Mobile money operator under investigation for money transfer to separatist fighter.

By Joe Tanji

 In a country where unemployment is so rife, getting employed is a herculean task. In Cameroon, for instance, where unemployment is high many university graduates are now resorting to telephone call box and mobile money transfer business for survival.

Before now many had thought this business was suitable for college dropouts or the less educated.

 The mobile money business is supposed to relieve their operators from financial stress, but many of them in the two restive English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon have, since the eruption of the Anglophone Crisis in late 2016, sent remittances to criminal suspects, subjecting them to arrests and judicial investigations.

Fresh reports said a certain Sirene Nwani – a Cameroonian university graduate who was eking out a living from the mobile money business was   arrested, late April 2021, in Buea for allegedly sending an undisclosed amount of money to a separatist leader.

The Cameroon government has accused mobile money dealers of facilitating the funding of separatist activities in the country, reiterating the criminal consequences   that would befall those implicated.

When contacted, Barrister Fombon Jerry, counsel for the accused Sirene Nwani, said

 “We are doing everything  legally possible to ensure her release…because we are convinced that she could not have knowingly carried out the purported transfer of money to a separatist ….”

Although the arrested suspect was born in May 1998 in Bali Kumbat, Northwest region of Cameroon, she did her secondary education in Tiko and proceeded to Buea for her post-secondary education before gaining admission into the University of Buea in 2016.

It would be recalled that when separatist fighters had attempted to disrupt the smooth functioning of the University of Buea in the heat of the Anglophone crisis, by kidnapping lecturers and students, Cameroon forces of law and order raided neighborhoods near the university believed to be hideouts for separatist fighters and suspects who included students like Sirene Nwani   and they were reportedly rough-handled, detained and later released following the interventions of their lawyers.

That encounter with the brutality of security forces is said to have traumatized Nwani who was reportedly still being monitored by security agents.

 With the escalation of the Anglophone crisis, security agents have been working round the clock to identify mobile money kiosks that transfer money to separatist leaders.

And it was during such investigations that Sirene Nwani was identified by security agents and whisked off for sending money to separatists, whom the Cameroon government has tagged as terrorists, threatening the unity of the country.

President Paul Biya, who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, has insisted Cameroon is “one and indivisible” and has likened the separatists to terrorists whom he promised to neutralize