By Atia Tilarious Azohnwi
Vote counting is underway after Sunday’s presidential vote. The polls were marked by deadly violence in the English-speaking North West and South West Regions. But the African Union and other observers give it a clean bill.
The capital of the South West Region, Buea, woke up to a ghost city, a day after the election. No movements were rare – only the vehicles of the security forces were patrolling the streets. This, however, has been caused by secessionists. Their aim is to show the French-dominated government in Yaoundé that it has no power over the English-speakers in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon. The previous day, the few who turned out to vote did so under massively tightened security.
At least two people in Bamenda, believed to be separatists, were shot dead by security forces, and gunshots were also exchanged in Buea. One election official was reportedly injured.
When Bernard Okalia Bilai, the governor of the South West region, came to vote at the Buea Appeal court, he was heavily guarded and escorted to the polling room. “We have heard that in some areas terrorists tried to intimidate the population, but defense forces reacted promptly,” Okalia said. “Terrorists” is how government describes the secessionists.
Separatists shunned the election
“We are no longer the same country. There may be people, who took part in the election for their president, but we have totally boycotted, and we have decided to restore the sovereignty of our state,” Samuel Sako Ikome, interim president for of the separatist movement, told DW, a German broadcaster.
On October 1, 2017, Anglophones in the Northwest and Southwest regions declared symbolic independence from the French-dominated government. Since then, the secessionists call the English-speaking region Ambazonia. For the elections, separatists say their aim was to disrupt the voting.
Local observers question vote credibility, AU gives it a clean bill
In some places in Buea and Bamenda, polling stations had no single person coming to vote despite calls from the authorities asking residents to go out and exercise their civic duty. An observer for the Center for Research on Democracy and Development in Africa questioned the vote. “I feel so frightened even though I have lived in this conflict area since it started,” he said. Today’s confrontation, he adds, was not a good one. In some areas, the unnamed observer said that the military paraded all over the place on voting day, frightening voters. “If you are asking voters to come and vote – you don’t move around with guns threatening them. No one is going to vote because no one wants to die.”
At the Parliamentarian Flats Hotel – one of the localities in Buea – only one-third of 363 registered voters voted, according to the election officer, who wanted to remain anonymous for his safety.
Many fear vote rigging and results fixing given the very low turnout. “People came to some centres without identification documents and they were allowed to vote because they are security officers,” another observer told The SUN after vote counting had finished in Buea.
Meanwhile, observers for the African Union have already declared that they were satisfied with the manner in which Cameroon’s presidential election was conducted. “We can agree that it went well and we are satisfied,” Kwesi Ahoomey-Zunu, head of the Observer Mission for the AU, was quoted in the press. Despite his satisfaction, his team was not dispatched to the troubled South West and North West because of the crisis.
The conflict affects all sides
While crisis has left the town of Buea crippled, residents insist that the military crackdown has been too hard. “Not everybody is part of the [secessionist] movement,” says a 29-year-old human rights researcher living in Buea. “But the impression of the military is that everyone, especially young men in this part of the country, is a secessionist.”
He explains how his two cousins were killed by military personnel. They had visited a village in an effort to ask people to come out of the forest and return to their homes. “I received a call from a friend who went to the town and discovered the corpses,” the researcher says. He himself hasn’t seen his direct family members in months. Many of them fled the towns and villages. “The people used to live here, but they’re now in forests. For the past six months I have not talked to my brothers. I have not spoken to any of my family members. I don’t know their whereabouts. I don’t know if there are still alive or dead.”
On The Election Day – a car transporting journalists was shot at by men believed to be separatists according to security sources. No one was injured. Journalist Leonard Kum says that he and his colleagues have been a target for both the separatists and the government army. “We are not so sure of how we are perceived either by the government or the separatists,” Kum said. “We receive frequent calls from both quarters to warn us on how we are reporting,” he added.
Kum, who also heads the Southwest Chapter of the Cameroon Journalists Trade Union, said the work of his fellow journalists was increasingly becoming almost impossible.
Another reporter said: “We are caught in the middle of the deep sea and a devil. We don’t know where to go, but we shall continue to do our job because without us, our people would be living in the dark.”
Buea DO ambushed, wounded
The convoy of the Divisional Officer for Buea, Kouam Wokam Paul was ambushed somewhere in Muea as he readied the stage for elections. His head was light bruised while his two right finders were wounded. After receiving medical attention, he could be spotted later with plastered fingers as he continued work.
The service car of Cameroon Tribune was also attacked by gunmen in Buea.