September 22, 2017: When Anglophone Cameroon Defied Fear and Filled the Streets

Nine years ago today, on September 22, 2017, tens of thousands of people poured into the streets across Cameroon’s North-West and South-West regions in one of the largest displays of civilian power the country had witnessed in decades.

They came from cities, towns and villages. Women marched at the front in some places. Young people painted their faces. Children, elderly residents and professionals joined the crowds. Many held tree branches and peace plants to signal that they were unarmed.

From Bamenda to Buea, Kumba, Kumbo, Limbe, Mamfe, Santa, Ekona, Muyuka, Ndu and Nkambe, protesters sang freedom songs, raised placards and carried the peace plants.

The International Crisis Group estimated that between 30,000 and 80,000 people demonstrated across about 30 communities on Friday, September 22, 2017. It described the mobilisation as Cameroon’s largest since the February 2008 unrest.

The demonstrations brought together people with different political objectives. Some demanded the release of Anglophones detained during the crisis. Others wanted a return to federalism, greater political autonomy or an end to Paul Biya’s presidency. Some openly demanded independence.

What united them was anger over the treatment of Cameroon’s English-speaking minority.

From professional grievances to a mass political movement

The crisis had begun nearly a year earlier with protests by Anglophone lawyers against the appointment of French-speaking magistrates and the erosion of the common-law system.

Teachers subsequently joined the movement, opposing the deployment of French-speaking teachers to English-language schools and what they saw as the gradual destruction of the Anglophone education system.

The government answered the protests with arrests and force. Demonstrators were killed in Bamenda in December 2016. On January 17, 2017, the government banned the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium and the Southern Cameroons National Council, arrested Consortium leaders Felix Agbor Nkongho and Fontem Neba, and cut internet access across the two regions.

The shutdown lasted more than three months.

Biya ordered the release of some detained leaders and protesters at the end of August 2017, but others, including radio presenter Mancho Bibixy, remained in prison. Schools had still not properly reopened, ghost-town operations continued and confidence in negotiations with Yaoundé had collapsed.

By September, demands that had started with reforms in education and the courts had developed into a much broader political struggle.

A march timed for Biya’s UN speech

The September 22 demonstrations were organised to coincide with President Biya’s address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Authorities were aware of the planned protests. Following an explosion that injured three police officers in Bamenda on September 21, the North-West governor restricted movement, imposed a curfew and banned demonstrations.

The restrictions did not stop the crowds.

In Bamenda, thousands marched for hours. In Buea, demonstrators arrived from Ekona, Muea and Mile 16, moving through Molyko towards the administrative district. In Limbe, protests began around 5 am in the Towe neighbourhood before another procession arrived from Mile Four and Bonadikombo.

Women led the march in parts of Buea, carrying branches and demanding an end to the suffering of Anglophones. Protesters called for the release of detainees and chanted the name of Mancho Bibixy.

While this was happening, Biya stood before the United Nations and spoke about terrorism, poverty, climate change and international peace.

“Peace is our most precious asset,” he told the General Assembly.

His speech did not mention the Anglophone crisis or the tens of thousands of people marching at home.

Bullets against peace plants

The demonstrations were largely peaceful, but the response differed from one town to another.

In parts of Bamenda, police officers and gendarmes reportedly accompanied the crowds without opening fire. Elsewhere, security forces used tear gas, stun grenades, water cannons and live ammunition.

At least four protesters were killed and dozens were injured, according to the International Crisis Group. Contemporary estimates ranged from three to eight deaths because information from the different towns was incomplete and sometimes contradictory.

In Limbe, local newspaper The Sun identified one of the victims as Mbunwe Terence. It reported that he was shot in the head during a confrontation near the police station and later died after being transferred towards Douala. Another young man was reportedly shot in the back while attempting to flee.

The marches were not entirely free of violence. Some protesters threw stones during confrontations with security forces. The residence of Buea mayor Patrick Ekema was vandalised, and a police station in Mamfe was set on fire.

Those incidents, however, did not represent the character of the wider mobilisation witnessed across the two regions: ordinary people walking with flags, placards and branches in defiance of government restrictions.

The size of the protests appears to have caught the authorities by surprise. Crisis Group reported that the government subsequently deployed about 1,000 additional soldiers and imposed what it described as a de facto state of emergency.

The road to October 1

Nine days later, on October 1, Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe and the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front proclaimed what they called the restoration of the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

The declaration did not emerge suddenly from the September 22 protests. Ayuk Tabe had already been selected as the movement’s leader and putative interim president in July. Pro-independence groups had also announced their intention to make the declaration on October 1.

The date carried historical meaning. On October 1, 1961, British Southern Cameroons joined the already independent Republic of Cameroon to form a federation.

September 22 nevertheless gave the independence movement its strongest visible evidence of public support. Its leaders could point to tens of thousands of people who had defied government orders and marched beneath Ambazonia flags.

When people returned to the streets on October 1, the crackdown was even deadlier. Human Rights Watch, citing Amnesty International, later reported that security forces killed more than 20 people between September 22 and October 2 and arrested at least 500.

The violent suppression of the demonstrations helped push the crisis further away from political negotiation. Crisis Group later concluded that the crackdown hardened the separatist faction and attracted greater support to it.

By November, armed attacks and military operations were increasing. A protest movement that had begun with lawyers, teachers, placards and peaceful strikes was becoming a war.

The civilian moment before the war

The conflict has since fractured communities and produced grave abuses by government forces and separatist groups. Soldiers have been accused of killing civilians, torturing detainees and burning homes. Armed separatist groups have killed civilians, attacked schools, kidnapped residents and violently enforced boycotts.

International Crisis Group estimated in 2025 that the fighting had killed more than 7,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

September 22, 2017, remains distinct from much of what followed.

It was not the beginning of the Anglophone struggle, and the Ambazonia declaration was already being prepared. It was the day the scale of Anglophone anger became impossible to dismiss.

For several hours, before guns came to dominate the crisis, the defining images were of people filling the streets, singing, crying and carrying peace plants.

The government saw a threat. The marchers believed they were finally making themselves heard.

Nine years later, the political questions that carried them into the streets remain unresolved.