In Cameroon, the gov’t has carried out a consistent campaign, wanting the world to believe that Ambazonian “Separatists” do not want children going to school. They have said Separatists fighters either raze down schools, lodge in schools, harass children, and teachers going to school or in school.
The shooting on Thursday, October 14 of a five-year-old on her way to school by the Cameroon military puts the evidence against Cameroon. The shooting in Buea on Thursday was just a tip of what is already known – that it is invading and occupying Cameroon forces who have made effective school learning in Ambazonia impossible due to intimidations, harassment, torture, and such heartless killings as witnessed Thursday of little Caroline Ndialle, a nursery pupil of CUIB Buea.
The little Caroline was almost in school when the animal in gun-toting Cameroon’s gendarme unleashed and took her life. She wasn’t an Ambazonian fighter, she wasn’t waving the Ambazonian flag that would have identified or the mother transporting her as an Ambazonian activist or supporter. She was just a little innocent toddler on the way to her kindergarten class.
What we have gathered so far is that, in one of their random stops and extort points in Buea, Southern Zone of Ambazonia, the Gendarme killer, a Beti/Bulu whose only name we have gotten as Mvogo, stopped a taxi right around Co-Cathedral, a distance less than one kilometer to the Catholic nursery school the young Caroline was being taken to. After stopping the Taxi, a Toyota Rav 4 shows up and the Gendarme stops it too while the Taxi driver waits to negotiate the amount of bribe to pay.
A lady, the driver, and mother of the murdered child steps out of the Rav4, the gendarme killer demands to have her vehicle’s documents. She pleads that she’s already late dropping the child at school. The gendarme insists she must hand over her vehicle documents, she walks into the car at this moment, and as she gets in and sits on the driver’s seat, the gendarme opens fire from the back windscreen and the bullet blows off the head and shatters the brains of little Caroline.
As the child lies in the pool of her own blood, the mother splinting to the air and back hollering “You kill my baby, just kill me too,” the gendarme attempts an escape from the scene, but for the immediate intervention of quarter boys who take up courage and arrest him. The mob gathers and mob justice takes its course. The gendarme is pounced with kicks and rocks to his demise.
One would suppose that given the tension, that the Cameroon soldiers will make a tactical withdrawal from the streets into their barracks. They didn’t. Hundreds of them proceeded to the same Catholic Primary School and invaded it with guns as parents descended in to withdraw their children. Unfortunately, the parents are not able to get in as the school authorities lock them out while the army forces its way into the classrooms. Over ten children who are already in class upon seeing the invading soldiers storming their classrooms fainted to the floor. Some were transferred to the hospital. What became of them is not known yet.
In the meantime, the mob stage a protest to the governor’s office carrying the remains of little Caroline with head chopped off by the assassin’s bullets. In their usual rebuff, the governor tells the protesting crowd he doesn’t know who killed the child even when he was aware a uniform officer did it. In fact, by this time the perpetrator is already killed by the same mob, Bernard Okalia, the Governor addressed. He assures the mob that the perpetrator will be brought to justice and then asked that the dead child be deposited in the mortuary for a state funeral – yes a state funeral.
Those to hold directly responsible for the brutal murder of little Caroline start from the governor and all of his subordinates in the security hierarchy under him – the commanders and the commissioners in Buea.
It has been established that little Caroline died because of a CFA 500 FRS bribe. (An amount not up to US $1). For some time running, Buea has not only come under invasion, and occupation by Cameroon security forces, there is an official policy of extortion sanctioned directly from the governor’s office. The police, the gendarmes, and the army take turns and mount checkpoints all over the city to enforce this policy. The security forces operate under pressure and instructions to extort and to steal from road users, particularly drivers. Millions in CFA are so extorted from the people this way on a daily basis. From the governor’s office to the hands of every police and gendarme commander or commissioner in the city, 50,000 FRS is then remitted on a daily basis, and Bernard Okalia is the general supervisor and chief beneficiary of this racket. Okalia and his subordinates are harvesting millions from this extortion on a monthly basis. The gendarme who stopped Caroline’s mother was looking to extort 500 CFA FRS before it went bad. This is the reason the governor is an accomplice and should be made to pay.
In Buea, from mile 17 up to Bongo square area alone, there are over 10 checkpoints or call them extortion points. Other parts of the city are seeing checkpoints growing by the day. The ultimate goal is to suck out resilience from Ambazonians resisting Cameroon occupation. It’s a psychological way to drain and to get Ambazonia to give up support for the struggle.