The Cameroon Dispatch

Cameroon’s judiciary has slammed another jail sentence on already jailed former Secretary General at the Presidency, Jean Marie Atangana Mebara on embezzlement charges. This is in outright defiance of an earlier statement from the African Union which had demanded Mebara’s unconditional and immediate release on arguments that he is a political prisoner. The erstwhile government cabinet minister was handed a 25-year jail term by the Special Criminal Court in Yaounde, June 22, for embezzling circa 2.9billion FCFA; part of money set aside for the purchase of a presidential plane code named Albatross. He had been sentence for 15 and 20years separate imprisonment terms. Legal practitioners say if the former statesman’s lawyers are not smart enough to plead that he serves his three sentences as concurrently, he will have to serve them consecutively. This they say, means he would have sentences, one after the other, possibly amounting to 50years in the dungeons. Going by judicial te...

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has  released a  documentary film-  Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs: Transforming Africa which illustrates strides covered within in its first year... To watch and discover how the Foundation developed a programme to institutionalize luck and gave Africa’s entrepreneurs the tools they need to succeed, please visit  bit.ly/TEEPdocumentary  click on the link to watch video The film tells the story of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP), the Foundation’s decade-long commitment of $100 million to empower 10,000 entrepreneurs from all of Africa, to create jobs and generate wealth. TEF Founder, Tony O. Elumelu, CON, commented: “I am deeply proud of what we accomplished in TEEP’s first year. We funded entrepreneurs, established networks and helped extraordinary people take control of their destinies and we did it on an incredible scale. This film is a depiction of Africans telling our own stories as ...

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF country office in Cameroon is stepping up efforts to get children involved in shaping the drawing up of national policies through a social platform known as U-report. Launched on November 21, 2015, the platform which involves mobile phone texting and Facebook interactive participation already has over 11, 700 registered participants from across Cameroon, UNICEF’s Youth and Adolescents Development Officer, Valentine Oloume Beyeme, revealed during a press briefing in Yaounde, June 13. To participate in surveys on specific topics selected by UNICEF, U-reporters (as registered participants are called), are expected to respond to shot quizzes via a free SMS number, 8555…and so far an impressive participation has been recorded, Beyeme said. She equally revealed that they are optimistic that with the implementation of planned strategies, they would be able to reach a target of over 300,000 registered U-reporters by the end of 2016. ...

 President Paul Biya In 1993, when the President of the Republic decided to create new State universities, thereby decentralizing the then University of Yaounde, he transformed the Buea University Centre that came into existence in 1985 into a full-fledged University. In the organic text of the said University, the President specified loud and clear for everyone to understand that the Buea University was going to be Anglo Saxon in nature and run according to the same Anglo Saxon tradition. That is why any visitor to the website of the University of Buea will be welcomed by this piece of information in the first paragraph at “About Us”; “The University of Buea was born in 1993 following wide-ranging university reforms in Cameroon. Conceived in the English-speaking tradition, the University of Buea seeks to foster the essence of that system, while situating itself within the larger bilingual and multicultural context of Cameroon. Fame Ndongo It is located in the hi...

Catholic Archbishop and Cardinal, Christian Tumi, has rubbished plans by the minister of higher education, Prof. Jacque Fame Ndongo to harmonise higher education in Cameroon and rid the country of its dual educational system. Christian Cardinal Tumi Cardinal Tumi was made nonsense of the minister’s plan in an interview with US-based Cameron Daily Journal’s Tamfu Harison yesterday, June 14. Quizzed whether he shared the opinion of Anglophone teachers’ groupings who are protesting against the so-called harmonisation, the influential clergyman answered with a series of rhetorical questions. Hear him: “ when they talk of harmonizing, what do they mean? Degrees will be Anglo-Saxon or French system?  That’s what I am asking. It will be interesting. Why harmonization at all costs? We are two, what will I call two colonial systems. So how will the harmonization be done? Will we create our own certificates, national certificates? That will be done in English and also in ...

The Cameroon Football Federation, FECAFOOT is now unable to pay its employees’ salaries after its president failed to have its frozen bank accounts reopened through the Yaounde high court; The Cameroon News Online has gathered. A source at FECAFOOT told The Cameroon News Online that the staff have not been paid their salaries for the month of May and that they are afraid the situation is not about to change, though the federation’s president is leaving no stone unturned to get the United Bank for Africa, UBA and ECOBANK to unblock its accounts. The FECAFOOT boss, Tombi a Roko Sidiki, however told The Cameroon News Online in a telephone interview yesterday that anyone claiming FECAFOOT has been unable to pay its staff salaries is not telling the truth. Tombi a Roko remained evasive when The Cameroon News Online repeatedly asked him to state whether or not the federation is facing financial difficulties because their accounts are frozen. He rather struggled to exp...

The United Nations children’s Fund, UNICEF is engaged in protecting children from harassment and exploitation on the internet. The Cameroon country office of UNICEF says the move is intended to assist adolescents in making the best out of online services without falling prey to cyber bullying and other vices that come along with the use of ICTs. This, we gathered, will be done through a #ReplyforAll  campaign embedded in UNICEF’s initiative to end violence against children. Supported by the We Protect Global Alliance which is engaged in preventing online child abuse and exploitation, the initiative would empower adolescents to be key players in ensuring their own security online. A press release from the country office in Yaounde indicates that children and adolescents will be given the opportunity to provide suggestions on how their security online can be guaranteed. This would include proposals on how to react in the face of online violence.   Yaounde:...

There is no gainsaying the fact that movers and shakers of every community are always expected on the front rows at funerals of their fellow mover and shaker who happens to embark on the journey beyond before them. Agbor Tabi’s funeral was undeniably one of such funerals. Though many top dignitaries defied the odds along the bumpy Kumba-Mamfe road or Babadjou-Bamenda road to bid the fallen statesman farewell, the absence in Mamfe of some elite of his Manyu Division remained conspicuous and left some observers bewildered. Jerome Obi Eta, current Board Chairman of the Cameroon Water Utilities, CAMWATER who is equally former Public Works Minister was nowhere near the Mamfe ceremonial ground where state personalities and the people who call the shots in the division gathered to pay their last respect to the fallen academic and political goliath. In as much as some high ranking personalities who hail from Manyu are reported to have been spotted in Mamfe, they were just as absent ...