The government of Cameroon is planning to plant arms in villages in Manyu Division so as to win international sympathy and support following its claim that it was under attack by terrorists, a source at the country’s ministry of defense has advised, urging Southern Cameroonians to ensure the government’s plan was nipped in the bud.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said following a meeting that took place at the country’s presidency after Mr. Biya’s return to Yaounde from Abidjan where he had attended the AU-EU Summit, there had been other meetings at the defense ministry to refine the diabolic plan hatched by the ministry of defense whose staff are predominantly Beti.

Our source underscored that Mr. Biya’s government understood only one language – brutality – and it was faithful to the colonial script designed to maim and kill anybody who challenged its authority. He pointed to the brutality that was brought on the English-speaking population on October 1, 2017, following a declaration of independence by the country’s English-speaking minority.

The source said the prefectoral order signed by Manyu Division’s Senior Divisional Officer on December 1, 2017, urging citizens of some 15 villages in the region to relocate to unknown destinationswas simply a ploy to ensure that no civilian actually saw how the government was implementing its diabolic plan.

He stressed that the objective was also to escalate things and blame everything on the Ambazonian interim government, led by Mr. Ayuk Julius Tabe. He said some 3,000 troops were currently on their way to Manyu Division to implement a plan that would result in the arrest and torture of thousands of people of Manyu descent. It is worth mentioning that the Interim leader is from Manyu Division which also happens to be the birthplace of Anglophone activism.

It should be recalled that over 100 Southern Cameroonians were killed on October 1, with some 50,000 fleeing to Nigeria where they are currently living as refugees. The government of Cameroon has never thought of how to repatriate these civilians back to their villages. 90% of the refugees are of Manyu descent and many still complain of the ferocious brutality that followed the declaration of independence on October 1. Though their living conditions are not the best, they however feel grateful to the Nigerian government which is doing its best to alleviate their physical and psychological pain.

It must also be recalled that the Southern Cameroons crisis started some 13 months ago when teachers and lawyers called for improved working conditions and the preservation of the Anglo-Saxon culture. Their appeal fell on deaf ears and the government’s response shocked the world, as lawyers were beaten on the streets of Buea while students of the University of Buea were made to drink raw sewage.

Images of this brutality caused the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora to join the struggle, calling for school and court boycotts, as well as ghost towns to hurt the government. With the economy struggling, the Yaounde government is feeling the pinch as its tax base has been eroded. This helps to explain why the ailing and aging government has been to all multilateral development institutions for loans that will help it restore the economy’s health.

Currently, it is working out details for a USD 3 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF); a loan that will be costly and will require another development finance institution to serve as a guarantor. The government’s loan default rate has made it less credit-worthy; a situation that makes it hard for it to get sovereign loans at low interest rates.

The government response to demands by the English-speaking minority was also marked by the shutting down of the Internet for close to 100 days, a situation that stalled trade between the English-speaking part of the country and East Cameroon. It also wiped out Silicon Mountain, a start-up hub in the South West regional headquarters of Buea that employed hundreds of young computer-savvy graduates.

Despite calls by the international community for a peaceful resolution of the crisis through genuine and sincere dialogue, the government has continued to pursue its fruitless policies that have only made the situation worse. Last week, opposition Members of Parliament had to disrupt deliberations in a protest against the government’s refusal to include the Southern Cameroons crisis in the Parliament’s agenda for the current legislative period. They also robbed the country’s Prime Minister of an opportunity to deliver the government’s budget speech as they sang and blew whistles while the Prime Minister was reading his speech.

It should be recalled that Cameroon’s crisis has the potential to destabilize the entire sub-region if the international community does not step in to preempt the genocide the government has been planning for months. With Mr. Biya’s declining health and mind, those around him are struggling to take over and this is pushing him into taking wrong decisions that are only causing the crisis to escalate.

The world could be inching close to another Liberia or Zimbabwe if it does not act in time. Only a prompt reaction will spare this region a huge crisis that will be characterized by huge floods of refugees. With Boko Haram destabilizing the country in the North, Central African Republic rebels using the Eastern part of the country to stage their attacks on the Bangui government and the Southern Cameroons crisis taking a turn for the worse, Cameroon is clearly facing a bleak future. The world must stop looking the other way while the country continues its descent to the bottom of the abyss.

By Kingley Betek in Agborkem German