After PCC Moderator’s outburst: Gov’t announces special operation to ‘liberate’ Akwaya from Nigerian herdsmen.

The Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Defence, Joseph Beti Assomo, disclosed the information in Yaounde Friday April 5.

He was speaking while presiding over a special security meeting held on the instructions of the Head of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Paul Biya. 

In his address during the meeting, Minister Beti Assomo, while making an overview of the country’s current security situation, touched on preoccupying developments in Akwaya Subdivision. 

The member of government told the high command of the military and defence chiefs at the special security meeting that “vigilance remains necessary” in adverting incidents such as that “recently recorded in the Messaga Eko1 canton, in the Akwaya Subdivision, Manyu Division, South West Region”.

Such atrocities in the administrative unit, the minister said, are “perpetrated by armed herders from a neighbouring country in search of pasture and water for their numerous livestock”. 

He then announced that: “An appropriate military operation is being prepared to put an end to these violent acts of provocation against our populations in these, it must be said, very isolated localities”.

Minister Beti Assomo then insisted that: “It is the State's duty to provide an appropriate response”. 

Akwaya Subdivision, it should be said, has been attacked repeatedly by armed Nigeria herders who invade communities in the border administrative unit, slaughtering Cameroonians like fowls, razing houses, destroying sources of livelihood and carting away property and other valuables.

Move provoked by scathing criticisms 

The special military operation to be engaged by government to salvage the dire situation in Akwaya, comes barely days after the outburst of the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, PCC, Rt Rev Dr Fonki Samuel Forba.

The vocal Man of God and son of Akwaya, had in a media outing, accused government of not only abandoning the population of Akwaya Subdivision to themselves and at the mercy of sophisticatedly armed Nigerian Fulani herders, but literally ‘ceding’ the border administrative unit to the government of the neighbouring country. 

Lawmakers, elite and the population of Akwaya, it should also be recalled, have also criticised the government for acting in a rather slow manner or not being proactive to the situation, despite the deepening threat to life. 

The silence of Yaounde authorities to such attacks by Fulani herders for years, had raised questions. 

Created in 1963, Akwaya Subdivision shares borders with three Nigerian States. The Subdivision is made up of over nine tribes, spread over a surface area which covers up to three Divisions in some parts of the country. 

The administrative unit was also a hotspot of separatist activities, when the crisis in the North West and South West Regions morphed into an armed conflict. Akwaya has been a fertile ground for the smuggling of weapons and other dangerous items from neghbouring Nigeria, by separatists. 

This was one of the concerns of the Member of Parliament, MP, of Akwaya, Hon Aka Martin Tyoga, when he in 2023, he made a desperate plea to government to set up a military base in the area. 

This, the lawmaker had insisted, was the first emergency needed to save his people from the hands of Fulani herdsmen from Nigeria. Hon Aka had stressed that a new military base would benefit the population, especially as the lone military base in the area is 32 kilometres away from the theatre of operation of the herdsmen.