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After Biya, Niat and Atangana: Cavaye Djibril heading to Europe for treatment

After Biya, Niat and Atangana: Cavaye Djibril heading to Europe for treatment

After Marcel Niat Njifenji, the Senate President and Paul Biya, the country’s president, it seems Cavaye Djibril, the House Speaker is also heading to Europe for treatment.

The National Assembly Speaker has been drinking and smoking for decades, and his recklessness has caught with him, delivering health issues which are now threatening to send him to his ancestors.

It seems all senior government officials of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime are down with terrible illnesses.

Even Atangana Clément, the Constitutional Council President, is also very ill. Cavaye Djibril is supposed to inform Atangana Clément of a vacancy as Biya has been out of the country for more than 40 days and none of them is healthy to do their job.

Cameroon is the only country in the world where all its leaders are very old and sick but none is willing to leave power.

Currently, the country’s president, Paul Biya, is in Geneva receiving treatment for multiple illnesses and Niat, the Senate President, is in France following a long and unknown health problem.

The country’s economy is as ill as its leaders and many young Cameroonians are looking outwards for opportunities as their economy goes through serious issues.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Biya’s Health: Air Ambulance lands in Yaoundé

Biya’s Health: Air Ambulance lands in Yaoundé

A source has informed Cameroon Intelligence Report that a Luxembourg Air Ambulance, a Bombadier Challenger 605, departed on October 16, 2024 from Paris Le Bourget Airport (LBG) at exactly 12:17pm and landed in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s political capital at 5:23pm.

The source however added that it was unclear who was onboard the Air Ambulance. Other sources have just intimated that the air ambulance might be in Yaoundé to pick up another sick person as most of Cameroon’s political leaders are very sick and senile.

A source close to the national assembly has said that the Speaker, Cavaye Djibril, is also sick and might be the person the Air Ambulance will be taking to France.

The source added that the Air Ambulance took off from Paris and not from Geneva.

This is a developing story and Cameroon Concord News Group has informed its correspondents in Cameroon to work their sources for things to become clearer by tomorrow morning.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Biya’s imaginary return to Yaoundé has not occurred

Biya’s imaginary return to Yaoundé has not occurred

The expected return of Cameroon’s president Paul Biya to Yaoundé has not occurred. Financial markets are reacting to growing concerns about his health, while several key government figures have been called to Geneva.

What happened on 13 October? In Yaoundé, Cameroon, while supporters of the Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounais (RDPC, the ruling party) and members of youth organisations had been discreetly mobilised to welcome President Paul Biya at the airport, the arrangements were scrapped a few hours later, with the same discretion. And with good reason: the Cameroonian president did not return to the country and is still in Europe. But where?

Imaginary homecoming

No announcement has been made about Biya’s aborted return or the reasons. But this latest development has heightened doubts about the president’s condition, after September and October saw him cancel his participation in the United Nations General Assembly, the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF) summit and the meeting on sustainable development in Hamburg, Germany.

Faced with rumours of the president’s death spread by a television channel close to the Ambazonian separatists and widely reported on social networks, the Cameroonian presidency and government were forced to make a public statement on 8 October, explaining that the head of state was continuing his stay in Switzerland, was in perfect health and would return to Cameroon “in the very near future”. That was a week ago.

“The head of state had never planned to return this Sunday [13 October],” said a source close to the presidency, who confirmed that no members of the presidential guard or the presidential security directorate responsible for accompanying the head of state on his travels had been mobilised for this trip. According to our sources, airport authorities were not alerted to any movement of CM-001, the code reserved for President Biya.

Budgetary emergencies

As a result, public suspicions have returned with a vengeance. According to one of the most persistent rumours, Biya has been hospitalised for at least two weeks in an ultra-secure VIP wing of the Percy military hospital in Clamart, near Paris. Cameroon’s ambassador to France, André Magnus Ekoumou, denied this to Jeune Afrique. “Paul Biya has never been hospitalised in Paris or anywhere else. He is in Geneva and in good health,” he said.

Then the influential territorial administration minister Paul Atanga Nji provoked more tension by declaring a ban on debates about the president’s condition in the Cameroonian media. In the same vein, land and property minister Henri Eyebe Ayissi announced that he would organise a day of prayer for Biya at Yaoundé’s Palais des Sports on 17 October. This was subsequently cancelled on the orders of Biya’s private office, led by Samuel Mvondo Ayolo.

These initiatives have annoyed some members of the presidential entourage, since they contribute to the climate of mistrust surrounding their boss. On 13 October, Finance Minister Louis-Paul Motaze, who is also expected in Brussels in the next few days, and Senate Vice-President Aboubakary Abdoulaye were summoned to Geneva. On 14 October, they were joined by Senate President Marcel Niat Njifenji, who had just been discharged from the American Hospital in Paris, accompanied by a delegation of three officials from the upper house.

According to our sources, these summonses correspond to a working meeting officially organised to draw up the budget, which was due to be signed by the president in early August. To make up for the delay, it must be finalised before the plenary session of the National Assembly and Senate, scheduled for November. For his part, Njifenji will have to work with his Senate colleagues from Geneva to manage some of the tensions that are threatening the upper house with implosion.

The uncertainty surrounding the drafting of the state budget is also worrying international agencies. Uncertainty about Biya’s health is affecting Cameroon’s ability to borrow as well as increasing the perceived risk of political instability.

With foreign debt repayments imminent and economic operators awaiting clarification, it looks as though the head of state preferred organising the summit meeting in Switzerland over not holding it at all. To date, Biya has no concrete plans to return to Yaoundé.

Culled from The Africa Report

Niger renames its historic places to sever ties with French colonial past

Niger renames its historic places to sever ties with French colonial past

Niger bid goodbye to the Avenue Charles de Gaulle on Tuesday as its ruling junta renamed several historic sites in the capital Niamey which previously bore references to old colonial master France.

Since taking power in a coup in July 2023, the Sahel nation’s military rulers have turned their backs on Paris, instead forging ties with fellow juntas in Burkina Faso and Mali – as well as Russia.

With the sound of marching bands blaring in the background, several junta officials took to the streets to witness the new names’ inauguration.

“Most of our avenues, boulevards and streets… bear names that are simply reminders of the suffering and bullying our people endured during the ordeal of colonisation,” said Major Colonel Abdramane Amadou, Minister for Youth and a junta spokesman.

“The avenue which once bore the name of General Charles de Gaulle is henceforth christened ‘Avenue Djibo Bakary’,” Amadou added.

A socialist politician who died in 1998, Bakary was a key figure in the struggle for Niger’s independence, which it obtained in 1960.

A few hundred metres further on, the memorial to those who died in the two world wars now pays “homage to all civilian and military victims of colonisation to the present day”.

With the ruling junta frequently accusing France of wishing to topple it, the renaming of monuments and streets marks a symbolic confirmation of Niger’s break with its former imperial ruler.

Since the coup, Niger’s authorities have expelled both the French soldiers fighting against the region’s persistent jihadist threat and the French ambassador, while the Franco-Nigerien cultural centre is no longer run as a joint venture and has been renamed after Niger’s filmmaker Moustapha Alassane.

‘Honour our ancestors’

Other monuments across Niamey will bear new names from Tuesday onwards.

A portrait of French commander and explorer Parfait-Louis Monteil, engraved for decades in stone, was replaced by a plaque bearing the effigy of neighbouring Burkina Faso’s iconic communist leader Thomas Sankara.

An anti-imperialist hero nicknamed Africa’s Che Guevara, Sankara was killed in a 1987 coup his widow and supporters accuse France of having a hand in organising.

Amadou hailed Sankara as a man whose “struggle for liberation” and “emancipation of peoples” was “still inspiring people” today.

Meanwhile the Place de Francophonie was renamed after the Alliance of Sahel States – a confederation created with Mali and Burkina Faso in 2023, cementing relations between the coup-hit countries.

All three had their membership suspended to the 88-state International Organisation of La Francophonie in the wake of their coups.

From now on “we are going to honour our ancestors”, vowed General Assoumane Abdou Harouna, the capital region’s governor and a junta figure.

Oumarou Abdourahamane, president of the Niger branch of the NGO Urgences Panafricanistes, welcomed the new names.

“It makes no sense for our streets to continue to bear the names of former colonists… and so justice is being done by renaming these streets, by naming them after our country’s heroes,” he said.

Urgences Panafricanistes is headed at the international level by activist Kemi Seba, known for his virulent anti-Western views, who was arrested on Monday in Paris for as-yet unknown reasons.

Seba, who was born in France to Beninese parents, holds a Nigerien diplomatic passport as special adviser to junta leader Abdourahamane Tiani.

The controversial militant, who was recently stripped of his French nationality, is a radical black power activist who is regularly accused of anti-Semitism and has been sentenced in France several times for incitement to racial hatred.

In June 2023, shortly before the coup that toppled elected president Mohamed Bazoum, Niger also adopted a new national anthem titled “For the honour of the fatherland”, which references the anti-colonial struggle.

It replaced “La Nigerienne”, whose lyrics were written by French composer Maurice Albert Thiriet in 1961, a year after the country gained its independence.

Source: AFP

Biya’s Health: The power struggle is building up in Yaoundé!

Biya’s Health: The power struggle is building up in Yaoundé!

It is becoming obvious that Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, will no longer rule the country as his health takes a turn for the worse.

While Mr. Biya is fighting for his life, there is a huge battle brewing in Yaoundé as different factions seek to take control of things. The king is dying but the princes are more interested in his succession.

In the event that President Biya gives up the ghost in the days ahead, his constitutional successor, Niat Njifenji Marcel, is supposed to step in to run the interim, but he too is very ill and it is being reported that he is in a deep coma. Mr. Niat has been out of the country for almost three months and it is gradually emerging that he is not responding to treatment. 

In such a situation, a vacancy can be declared at the Senate and Aboubakary Aboubakar, the 63-year-old Senate Vice President, will take the reins of power and run the country for at most 120 days.

The Lamido of Rey-Bouba was invited last week to Geneva where Mr. Biya is battling for his life and was asked to resign. The ruling mafia does not want him to run the transition period. He was not allowed to see the President. He left Switzerland disappointed and devastated.

Aboubakary has no plan to resign and is not in a rush to yield to any pressure and he is sticking to his guns. The ruling mafia does not want a northerner to be anywhere close to power and there are fears that if Mr. Aboubakary runs the show, he will deploy a game strategy that will not sit well with Chantal Biya and Ngoh Ngoh. The battle lines have been drawn and the pressure is mounting.

Meanwhile, the country’s finance minister, Louis-Paul Motaze, who was called to Geneva was refused access to the ailing 91-year-old Biya. Mrs. Biya who is now restricting access to the dying President rejected Motaze’s request to see his boss.

There is a lot of political drama playing out in Geneva and Yaoundé and the French are principal architects in the break dance. Nicolas Sarkozy, a former French President,  is reported to be rooting for Franck Biya and he is insisting that power be handed to the young Biya who has no place in the country’s constitution.

Several regime insiders are against Franck Biya though not many of them have the courage to openly express their minds.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands the ruling CPDM is quietly planning an extraordinary congress for the end of this year. Though not many party stalwarts are talking about it, the plan is for members to choose another candidate for the 2025 Presidential Election, given that the party’s natural candidate, Paul Biya, is caught up in another battle that he might not win.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Yaoundé to pay CFA6.5bn to residents affected by Chad Power Line Project

Yaoundé to pay CFA6.5bn to residents affected by Chad Power Line Project

Cameroon is preparing to compensate residents affected by the Cameroon-Chad Power Interconnection Project (Pirect). In the coming days, ten people in Batschenga, located in the Central region, will receive around CFA65 million for properties that will be destroyed during the project. In total, the government has allocated about CFA6.5 billion to compensate all residents impacted along the power line route, according to official sources.

These details were shared on October 14, 2024, during a workshop in Yaoundé that marked the official launch of the Pirect project. The workshop focused on the additional financing provided by the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB). Among the goals of the meeting was to outline IsDB’s financial procedures, including how funds will be disbursed electronically.

With a contribution of CFA80.5 billion from IsDB, the funds will be used for several key elements. These include constructing four new power substations, supporting projects for women and youth in the areas affected by the project, creating a technical library for power transmission, and building 566 km of transmission lines to the Chad border. It will also provide electricity to 409 communities along the route, according to Sonatrel, the company leading the project.

In addition to IsDB, several international partners are helping fund the project, which is expected to cost CFA557.5 billion in total. The World Bank, African Development Bank (CFA169.2 billion), and the European Union (CFA19.7 billion) are all involved. Set for completion in 2027, the project will turn Cameroon into Central Africa’s top electricity exporter, supplying Chad with 100 MW of power from the Nachtigal Dam, which has a capacity of 420 MW.

Source: Business in Cameroon

CPDM Crime Syndicate: Camtel, Orange, MTN invest CFA185bn in 2023, but service quality remains poor

CPDM Crime Syndicate: Camtel, Orange, MTN invest CFA185bn in 2023, but service quality remains poor

In 2023, Camtel, Orange, and MTN Cameroon invested a total of CFA185 billion to improve their networks. Despite this massive investment, service quality has continued to decline, frustrating many consumers. These figures were revealed on October 11 by Minette Libom Li Likeng, Cameroon’s Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, during a press briefing following her visit to the operators’ facilities. Camtel, the state-owned telecom company, led the investment with CFA117 billion, followed by Orange with CFA38 billion and MTN with CFA30 billion. 

The amount invested in 2023 exceeded the CFA156 billion the operators had initially forecast in December 2022. Despite the larger-than-expected investments, consumers have reported worsening issues, including frequent network interruptions, slow internet, dropped calls, and poor voice quality. “Recently, complaints about service quality have increased. People are facing frequent network outages, slow internet, and bad call quality,” said Minister Libom Li Likeng during the press conference. 

When asked about the reasons for these ongoing problems, the operators and regulators pointed to both internal and external factors. As external issues, they cited power outages, fuel shortages, and repeated disruptions to the fiber optic network managed by Camtel. Internally, delays in expanding fiber connections, insufficient investment in critical areas, poor maintenance of infrastructure, slow response to customer complaints, and overloaded urban networks were highlighted. 

In response, Minister Libom Li Likeng has laid out a series of measures to help improve the telecom sector. She emphasized that quality service in telecommunications is essential for consumer satisfaction and the growth of the digital economy in Cameroon. The minister instructed regulators to enforce stricter compliance with operator contracts, improve collaboration between operators and regulators, upgrade consumer complaint management systems, and better monitor the operators’ infrastructure. 

For Orange and MTN, the government recommended increasing investments in priority areas, targeting key regions with strategic equipment, optimizing the use of the dark fiber provided by Camtel, improving customer service, and enhancing real-time monitoring of network sites. Educating customers on how to use available services was also advised. 

Despite Camtel’s heavy investments CFA117 billion in 2023 and a planned CFA109 billion for 2024 the results have been disappointing. The company has struggled with network expansion and ongoing service quality problems, prompting questions about the effectiveness of its investments. The minister urged Camtel to meet its contractual obligations, protect its infrastructure with physical surveillance mechanisms, offer transparent pricing, and expand its international connectivity options.

Source: Business in Cameroon

Manchester United: Alex Ferguson to leave ambassador role as club cuts costs

Manchester United: Alex Ferguson to leave ambassador role as club cuts costs

Alex Ferguson is leaving his reported £2 million-a-year ($2.6m) ambassador role with Manchester United at the end of the season as part of a cost-cutting exercise.

The former United manager, 82, won 13 Premier League titles and two Champions League crowns among a huge trophy haul during nearly 27 years at Old Trafford.

The Athletic reported that the decision had been made amicably, with Ferguson stepping down from the global ambassador role when the season ends.

Ferguson, a regular at matches since he stepped down in 2013, will remain a non-executive director of the football club board.

It comes as part of a wider cost-cutting exercise at United under INEOS, which has had responsibility for football operations at the club since its founder Jim Ratcliffe completed the purchase of a minority stake earlier this year.

Last month United posted losses of £113.2 million ($148 million) for the year ending June 30, 2024 — their fifth straight years of losses.

But the club said they are compliant with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules.

United have instigated a number of cost-saving measures, including a redundancy programme that cut about 250 jobs.

They are currently 14th in the Premier League after a poor start to the season, with manager Erik ten Hag under intense pressure ahead of Saturday’s game against Brentford.

Source: AFP

Brussels Airlines: Daheru Mamman is new Cameroon Station Manager

Brussels Airlines: Daheru Mamman is new Cameroon Station Manager

Brussels Airlines recently welcomed Daheru Mamman as the new station manager for Cameroon, effective October 1. With more than 22 years of experience in the aviation industry, Mamman is not new to the airline. He previously served as the station manager at Nsimalen International Airport in Yaoundé, where he developed a strong reputation for excellent service.

Expressing his excitement about the new role, Mamman said, “I am honored to take on this opportunity with Brussels Airlines. I look forward to working with our dedicated teams to provide exceptional service and ensure smooth operations while prioritizing the safety and comfort of our passengers.” His passion for the job and commitment to customer satisfaction shines through in his words.

In this new position, Mamman will oversee daily operations at both Nsimalen and Douala airports. He will manage the staff and introduce initiatives aimed at boosting efficiency and enhancing the overall customer experience. He is also dedicated to creating a collaborative workplace that encourages innovation and teamwork, believing that a united team can achieve great things.

Younes Louahrani, the managing director of Brussels Airlines in Cameroon, shared his enthusiasm for Mamman’s appointment, stating, “We are thrilled to welcome Daheru Mamman as our new station manager in Cameroon. With his leadership and experience, we are confident that we will continue to enhance our service offerings and strengthen our position as a leading airline in Cameroon.”

Brussels Airlines, a proud member of the Lufthansa Group, operates daily flights that connect Cameroon to various destinations in Europe, North America, Canada, and beyond. However, passengers should be aware that starting in 2025, the airline plans to implement an environmental surcharge on its fares. This surcharge, ranging from €1 to €72 per flight, will be applied to all flights departing from European airports, including those bound for Cameroon.

Source: Business in Cameroon

Yaoundé: Mad rush for visas triggered by fear of Biya’s death!

Yaoundé: Mad rush for visas triggered by fear of Biya’s death!

There is a mad rush for visas as news of President Paul Biya’s death is becoming more certain. Yesterday, the lion man who thought he owned the world sank into a deeper coma, causing panic among his family members.

Despite assurances from the 91-year-old dictator’s ministers that the president is hale and hearty and is working remotely, many people who have benefitted from the chaos and corruption which have characterized the dictator’s time in power are applying for visas just in case violence erupts after his death.

“Many government officials who do not hold foreign passports are rushing to embassies to secure visas for themselves and their families. They are aware that the clouds are gathering and a massive storm may be headed to Cameroon,” a source in Yaoundé who saw ministers heading to the French embassy told Cameroon Concord News.

“We know that things are really bad in the country and the spectrum of anger encompasses a wide range of emotions that tells every reasonable person that revenge may be in the menu. Cameroonians are angry and years of frustration could trigger extreme violence if news of Mr. Biya’s death gets confirmed,” the source said.

“There is panic within government circles and even ordinary people are making alternative arrangements just in case Cameroon goes down such a slippery slope. Life is very challenging these days and escalating living costs are hurting many Cameroonians who cannot even make ends meet” our source added.

“We are in trouble. 42 years of misrule could create massive chaos in our country. We are praying for a smooth transition and Cameroonians should learn to forgive. We can fix our country and move on peacefully. We should not let anger destroy whatever we have built together,” the source added.

By Rita Akana in Yaoundé

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