A Cameroonian family has fled the country and is reportedly seeking asylum abroad after years of threats, intimidation, and near-fatal encounters linked to the ongoing armed conflict in Cameroon’s North-West Region.

Nyuyfoni Sidney Fonyuy, a senior staff of the Mobile Telephone Network (MTN) in Bamenda fled the country last year as his life and that of his family became uncertain.

The family’s ordeal, traces a steady descent into fear and displacement as violence between armed separatist fighters and government forces intensified in the English-speaking regions.

According to the account, the head of the family, Nyuyfoni Sidney Fonyuy was employed in a managerial role that required frequent movement across rural communities in the North-West. These journeys, once routine, became increasingly dangerous as armed groups imposed “ghost town” days, roadblocks, and violent reprisals against perceived defiance.

At one point, he was reportedly forced to travel nearly 15 miles on foot to avoid ambushes and was repeatedly warned that he was being monitored by armed fighters. Despite transfers to safer urban locations, including Bamenda, insecurity followed him as the conflict expanded into cities, targeting civilians, businesses, and public servants.

The situation worsened after his wife Micheline Timea Scott , a teacher, continued to work in a conflict-affected area where many schools had been abandoned. In April 2022, she narrowly escaped what the family describes as a deadly incident when a vehicle transporting teachers went missing amid clashes between separatists and security forces. Several passengers were reportedly feared dead.

The trauma left her severely shaken, with the family stating that only chance prevented her from becoming another casualty of the crisis.

Our investigation further reveals a series of violent episodes in Bamenda, including shootings of civilians, abductions, and extrajudicial killings that deepened the family’s fear. By 2025, with violence intensifying in the North-West, the family decided they could no longer remain in Cameroon.

With assistance from friends, they reportedly fled the region under cover of darkness, avoiding major checkpoints and hospitals out of fear of arrest or mistaken identity. The family eventually secured temporary refuge and later obtained visas that allowed them to travel to Canada.

The couple is known never to have supported separatist movements or engaged in any criminal activity. Instead, they ordinary citizens trapped between warring sides in a conflict that has displaced hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians since 2016.

Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that civilians in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions face heightened risks, including targeted killings, kidnappings, and collective punishment, with professionals such as teachers, administrators, and business managers often singled out.

It is hoped that immigration authorities will consider the totality of their experience and grant them protection, allowing them to rebuild their lives in safety.

“We abandoned our jobs, our home, and everything familiar—not because we wanted to leave Cameroon,” they say, “but because staying meant risking death.”

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Reports from Bamenda, chief town of the North West Region of Cameroon say an Anglophone lecturer, Teke Johnson Takwa, noted for his criticising the Yaounde regime for the poor mistreatment of Anglophones in Cameroon especially Anglophone teachers and lecturers, has been arrested security and defense forces.

Teke Johnson Takwa is currently in custody at the military detention facility in Bamenda Up Station.

The arrest of Teke Johnson Takwa has complicated the lives and future of his wife and children, especially Teke Grateful Anwi a former vice publicity secretary of the University of Buea Students Union, UBSU, who is abroad for further studies.

Teke Johnson Takwa was arrested on Saturday August 2, 2025 at a mixed control checkpoint around Commercial Avenue in Bamenda. THE SUN gathered that the officers went through his phone and discovered messages confirming that his daughter, Teke Grateful Anwi, now abroad onetime worker in a bank at the  a Mobile Money department received money from abroad and sent to his father for onward transmission to separatist fighters and other groups to reinforce their objectives in clamouring for the restoration of the independence of Former British Southern Cameroons or the creation of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

It should be recalled that Teke Johnson Takwa had, at the dawn of the Anglophone crisis, been warned about his activism by joining other lecturers and teachers to protest against the transfer of French-speaking teachers to Anglophone colleges and Universities to teach Anglophone students.

His daughter played a frontline role in frequently organising student unrests as the vice publicity secretary of the University of Buea Student Union, UBSU, to manifest their grievances following government’s failure to keep to its promises since 2016. This caused her being arrested and later released by security officers sometimes in May 2021.

Sources say it is against this backdrop that the military initiated criminal proceedings against Teke Johnson Takwa before the Bamenda military court, and endorsed an arrest warrant against Teke Grateful Anwi, declaring her wanted.

As we went to press reports said while Teke Johnson Takwa is still in custody awaiting prosecution before the Bamenda Military Court, his wife, Timbu Caroline Acha, a teacher by profession, had gone underground, while Teke Grateful Anwi’s three siblings now live in trauma and fear and facing possible arrest by the military.

According to the Cameroon Penal code if arrested, they will face charged for acts of insurrection, hostilities against the state, and failure to report.

The Anglophone crisis began in 2016 with strikes by teachers and lawyers, which later attracted the people of the two English-speaking regions of the country, as they expressed their accumulated grievances emanated from marginalisation by the majority French-speaking part of Cameroon, inequality in employment, adulterations of the Common Law judicial system and English subsystem of education.

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 have been razed to the ground with extrajudicial killings being regular occurrences.

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The defence and security forces are reported to have launched a manhunt for a suspected supporter and sympathiser of Ambazonia separatists, whose name we got as Enow Besong Divine.

Enow is being accused of having links with and collaborating with the separatists, who have taken up arms against the state to fight for the independence of a country they have named Republic of Ambazonia.

After graduating from the university, Enow had been living in Afab village, Manyu Division of the South West Region, helping his parents with their palm oil farming, milling and other businesses.

Enow, in the business, had been supplying foodstuffs and other provisions to the military whose camp was not far from his family residence. His ordeal started sometime in 2023 when some men, who are said to have introduced themselves as Amazonia separatist fighters, confronted Enow, requesting that he supplies them vegetables and other food stuffs. When Enow hesitated doing so, the separatist fighters later stormed his family home, threatening to kill him, his parents and brothers and sisters if he didn’t to the supplies.

For fear of his life, Enow is said to have started supplying the separatists with foodstuffs and other items. He often took the supplies to the various camps of the separatists.

Enow is said to have supplied both the military and separatists for some months until when a group of separatist fighters are said to have stormed his family home, accusing him and his father of giving information to the military about their hideouts.

They were also accused of having been campaigning for effective school, against school boycott calls by the separatists.

Enow and one of his cousins were abducted by the separatist fighters. While being conveyed to the fighters’ camp, Enow’s cousin attempted to escape and was shot on the leg. He later died of the gunshot injury.

However, after having been tortured and detained under deplorable condition at the separatists’ camp with deteriorating health, Enow is said to have escaped under circumstances that remain unclear. Since then his whereabouts is not known.

Nonetheless, when the military learned that Enow had been supplying items to the separatist fighters, they accused him of having links with the fighters, collaborating with them. They also accused him of “supporting terrorism”. The military also accused Enow of having been spying on the military and sending information to the separatist fighters.

It should be recalled that many young people in the North West and South West regions have been caught in such a situation as the armed conflict within the two English-speaking regions rages on.

Another case is that of Ndakwe Daniel Tangwa, a music teacher in Limbe, Fako Division of the South West Region. He had years back been accused of collaborating, sympathising and sponsoring Ambazonia separatist fighters.

For fear of his life, Ndakwe is reported of having fled and his whereabouts, till date, is not known. We gathered that a warrant of arrest had been issued for him and defence and security forces have continued to storm the residence of his parents in Limbe, harassing them to declare his whereabouts.

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Many civilians in the North West and South West Regions have been caught between military crackdown and atrocities committed by Ambazonia separatist fighters.

This is as the crisis rocking the regions, which long escalated into an armed conflict, rages on. Some civilians have also found themselves trapped in crossfires between the military and Amba fighters. Many have lost their lives after having been hit by stray bullets in the gunfire exchanges between the military and Amba fighters.

Meanwhile, the Amba fighters have also been forcing young men and women to join them in their armed struggle for the independence of a country they have christened Republic of Ambazonia. Those who have refused to join the Amba fighters, collaborate with or support them financially have been abducted and killed, with some beheaded.

On their part, the defence and security forces have been indiscriminately arresting people suspected to be collaborating, sympathising with and supporting the Amba fighters materially and financially. Sources say the arrested persons are being tortured and detained under deplorable and inhumane conditions. Some have reportedly died in detention.

This has caused many of them to flee into hiding and the whereabouts of many is not known.

One of those who have been caught between the Ambazonia fighters and the military is Ndakwe Daniel Tangwa, who was a music teacher in Limbe, Fako Division of the South West Region.

Ndakwe’s ordeal began some time in 2019 when he was stopped by the military one night at SAMCO Quarter in Limbe. That night, the military and Amba fighters were engaged in a gunfire exchange. As Ndakwe was heading home on his motorbike with his wife, he was stopped by soldiers, who pointed a gun at him point blank, suspecting him of being an Amba fighter. But when the soldiers discovered that he was with a woman behind, they let him go.

However, because of that incident that greatly traumatised Ndakwe and his wife, he decided to relocate from Mile Four to another quarter in Limbe.

But his torments were far from over. As Ndakwe had refused to join the Amba fighters or give them material and financial support, sometime in 2021, they are said to have started sending messages on WhatsApp, threatening him. The fighters are said to have warned him that if did not send them financial support, they will kill him and also harm members of his family.

As Ndakwe did not budge to their threats, one day the Ambazonia fighters trapped him on his way back home on his motorbike, kidnapped and took him to one of their camps somewhere around Mutengene. There, he is said to have been tortured.

However, the next day, the military stormed the Amba fighters’ camp and a shootout ensued between the soldiers and Amba fighters. In the midst of the shootout, Ndakwe is said to have escaped. Some Amba fighters were killed in that military raid, but many of them escaped.

Not long after, the Amba fighters are said to have accused Ndakwe’s family of having caused the military raid on their camp in Mutengene by informing the military of Ndakwe’s kidnap. The Amba fighters are also aid to have vowed to kill Ndakwe if they lay hands on him.

Later, the military is also said to have also accused Ndakwe of having been collaborating with and supporting the Amba fighters. A military manhunt was launched for him.

Nonetheless, suddenly Ndakwe is reported to have vamoosed and his whereabouts is still not known.

If the Ambazonia separatist fighters lay hands on Ndakwe Daniel Tangwa, he will certainly be killed, like many others who have suffered from atrocities committed by separatist fighters.

Meanwhile, if arrested by the defence and security forces, Ndakwe Daniel Tangwa will be tried in a military tribunal, under the 2014 anti-terrorism law, whose maximum punishment is the death sentence. That is if he is not killed outright, like many others who have been victims of extra-judicial killings within the context of the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions.

Origin of crisis

It is worth recalling that the Anglophone crisis, something that pundits say had been brewing for several years, boiled over recently, when Common Law Lawyers in the North West and South West regions went on strike. They were 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. Not long after, teachers in the North West and South West regions also went on strike, demanding for the redress of several issues concerning the English system of education.

Things, however, got worst when Anglophones in both regions, who had been fed up with the unfavourable political and economic situation of the country, the use of French as the dominant and official language, and the marginalisation of the Anglophones, joined the strike.

The crisis has left thousands, both civilians and security and defence 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.

Many houses, and even whole villages, have been burnt down in the crisis-hit regions.

The separatist leader of the self-declared Republic of Ambazonia, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, and eight other close associates of his, who were arrested in Nigeria and extradited to Cameroon, are currently serving life sentences at the Kondengui maximum security prison in Yaounde. Many other activists such as Mancho Bibixy, Penn Terrence, Tsi Conrad, among others, are also serving jail terms at the Kondengui prison.

While the Anglophone crisis continues to escalate, international organisations and other western powers have called on the government to address the root cause through genuine and inclusive dialogue.

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