Anglophone Crisis - Bamenda, Of Gunshots and Fire!

After a relatively calm end of year in Bamenda, chief town of the North West region, the city has seemingly picked back steam with a tensed atmosphere. Be it gunshots or night fires the tense atmosphere is creeping back to the city and equally spreading to other cities of the region.

On Monday night, the situation was tense along the City Chemist extension of the road with heavy noise accompanied by gunshots, residents reports.

This follows a bleak weekend in the city when residents got up to discover part of the Bamenda main market ravaged by fire.

Anglophone Crisis - Bamenda, Of Gunshots and Fire!

« I saw the flames behind the market at night but I thought it was coming from traders burning waste. I only realised it was burning shops when it had grown bigger and consuming at a faster rate that I alerted other, » a resident of the area said.

The damage of a warehouse and cold store left food stuffs and other valuable items were completely destroyed by the fire that was later on contained by fire fighters.

« I don’t know what I can say again, all my shop is completely down and I am completely confused. This (items burnt) is over fifty million all gone so I don’t just know what to do again, » a victim of the fire disaster said.

Though the cause of the fire which broke out at about 8pm on Friday night remains unknown, residents speculate it could be a revenge on those who have been disrespecting ghost town calls in the market. Others are putting forward the theory of poor eletrical wiring of the shops.

From the fire at the Bamenda main market, the tension spread to Nkambe in the Donga Mantung division as locals got up to news of another fire incident. This time, the girls dormitory of the Saint Rita Comprehensive Technical School was completely razed by fire. After a failed attempt on Sunday night, the school was finally put on fire by unknown men on the night of Monday breaking Tuesday.

This follows another school fire last week at the Government High School Balikumbat where the administrative block was completely razed.

Gunshots have also made their way back to the region with local reports of a police man and a gendarme officer wounded on Sunday night along the Bali control post road by unknown men.

The incident followed another exchange of fire between gun men and soldiers after a military base in Mbengwi came under attack from men believed to be fighters of the Ambazonia Defence Forces.

According to the spokersman of the army, Colonel Didier Badjeck, the attackers tried to penetrate the Mbenwi camp but were immediately « neutralised » by soldiers of the Rapid Intervention Batallion.

Bamenda and the North West region had gained relative calm for the past months but with the return of effective ghost towns, low school attendance, arsons and gunshots, it is evident much still needs to be done in terms of dialogue so as to pacify the atmosphere.