Anglophone Crisis: A teacher who faces death threats on two fronts

 By Tanji Nguma

Suh Vitalis Ngwai was a state-employed teacher. He was teaching at Government High School Kombone in the Southwest, one of the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon plagued by the Anglophobe Crisis.

Although he was living in a nearby neighborhood called kwa-kwa, Suh went about his teaching job peacefully in Kombone until the Anglophone crisis erupted in 2016 over corporate demands by Anglophone teachers and Common law advocates.

He found himself in a dilemma as he was accused of double standards by Separatist fighters and Cameroun Security Forces, and allegedly became a target of attacks and torture by the two warring entities. 

The crisis, which started as peaceful protests across Anglophone Cameroon, soon turned violent and bloody, putting many lives in danger and sending many others to their early graves as Cameroon forces launched a counter offensive against   separatist fighters, who were (and are still) asking for the independence of the two English-speaking regions (Northwest and Southwest) of Cameroon.

Houses of suspects razed during the Anglophone Crisis

The country’s two English-speaking regions were formerly called Southern Cameroons -a former United Nations Trust Territory that was administered by Britain and it gained its independence on October 1,1961 by joining the majority French-speaking La Republique du Cameroun, to form a single country.

But after joining the majority Francophones, the minority English-speakers started complaining of being marginalized and discriminated against in appointments and development projects by the latter who dominate the administration of Cameroon.

The on-going crisis has led to the deaths of over five thousand   people (civilians and soldiers). Enormous property (private and public) worth hundreds of billions of FCFA have been destroyed,

Over 40 thousand Cameroonians have fled to neighboring Nigeria where they are seeking asylum. Over 500 thousand people are reportedly internally displaced.  Hundreds of others fleeing the crisis are found in the US, Europe, Asia and in other African countries like South Africa.

As the story goes, Suh Vitalis Ngwai respected the 2023/2024 school resumption of the Cameroon government as he went about his teaching in Kombone even as the separatists had called for school boycott throughout Anglophone Cameroon.

That put him at war with the separatists who reportedly attacked and tortured him on several occasions, threatening him with death if he continued going to school.

Other the hand, when a traumatized Suh, for fear of his life, stopped going to school, he was also accused by school officials of being sympathetic to the separatist agenda of dividing Cameroon, which the country’s President Paul Biya has insisted is “one and indivisible.”

The attacks on him by the two warring entities left him traumatized, as he started living in hiding for fear of the unknown.

Reports say when he decidedly left kwa-kwa, a fief of separatist fighters, he was only lucky to have narrowly escaped arrest because security forces on, 15 September 2023, raided their family residence, ransacking it in search of him. The house would later be razed by unknown persons.

Burning of houses of suspected separatists, ghost towns, vandalism, arrests, torture of accused persons, extra-judicial killings, kidnappings, beheadings, sexual assaults and several other vices have characterized the Anglophones crisis.

The escalation of the crisis has been largely blamed on the social media being used by activists to mobilize anti-government protests. It would be recalled that in the heat of the crisis, Cameroon Government first suspended access to the internet early in 2017 in the Northwest and Southwest Regions for three months and later for another one month.

English-speaking Cameroonians in the Diaspora have been accused by the Cameroon Government of instigating and funding separatist fighters.

The Government has blacklisted some Anglophone activists abroad who include Mark Berata, Cho Ayaba,Tapang Ivo,Akwanga Ebenezar,Chris Anu, John Mbah Akuroh,Nso Forcha and Akoson Raymond  .Due to the mass arrests back home and the hunt for activists abroad, many Anglophones abroad - even students are scared to return home.

In late 2019, President Paul Biya convened what was styled National Major Dialogue (NMD), with the intention of looking for lasting solutions to put an end to the Anglophone crisis. But the implementation of the recommendations of the NMD, which included the granting of a special status to the Northwest and Southwest regions, has not put a stop to the crisis, which is in its 8^th year.