As the leader of Cameroon’s separatist struggle, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, and his peers mark five years in detention, some English-speaking Cameroonians believe their arrest was an unsuccessful attempt to silence Anglophone minority voices.
These Cameroonians shared their views in a vox pop MMI conducted on Thursday, January 5, 2023, which marked five years since Sisiku AyukTabe and nine other separatists leaders were arrested.
Some people think Sisiku’s arrest instead fueled the six-year conflict in the Anglophone regions and it complicated the path to dialogue, which was in process at the time he was arrested.
Solomon Kalushi, an Anglophone Cameroonian who has lived through the conflict since 2016, says the arrest of Sisiku enflamed the Anglophone conflict.
“It simply added more fuel to the flames,” he told MMI, adding that nothing can obstruct the quest for greater freedom by Anglophone Cameroonians.
Sisiku Ayuk Tabe became the first leader of the “Republic of Ambazonia,” which separatists formed out of the English-speaking regions of Cameroon in October 2017.
Then, he was seen as a unifying factor in the separatist struggle. His arrest a year later, many believe, changed the course of the crisis, as it ushered in a cream of more radical and difficult separatist leaders, who were bent on using arms to prove their point.
Talking about Sisiku and the nine other separatist leaders who were given a life sentence, Nghonjuyi Wozerou Ndaleh, another Anglophone Cameroonian, said: “Those guys had the people at heart and not those criminals in the Diaspora and the US in particular.”
Also, Daba Richard thinks Sisiku was “the voice of the voiceless” as English-speaking Cameroonians clamoured against marginalisation in 2016.
Mbah Capon sees the imprisonment of Sisiku and Co. as a necessary end for people who fight for change.
“These people are fulfilling a just course. Being in prison for five years is just paying the price for a free person. It’s normal that, to be free, you must first be in chains. I see it as God’s fulfilment,” Mbah Capon said.
Sisiku was arrested alongside 46 other separatists in January 2018 in Abuja, Nigeria. They were then extradited to Yaounde, a move termed illegal by a Nigerian court in March 2019.
In Yaounde, their trial dragged on for 19 months, and in August 2019, a Yaounde military court sentenced them to life imprisonment, with charges including terrorism, secession, and hostilities against the state.
They were also fined for paying 250 billion CFA francs ($422 million) into the state treasury.
After the court verdict was pronounced, one of the defending lawyers, Ayukotang Ndep Nkongho, accused the judge of bias and “personal interest in sentencing the accused persons.”
He told the media that the judgement had been premeditated.
The verdict also attractedcriticisms from many English-speaking Cameroonians who saw it as an indication that the government was not interested in peace talks to end the Anglophone Crisis.
Five years after the separatist leaders were arrested and close to four years after they were sentenced, the Anglophone Crisis lingers on.
The chances of dialogue between the government and separatist leaders in the diaspora have grown slimmer, as President Paul Biya’s government claims to be “winning the war” with only “pockets of resistance” remaining in the Anglophone regions.
