By Sah Terence Animbom
With all roads leading to Donga Mantung Division in the North West Region blocked, travellers moving into the Division had to go through the West and Adamawa regions covering a distance of over 650 Kilo meters in about 15 hours at the cost of over FCFA 25,000.
This was not the only hurdle that elites from the area in the likes of Ngala Gerald of Jerry Sarl, Fuh Calistus Gentry of the CPDM, Awudu Mbaya of the SDF and others had to scale. Deadly threats from Ambazonia defense forces in the North West or South West regions made campaigning and voting in these regions an almost suicide mission.
However, the political elite resolved to get into online campaigns by making constant phone calls to their militants on the ground and sending them huge sums of money to convince voters to come out despite threats and vote on October 7, 2018. The online campaigns also became hampered as MTN and Orange networks as well as electricity in the entire division has been cut off for over three weeks now.
On the eve of Election Day, Ambazonian Restoration fighters attacked Ndu town in the division attempting to Kidnap the Divisional Officer and ELECAM officials so as to hinder voting. A military officer was killed during this attack after he had successfully shot to death four Amba boys and another military officer wounded on the neck. The D.O’s car was set ablaze but the election material remained safe. This attack had a huge negative impact on the elections the next day as the turnout was disastrous giving a less than 0.5 % rate of participation in the Sub Division.
In Nkambe, denizens of the town slept amidst a plethora of deafening smoking gunshots on the eve of the D-Day. Some three shops at the Nkambe market were set ablaze by unknown persons.
Being a strong political hub dominated by the CPDM since the 2013 legislative and municipal elections, some 2,543 voters came out to exercise their civic right despite the numerous threats and gunshots through the night.
Worthy of note is the fact that at the pooling centers spread across Nkambe a white pickup belonging to a certain mega enterprise whose names we are withholding ferried a good number of voters in different turns to the pooling centers.
Elections went on hitch-free in Nkambe though only a 10.04% rate of participation was recorded.
In Ako Sub Division, militants showcased a wonderful zeal for political participation as they recorded a participation rate of over 50 percent with close to 6,000 voters casting their votes.
Misaje Sub Division suffered serious threats and attacks at the Ndumbu polling center that almost took away the life of a military officer on guard at the station. This highly affected the voting process around there.
Nwa Sub division too registered a very low participation due to the many threats that sent the ELECAM officials there fleeing for their precious lives to unknown locations. Roads leading to the sub division were also blocked and elections materials were air lifted by a military chopper to Sabongari in Bui Devision.
The Nwa pooling centers were moved to Sabongari in Bui Division which highly hampered the voting process as voters could not risk paying high transportation fares to go and vote at a distance of over 30 kilometers.
Transportation to and from some polling stations in Nkambe was as high as FCFA 7,000FCFA per voter which caused most voters to damn the whole voting exercise. This explains why voters from Mbot area were highly absent.