The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government (IG) Dabney Yerima sent a strong message late on Sunday to Ambazonia fighters in Ground Zero: Listen to your legitimate Ambazonia Interim Government or surrender to the French Cameroun enemy.

“I say to you all Ground Zero commanders and brave fighters: Listen to your Interim Government or surrender to the enemy. It is the hard choice you have to make now if we as a people must get to Buea,” Vice President Dabney Yerima said during a hard-hitting address to the Southern Cameroons exiled war cabinet meeting that held late on Sunday.

Dabney Yerima said the Department of Foreign Affairs has tried to establish unity to the divisive crisis that has rocked the Southern Cameroons front line leaders in the diaspora but blamed many of the groups for failing to respond to the overtures.

“As your Vice President, I have no other option but to turn to you fighters in Ground Zero and to inform you that our job in the diaspora now is to help in providing you with the support needed as our struggle is a war with only one outcome: Our victory and the recognition of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia,” Yerima said.

The war in Southern Cameroons has created a business empire for top military officers in Yaounde. About forty thousand Southern Cameroons civilians have lost their lives in this war. More than a million persons have fled to Nigeria and other countries as refugees, and millions have been made IDPs. More than 600 towns and villages and countless homes have been burnt down by French Cameroun troops. Hundreds of females have been raped (a good number deliberately infected with HIV and other STDs), scores of children killed in targeted killings, food and food crops and livestock destroyed to impose conditions of famine, water sources defiled and polluted to provoke a pestilence, and mass graves punctuate the landscape.

Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed in the Southern Cameroons by French Cameroun military which systematically continues to kill women, teenagers, and even babies, the elderly, the infirm. Presidents Emmanuel Macron, Paul Biya and Buhari bears direct responsibility for these heinous crimes.

The UN Security Council has so far failed to assume its responsibility under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations to deal with French Cameroun’s colonial war in the Southern Cameroons. In the circumstances, it is not inconceivable that the Southern Cameroons abandons the self-defence posture to which it has so far restrained itself, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. It may eventually go on the offensive and broaden its offensive posture by targeting economic and social infrastructure in French Cameroun that support that country’s war effort, in the same way social and economic infrastructure in the Southern Cameroons continues to be targeted by the French Cameroun army. The objective of this new offensive would be to bring it home to Macron and Biya that their fanciful claim that “l’Ambazonieestcamerounaise” (Ambazonia belongs to Cameroun) is a pipe dream and that pursuing it will be very painful for French Cameroun in 2022 in the same way as the French claim that “l’Algerieestfranaise” (Algeria belongs to France) was for France in 1962.  The people of the Southern Cameroons strongly reject any idea or suggestion, explicit or implicit, that the Southern Cameroons is an area under French influence given that the Southern Cameroons does not have and has never had any ties, colonial or otherwise, with France. 

By Isong Asu and Chi Prudence Asong