Cameroon: Fresh Details Emerging on the Killing of Local Administrative Officer, Others in Restive Southern Cameroons

A local government administrator in Ekondo Titi, Abolowa Timothy, and the mayor of the same municipality, all in the Ndian Division of the troubled South West Region have been killed after their car ran over an Improvised Explosive Device.

According to regional Governor, Okalia Bilai, the administrator was headed to the village of Bekora on March 2, some 10 km from Ekondo Titi on a meet-the-people tour.

“The Improvised Explosive Device exploded, killing the Prefect, the Mayor, an army Lieutenant, and a village chief, along with four other people,” Bilai told the State broadcaster, CRTV.

He said the road was so narrow that the military found it difficult to swiftly intervene.

Pro-independence fighters who love to be called self-defense forces have taken responsibility for the attack.

Security sources in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde say pro-independence forces buried six explosive devices on the earth roads, targeting the four-vehicle convoy. The sources say four of the devices were detonated, hitting the vehicle carrying the divisional officer, mayor, local politician, and a traditional chief, adding that at least six people died at the spot with several others wounded.

An Ekondo Titi resident by name Victor Ekoko, who was at his farm around the area of the incident, told Timescape Magazine that he heard the sound of explosions that left the entire convoy immobilized, adding that the “Freedom fighters who activated the devices were not far away and so they opened fire on the rest of the convoy after the divisional officer and his close aides were shattered to death by the explosions, killing other members of the delegation and wounding others”.

“The operation was carried out by our defense forces targeting primarily the colonial divisional officer of La République du Cameroun,” an official of one of the prominent self-defense groups told Timescape Magazine.

“We will continue to use IED attacks to target Cameroon government officials that are involved in coordinating Cameroon military operations within our territory. Guerrilla warfare remains our best tactic to resist Cameroon’s occupation and colonial rule over the sovereign Ambazonian territory. This is a war for the complete decolonization of our territory and the liberation of our people,” the official warned.

Nearly five years ago, Common Law lawyers and teachers began striking over efforts to change the legal system and British-based schooling system the Former UN Trust Territory of British Southern Cameroons inherited from the colonial era. Most of Cameroon is French-speaking.

The protests were violently suppressed by the central government, leading to pro-independence insurgency intent on establishing an independent country called “Ambazonia.”

The fighting has killed at least 4000 people and forced more than a million from their homes, according to the United Nations.