crisis which has either caused the death of hundreds of young men and some of the elderly or forced them to quit the war-torn area, dead bodies are now at the mercy of women. Belo, the seat of the Kom deanery and the heart of the war in Boyo, has been abandoned to old people with a majority of them closer to inactivity. Local sources say the tensions escalated in Belo when the military was once blocked from transporting young people from Fundong to Bamenda and subsequently to the Yaounde Maximum security prison. In the course of confrontations between the angry youths and the military the service car of the Divisional Officer for Boyo was burnt and the military managed to get through to Bamenda though losing some of their weapons to the youths who had become radicalised. It is said that the military came back days later to retrieve their weapons. In the course of their search a boy identified as Samsoya who traded in Marijuana was killed. His elder brother we could only get as Amigo, president of the Drivers’ Union for Belo, set out for revenge and made a stronghold for fighters in Belo. During an operation carried out in November 16 2018 by the Cameroon military, 10 suspected separatist fighters were killed. Security sources say during the operation the kingpin of the Belo-based camp now “General Amigo” was killed. Local sources on the ground hold that this incident happened as a result of an insider set-up in which a person tipped the military during a funeral in Belo in order to facilitate the mass killing. General Amigo had been the main trouble of the military before this ‘liquidation’ expedition.

Boyo was initially very cool at the beginning of what started as a peaceful sit-down staged by Anglophone common law lawyers and later on the Anglophone teachers’ trade unions who made demands linked to what they considered the disrespect of the common law legal system and the assimilation of the English sub system of education. The 27-month-old crisis has brought education in the area to a standstill with many education establishments burnt and even heads of some of the schools briefly kidnapped. In 2018 the Principal of Saint Bedes College Ashing-Kom, Rev. Father Williams Neba, was abducted. In a press statement signed by the Communications Director of the Bamenda Archdiocese, Father Tatah Humphrey Mbuy, his colleague Rev.Willam Neba was kidnapped on the 30th of April 2018 in Belo by unidentified individuals. The statement further stated that the prelate was seized from the chapel while celebrating mass with his students. The Division has since the escalation witnessed severe economic pain with market avenues dysfunctional causing bold-hearted business persons to try on streets risking their lives to regular standoffs between the military and separatist fighters. The Mayor of Fundong, Denis Awoh Ndang, alongside that of Njinkom, Belo and Bum under the Boyo chapter of the United Councils and Cities of Cameroon, donated toiletries, mattresses, foodstuff as relief aid to close to a thousand of the registered Boyo internally displaced person who are struggling to survive in Cameroon’s political capital Yaounde.

It is hoped that when the pending dialogue preached by government starts, it will end with Boyo Division resolute to continue to play its role as the seat of Cameroon’s opposition, fertile ground for the Ndawara Tea Estate that battles to be one of the country’s biggest employers, tourist destination for those who love the Ijim Mountain forest; the only comfort zone for the Bannerman’s Turaco and the place for one of the country’s most famous antiquities (Afoa-kom).

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The Ordeals in Boyo.