DDR boss clinches prize for luring Amba, Boko Haram fighters to surrender arms.

The retired senior civil administrator, who clinched the coveted National Disarmament, Reintegration and Peace Icon award recently, was particularly celebrated for his efforts which have within a few years, seen over 4,000 Amba fighters and Boko Haram militiamen, dropping their arms.

The former governor was singled out and raised to the hall of fame by organisers of the maiden edition of the Cameroon English Language Newspaper Publishers Association, CENPA awards.

He was amongst several national dignitaries celebrated at the award night, held July 25, at the Yaounde Hilton Hotel.

The CENPA Award jury, headed by celebrated human rights lawyer, Barrister Akere Muna, said at the award night, that Fai Yengo Francis, was being recognised: “For his celebrated vast and successful campaigns in engaging young people, misled into taking up arm against the state and joining terrorist groups to disarm and take up new options in life thereby contributing to national peace and security”.

The discreet astute administrator was particularly felicitated for translating President Biya’s disarmament vision into concrete reality.

The award organisers said Fai Yengo’s achievements atop the disarmament committee were visible enough for the blind to see, and loud enough for the deaf to hear.

Meanwhile, speaking at a reserved ceremony at the Yaounde headquarters of the DDR committee, during which he was officially handed the prize, Fai Yengo, who is the first Anglophone to have served as Governor of the Centre Region, said, the distinction was both an honour and an encouragement for him to redouble his efforts.

He told the CENPA delegation, headed by its pioneer president, Ngah Christian Mbipgo, that the award was that of the entire staff of the nascent public body.

“We want to thank CENPA for thinking about us. I am accepting this award on behalf of these people who are sitting here because here at DDR, we are a team. We are a very restricted team,” Fai Yengo who has served the state in different capacities told the gathering.

 “We want to thank the Head of State. The directives which he gave to the DDR is not common. It is unprecedented. Our DDR of Cameroon which is the latest, came in against some established norms. The rules are that before you to get a DDR, you need to have a peace agreement and so on…but in Cameroon, we didn’t need to sit down and sign an agreement. Even if we had to sign an agreement, we didn’t know with whom we would have signed the agreement,” Fai Yengo said, while accepting the distinction.

He continued that: “Today, we have about 4,000 ex-fighters. If we had waited that we must first sign an agreement, where will these 4,000 ex-fighters have been today? 

These are the possibilities: they might eighter have been killed as terrorists, or they might have killed thousands of Cameroonians already. I think the Head of State took a very wise decision and this is where we are today”. 

Fai Yengo admitted that: “It was not easy because we had to tell the rest of the world about this mission… I am pleased to tell you that other countries are coming here to buy the Cameroon method of creating a disarmament centre in the midst of a crisis”.

Award fruit of dedicated service

The award won by Fai Yengo Francis, comes clearly as no surprise.

In less than five years at the helm of the strategic body, Fai Yengo Francis has achieved so much that he is now even being endeared by his adversaries.

The man who rarely plays to the gallery, prides self of a perfect mastery of the delicate mission assigned him by the Head of State. 

Once stepping into office in 2018, following the setting up of the committee, Fai Yengo Francis hit the ground running.

The activities of the committee, under Fai Yengo’s watch, have been paying off, with militiamen dropping arms in parts of the restive North West, South West and Far North Regions.

The DDR committee, with Fai Yengo on the driving seat, has invested energy and time in sensitising armed fighters in the Anglophone Regions and Far North Region to drop arms.

Thanks to the efforts of the DDR committee, some 400 members of the Nigerian-terrorist sect, Boko Haram, last year dropped their weapons to join the ranks of the DDR transitional centre in Meri, in the Far North Region. 

Following the development, the total number of ex-fighters who had joined the centre increased to 1,127. 
 

UN hails efforts of DDR committee

In 2021, officials of the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs, UNODA, from New York, USA, had hailed the National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration, DDR, led by Fai Yengo Francis.

The UN body had particularly expressed satisfaction with the committee’s handling of ex-Boko Haram combatants in the Far North Region and repentant separatist fighters in the troubled North West and South West Regions. 

The UN officials made the remarks at the end of a two-day working visit to the Far North Region, on the invitation of DDR officials. 

Fai Yengo Francis, in the company of his Far North regional collaborators and Governor Midjiyawa Bakari, took the UN officials to the two temporary sites which host Cameroonian and Nigerian ex- Boko Haram fighters and associates. 

“I am particularly grateful to the coordinator for opening the door in really very frank and very transparent way. We hope to continue in that direction,” a member of the UN team stated. 

The officials, aside hailing the functioning of the Centres, pledged to work with and assist the DDR Committee in all its activities in other to ensure it achieves its objectives of getting more and more ex-fighters to voluntarily surrender their weapons, get trained and be reintegrated into the society with different mindsets.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue N0:3197 of Monday August 12, 2024