Paul Biya’s War on Ambazonia; Chiefs Remain in Hideouts Despite Asking Villagers to Come Out

Paul Biya’s War on Ambazonia; Chiefs Remain in Hideouts Despite Asking Villagers to Come Out

As Paul Biya’s War on Ambazonia proceeds, a handful of Chiefs across Meme County, Southern zone, who surfaced at the colonial SDO’s office on April 4, accepting to cause their subjects to leave the forests for their homes, have continued to live in their various hideouts.

The colonial SDO, Chamberlain Ntou’ou Ndong, convenor of the meeting, had asked the chiefs to return to their respective villages and convince villagers to return home too, for life to return to normalcy. The colonialist is qouted as having urged the chiefs to use their powers to reverse the trend of villagers escaping into the forests. Besides, they were also charged with submitting to colonial hierarchy, exhaustive lists of houses destroyed by colonial terrorist forces, alongside the names of their corresponding owners.

The meeting, during which the chiefs pledge to cause the return of the the villagers, was the first opportunity for the chiefs across Meme to gather in one place after a long while. Amid the conflict, chiefs have feared detention by separatist armed groups. This has caused them to seek their individual refuge in different areas across Ambazonia.

In a smart move, the Meme chiefs convened a meeting on April 5, a day after the colonial SDO’s meeting. This permitted them to conduct swift elections transferring power from Nfon Mukete to Chief Rudolf Duala Itoe.

Warning messages from restoration forces, and the assassination of their pro Ambazonia colleague, Chief Johnnes Ekabe Niongo, of Nongo Bakundu on January 12, by colonial agents had sent frisson through the spines of the Chiefs. Caught in the middle , the Chiefs felt threatened. None of them participated in the burial of their colleague.

Every Chief is said to have taken personal security measures, some escaped out of the County. A couple of them have become refugees in Kumba and their traditional symbols have since disappeared from their dress code.

Difficult Task

Observers had since the meeting indicated that, tasking the depressed Chiefs to bring out their people from the bushes was a prodigious task. For one thing, some of the Chiefs indicated how challenging it is to the colonial administration. They described the burning of villages across by colonialists across the county as a sacrilege.

Three weeks after the meeting with the colonial administrator, a meeting which purportedly raised hopes of efforts towards ending the humanitarian crisis due to the rampaging activities of colonial terrorist forces, the Chiefs are yet to show the colonial administration what they have done in terms of executing the assignment of bringing back the villagers to their burned down villages. From every indication, the Chiefs have remained in their refuge hideouts as the villagers also remain in the forests.

Originally written by Maxcel Fokwen for the Post Newspaper, and adapted for BaretaNews by James Agbor, BaretaNews Political Analyst.