Cameroon is moving slowly but surely into the abyss of civil war with troops loyal to the Biya Francophone regime attacking leaders and militants of the opposition over the October 7 controversial presidential election.

The Sub Saharan nation is already in a civil war situation, according to the leader of the MRC party, Prof Maurice Kamto who reportedly won the disputed polls. The Kamto Campaign observed that more than 4000 Southern Cameroonians have been killed and approximately 2,000 wounded by gunfire since the crisis in the English speaking regions started three years ago.

With the political crisis apparently set to deepen following a Constitutional Council decision to throw out Kamto Campaign’s application for recusal, the US government recently sounded a note of caution to the 35 year old Biya regime, urging the electoral commission to respect the will of the Cameroonian people. The United States called upon Cameroon election body to urgently release election results to avoid suspicion of cooking the outcome.

Cameroon held elections on the of 7th October, but up until 17^th of October, the Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) was yet to finalise announcement of election outcome raising great suspicion President Paul Biya’s governing Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) were working with the election body to cook the election results.

The 85 year old dictator came to power in 1982 and is defying pressure to step down. Members of his ruling tribal political structure have warned Prof Maurice Kamto the internationally recognised election winner, and his supporters to leave the nation’s capital Yaounde.

The regime in Yaounde has placed Kamto in some form of house arrest and the man widely believed to have won the October 7 polls was recently prevented from holding a press conference and many members of his campaign have been arrested on widely discredited claims that he declared himself winner.

The UN secretary general, Antonio Gutteres has been maintaining a kind of deliberate silence on the happenings in Cameroon.  With the genocide currently going on in Southern Cameroons, there are fears that any attack on citizens from the Bamilekes extraction who are massively behind Kamto could provoke widespread violence that could reignite civil war.

Cameroon government spies are currently standing outside Prof. Kamto’s residence and at his political headquarters disguised as news reporters or motorcycle taxi drivers. The Biya spies have been following everyone in the Kamto coalition in Douala, Yaounde and Bafoussam.

There are widespread complaints of police disrupting or shutting down meetings involving the Maurice Kamto Campaign. Recently, Senior Divisional Officers have started demanding that press conferences and political meetings should be banned. The UN was yet to comment on the disputed vote. By some strange happenstance,

World leaders have also turned a blind eye on the atrocities being committed by Francophone soldiers loyal to the regime in Yaoundé.  The UN representatives and the International Crisis Group in the Sub Saharan region have voiced alarm that hundreds of Southern Cameroonians have been rounded up, with some being held incommunicado and facing the risk of torture. The UN has also been denied access to the Southern Cameroons territory.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai