BY CYNTHIA BIH
As the Anglophone crisis, which has metamorphosed into an armed conflict rages on, the government of the Republic of Cameroon, through its military is currently targeting innocent Anglophones, and activists.
The government has consequently launched a manhunt for them for siding with Separatists.
As a consequence, more and more Anglophone activists are going underground as they have been declared wanted by the military. Search and arrest warrants for their apprehension all over the national territory have been established.
The alleged activists both home and abroad have been considered as dangerous and threats to the public. The population has equally been urged to be vigilant and report to the closest gendarmerie or police stations. Those who have successfully escaped to countries where the respect of human rights is prime for protection, their names are still in the military database pending arrest and prosecution.
The innocent alleged activists include Nji Alfred Ndifor, Eko Olivechance Liyengu, Mbone Akanji Martin, Mbanwei John, and Charlette Nkwa Mbiaya.
As we went to press, we gathered that the entire population of Limbe, is still to come to terms with the fate of one of their illustrious daughters, 30-year-old Eko Olivechance Liyengu, whose whereabouts remains cloudy since June 2025. Reports say like many other youths who have disappeared amidst the armed conflict raging on the restive North West and South West Regions, hers is more of political witch-hunting.
Family sources say Liyengu, a Human Rights activist with particular interest on Child Protection Rights, was arrested by the military on May 17, 2025 while returning from sharing with children of some communities in Limbe considered as separatist zones, her knowledge she gathered from the 5th Global Conference on Children and Youth which took place from the 27-29 of March 2025 in Oxford UK where she presented a paper on “The Impact of Parent-Child Relationship on the psychosocial well-being of Adolescents in Limbe, Cameroon”.
THE SUN gathered that Eko Olivechance Liyengu, a regular participant on radio debate programmes, critic of the regime and Columnist, was arrested on grounds that she is siding with separatists. She was accused of returning from separatist zones where she must have exchanged information with them, thus concluding that she is aiding and abetting terrorism in Cameroon.
Despite the fact the Eko struggled to explain, eyewitnesses disclosed that she was bundled into the military truck and whisked to their camp in Man O’ Bay and later to Buea. In Buea, she was further accused of going to the UK to collect aids for separatist and tarnishing the image of the Cameroon government through her presentation, judging from her published abstracts with Proud Pen.
Family sources hinted that Eko Olivechance Liyengu was released on the fifth day and reminded that her case file will be sent to the military prosecutor for prosecution, and to report at the military prosecutor office once a week. Despite battling with health issues following the injuries sustained while in military detention, Eko Olivechance went underground and later escape for safety when she received a distress call from her husband while at a pharmacy to purchase drugs that the military came looking for her in the house.
It should be recalled that this is not the first time Eko Olivechance Liyengu has been arrested, tortured, molested, and detained in very cruel, harsh and degrading inhumane detention conditions by the military. In 2016, as one of the youth coordinators of the Cameroon People’s Party, CPP, of Edith Kahbang Walla for the North West and South West Region, she was arrested alongside other members of the party at the sidelines of a planning meeting at Buitingui Community Hall. They are said to have been planning to go and join their party leader’s peaceful protest in Yaoundé against the marginalisation of Anglophones. The outspoken critic of the Yaoundé regime was later on arrested, molested, tortured and detained in very degrading conditions on April 15, 2019 during a military raid in Buea. She was arrested for instigating violence in Cameroon through her newspaper articles, radio talk shows and for siding with separatists.
Despite the fact that her whereabouts remains cloudy, the military still keeps making impromptu patrol to their neighbourhood just to apprehend her after locking up her husband to produce her without which he won’t be released.
Government forces have engaged in extrajudicial killings, random looting, shooting, torture, molestation using disproportionate and indiscriminate force, abusing and arresting protesters, burning more than 200 villages, 500 houses, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, attacking hospitals, beating and raping women and girls.
The Anglophone crisis began 2016 with Common Law lawyers and teachers strikes, which later attracted the people of the two English-speaking regions of the country, as they said their accumulated grievances emanated from marginalisation by the majority French-speaking part of Cameroon, inequality in employment, adulterations of the judicial and sub educational systems.