Liberators-turned oppressors: Amba fighters intensify move to further impoverish Anglophones.

Unfortunately, they have not ceased claiming to be on a self-assigned mission to liberate Anglophones in Cameroon from suffering.

But the records of atrocities put at the doorsteps of such groups of militia men and online leaders is yet to be exhaustive. 

Even as many are yet to fully tell the ravaging damage of such separatists manifested punishment on a people they claim to be fighting for, what stands out since things went bloody in the North West and South West Regions in 2017, is that Anglophones are the highest targets and losers.

In the thinking of those who have monitored the conflict carefully, aborigines of the North West and South West Regions especially, only have accounts of blood, fire, brimstone and other unheard heart wrenching happenings to tell.

Even with such heavy damage on their people and a generation pinned in perpetual pain, the masters of war, self-declared liberators-turned operators, analysts are saying, are still on the path of further worsening the lives of people in the two English speaking Regions.

Bamenda new theatre of Amba madness

For some, apparently having run out of ideas and being unable to face the military, Amba fighters and their sponsors have continued to feast on the blood and sweat of innocent Anglophones. 

In June this year, they surfaced with an absorb order that has never been recorded in a conflict anywhere across the globe. 

That decision had to do with asking cab drivers in Bamenda to suppress the traditional yellow colours on taxis and adopt the separatist colours of blue and white.

Unable to find space for such instructions, which analysts say are only synonymous to incurable madness, Amba fighters have gone after taxis, setting same ablaze and targeting owners in the process. 

One of such victims was Joseph Fru Nde, a physically challenged cab driver who was attacked on Che Street and his only source of livelihood reduced to ashes.

God being so kind, persons of goodwill came to his rescue last week with a new car. 

While Ndeh left Yaounde smiling and the authors of the kind gesture felt they contributed to what is a rebuilding and healing process ongoing across the North West and South West Regions, Amba fighters have not given up.

Having apparently lost track of what they claim to be fighting for, from the outset of the conflict, experts in conflict issues say it will not be wrong to affirm that the original intention of those behind the conflict remains impoverishing Anglophones to the marrow.

In the last few weeks, Bamenda has been the theatre of such attacks, especially on cabs from Amba fighters, who have continued to pay allegiance to the separatist movement.

Revisiting what happened in B’da Tuesday

According to eyewitness accounts, the gun-carrying individuals who burnt two taxis at the Hospital Roundabout on Tuesday were masked. 

The source told The Guardian Post that the gunmen spent almost 10 minutes shooting indiscriminately before setting fire on the cabs.

A man whose car was around the spot of the incident but was not burnt told our reporter on condition of anonymity that "my car was parked in the middle of these two taxis. One of the boys told me to remove the car because it did not have yellow colour. Then they poured fuel on the two taxis and lit fire on them…".

According to reports, a young man had rented one of the cabs from its owner for hours to work but encountered the unknown. 

The driver was said to be carrying the last passengers to drop before handing over the cab to its owner when the gunmen attacked. 

Police officers are said to have arrived the scene of the attack after the gunmen had vanisehed into thin air.

Impoverishing Anglophones over impossible mission 

Resurfacing from an apparent relapse, gun toting youngsters, with mannerisms akin to the separatists, set ablaze two taxis in Bamenda around 5:30p.m. on Tuesday July 30. The incident happened around the hospital Roundabout.

It is an umpteenth incident which some pundits are beginning to conclude, point to Amba fighters only intensifying a crusade to further impoverish the same Anglophones whose wellbeing they claim they are fighting for. 

For one thing, cab driving is among the most basic of social services just like petty businesses, which have remained the last source of hope for millions of families in the North West and South West Regions.

Coercing and terrorising drivers to switch colours of taxis from the traditional yellow to the separatist colours of blue and white, many are affirming, is an impossible mission. 

There are those who say the move is not different from the dream of separatists to split Cameroon.

Burning taxis with the hope of forcing such colours in a territory fully under government control, analysts argue, is absurd, unreasonable and out of the natural order of conflicts.

Moving from one fruitless strategy to another 

The attacks on commercial taxis add to many other actions that Anglophones have gone through in the hands of Amba fighters. 

In the last seven years, those already writing the history of the Anglophone crisis say, separatist fighters have maimed, beheaded, buried people alive, ruined businesses in addition to other unimaginable atrocities.

Added to the excesses, they also add attacks that come in the form of unending lockdowns, ghost towns and the raiding of business ventures and plantations belonging to private individuals and the state. 

This is the case with the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, the second highest employer after the State that was brought to its knees through Amba attacks. 

PAMOL Plantations PLC in Ekondo-Titi, Ndian Division of the South West Region, also suffered similar attacks.

Even workers of the corporations were killed, while others have remained disfigured till date. Hundreds of hectares of private cocoa plantations have been seized or destroyed by Amba hoodlums. 

The global picture from all of these, those who have not stopped castigating separatists say, is nothing short of pushing Anglophones into extreme suffering and poverty.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3186 of Thursday August 01, 2024