By Dibussi Tande
January 2012 was a particularly hectic and nerve-wracking month for Cameroonian security and intelligence services, along with political, administrative and religious authorities in the “Grand Nord” as they frantically tried to put measures in place to hold back what they viewed as a potential, if not imminent, Boko Haram tidal wave across Northern Cameroon.
Measures taken thus far by Cameroonian authorities to keep the Nigerian Islamist sect in check have ranged from the surveillance and arrest of alleged Boko Haram militants, a call to order and even outright closure of Koranic schools, strict control of who and what is preached in mosques, arrest of itinerant Muslim preachers, setting up of checkpoints in the outskirts of towns and villages, sensitization tours and crisis meetings with local administrative and religious officials, and officials from neighboring countries particularly Chad, all of this crowned with the deployment of 600 elite troops from 32nd Motorized Infantry Battalion in Mora and the 4th Joint Military Region in Maroua, to monitor the porous Cameroon/Nigeria border. In short, the region is under a de facto state of emergency whose impact has been made more acute by a growing economic crisis stemming from the closure of the Nigeria/Cameroon border in a region whose economy depends primarily, if not solely, on cross-border trade. And the discovery of alleged Boko Haram “hideouts” in the region, along with yet unverified claims in the Nigerian press that Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, has sought refuge in, and is operating from Ngaoundere, have only heightened the growing psychosis in the region.
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Boko Haram. I am a rep from the Makiza army of the SOUTHERN CAMEROONS. JOIN US FIGHT THE OCCUPATION OF OUR TWO NATIONS.
Posted by: SOUTHERN CAMEROONS | Friday, 17 February 2012 at 05:50 AM