The Boko Haram sect negotiators have demanded $400m from the Cameroonian government before it will release the wife of the Vice Prime Minister kidnapped about 64days ago.
Five years after Boko Haram declared war on Nigeria, the Cameroonian authorities continued to play the ostrich, pretending that the sect was a Nigerian affair. This is in spite of the fact that the two countries are neighbours and some parts of Nigeria that Boko Haram attacks are concentrated, were once part of Cameroon before the 1961 UN plebiscite. The boundaries that separate the two countries blurred due to the fact that families from both sides of the frontier divide interact as if there were no international demarcation.
However, the inevitable creeping of the insurgency across the boundary into Cameroon started happening when Boko Haram began abducting foreigners based in Cameroon in exchange for hundreds of millions of FCFA paid by the Biya regime that went to procure arms and ammunitions for their struggle.
As at today, Madam Akaoua Babiana Amadou Ali, the wife of the Vice Prime Minister of the Republic of Cameroon, Ahmoudu Ali, has spent 64 days in the custody of the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents, and all efforts to free her from captivity in the sect’s controlled territory in Nigeria are yet to yield the desired results. Her abduction on Sunday, July 27, during a massive attack on the northern towns of Amchide and Kolofuta by over 200 fighters of the sect, has remained unforgettable.
Vice Prime Minister Ali had returned to his country home in the Far North to celebrate the Muslim festival after the Ramadan fasting. The fighters swooped on the premises, shooting and killing, leading to the death of two brothers of the Vice Prime Minister and the abduction of his wife and two of her bodyguards. In all 17 persons were killed in the brutal encounter in the two towns in the Far North.
This strike at the heart of the Cameroonian government, through the abduction of the spouse of a top government functionary, constituted the wake-up call to the Biya government which has since deployed more than 3,000 troops to the Far North Region to counter the ever increasing incursions of the militant sect into Cameroonian territory.
Although President Biya had declared war against Boko Haram after a crises meeting in Paris on May 17, 2014 that brought together himself, the French President Francois Hollande as well as Presidents Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, Yayi Boni of Benin, Idriss Déby Itno of Chad and Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger, Biya still considered Boko Haram as merely “these people who attack only from midnight, whereas during that time our forces are resting” and not a force to reckon with.
The attack on the Vice Prime Minister’s residence occurred a day after the Maroua Military Tribunal sentenced 14 Boko Haram militants, who are suspected to be Nigerians, to prison terms ranging from between 10 and 20 years, on terrorism charges. The fighters were captured by the Cameroonian army in action, and the military tribunal’s judgment was considered to be very swift as a way of deterring others from venturing into the Cameroonian territory to carry out their act of terrorism. However, while the tribunal passed the sentence on the captured fighters other Boko Haram insurgents invaded the residence of the Mayor of Kolofata, Seini Boukar Lamine, and took him hostage. Mayor Lamine was also referred to as the Sultan, a Muslim leader in the area.
Though the Cameroonian army on July 29 freed all hostages in the attacks in the two towns, except the wife of the Vice Prime Minister who had been ferried across the border into Nigeria, the Cameroonian forces were shocked by the sect’s exploit. To show their effrontery, as at August 9, the sect members demanded for a ransom of $400,000 for the release of the woman, but the deal was botched.
