BY ALICE NJI
Reports from across the North West and South West Regions say many youths and family members are currently on the run as they have been declared wanted by the regime for allegedly siding and collaborating with separatists and other pressure groups, due to their frank talk about the ongoing crisis.
Consequently, witch-hunting and fear of the unknown have made them go underground for fear of reprisals. Families are bearing the brunt of the unending crisis which has morphed into an armed conflict since 2017. They are either kidnapped by separatist fighters for ransom for siding with the military on one hand or are arrested tortured, molested and even killed by the military on grounds that they are siding, collaborating and sponsoring separatist fighters.
In the face of all these, the military and other security operatives have established both search and arrests warrants for the apprehension of many alleged Anglophone activists and separatist fighters all over the national territory as the ongoing armed conflict that started about nine years rages on. The population has equally been urged to be vigilant and report to the closest gendarmerie or police stations.
As we went to press, we gathered that the entire population of Mamfe, Manyu Division, South West Region is still to come to terms with the unfortunate incidents happening to the family of Oben Milford Ayuk. Family sources said since Oben Milford Ayuk miraculously escaped to an unknown destination during a military ambush by separatist fighters while him and other detainees were being ferried by the military to the Yaounde Kondengui maximum prison in December 13, 2024, the military has launched a fresh pursuit for his arrest and subsequent prosecution.
According to his uncle, whose names we are withholding for security reasons, 25-year-old Oben Milford Ayuk remains a target of the military as soldiers keep making impromptu checks at his residence demanding his whereabouts as he has been declared wanted. The uncle disclosed that the military has accused Oben Milford Ayuk of fueling the ongoing crisis rocking the North West and South West Regions by providing financial support and information to separatists. Oben Milford’s uncle hinted THE SUN that, the military, in one of the impromptu checks at Oben Milford Ayuk’s mother’s residence in search of Oben, out of frustration because they couldn’t see him, tortured his sick mother and razed her house to the ground, while promising to track Oben all over the national territory and eliminate him once arrested.
It should be recalled that Oben Milford Ayuk, while on a visit to Cameroon from the UK in 2024 to provide financial and moral support to his sick mother, was unfortunately caught in the web of both the dreadful separatist fighters and the barbaric elements of the defence and security forces.
Reports say he was kidnapped on Thursday October 31, 2024 by separatist fighters in Mamfe while heading home just as they arrived from Kumba where he went with his sick mother for her medical checkup at the Kumba Regional Hospital Annex. Oben Milford is reported to have regained his freedom from his abductors after two weeks against a huge ransom.
Sources say Oben Milford Ayuk, alongside many passengers, were later arrested on board a vehicle at the military checkpoint in Bakebe village, Upper Bayang Subdivision, Manyu Division on November 19, 2024, while on his way to Kumba with his sister for a family meeting. A consignment of materials belonging to the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, a secessionist movement advocating the restoration of the independence of the Former British Southern Cameroons, is reported to have been discovered in the vehicle transporting in which Oben and the others were travelling.
They were whisked to a military detention barracks, tortured and detained under harsh, degrading and inhumane conditions. Sources say Oben Milford was accused of going on the same footpath of his late father, a staunch SCNC activist who is reported to have died in detention sometimes in 2018 due to severe torture.
Flashback of the crisis
It is also worth recalling that the Anglophone crisis, something that pundits say had been brewing for several years, boiled over in 2016, when Common Law Lawyers and Teachers in the North West and South West regions went on strike, demanding for the return of the federal system of government, redeployment of Civil Law Magistrates back to Civil Law Courts in French Cameroon, among other grievances and, for the redress of several issues concerning the English system of education respectively.
The crisis has left thousands, both civilians and security and defense forces dead, others internally displaced with some living in bushes, while over 30,000 have fled to neighbouring Nigeria where they are living as refugees, houses as well as villages razed to the ground with extrajudicial killings being a regular occurrence.