The Cameroon Renaissance Movement party, CRM, of Professor Maurice Kamto had announced a nationwide protest for January 26th without the approval of Government. Many are those who took the Cameroonian political guru for a Lilliputian, until about midday Saturday, when images of the protest surfaced on social media, of the rally in the political capital, Yaoundé and economic capital Douala.
Amongst the protesters, was Barrister Michelle Ndoki, a firebrand Cameroonian female lawyer, human right defender and one of the pillars of the CRM party. Michel had led one faction of the protest in Douala, when the military fired life bullets. she got shot on the right thigh and was rushed to the hospital. Bar Michel Ndoki had won the admiration of Cameroonians when she exercised fine intellectual and professional might in the country’s constitutional court in November 2018, in a bid to defend her presidential candidate, Maurice Kamto, who had declared himself winner before the presidential results
Before Bar Ndoki, another member, Celestine Djamen had equally been shot on the leg. The protest was organized to continue decrying electoral fraud of October 7th, 2018, where the party emerged second. Also, to demand that justice be done to the state officials who poorly managed state funds, yet let the Confederation of African football, CAF, cease 2019 hosting rights from the country.
Two prominent members of another opposition party, Social Democratic Front, had been arrested earlier this week for same reasons. At the time of this article, The CRM national Chairman, Maurice Kamto, had left Yaoundé for Douala to assess the situation.
For more than two years now, northwest and southwest regions are in a war situation sparked by a teachers and lawyers strike in November 2016, with more than a thousand dead, 150 villages attacked, 160,000 IDPs, and so much to ride home in terms of humanitarian crisis. Cameroon military is noted to be one of the continent’s worst, under 84 years old President Paul Biya who still rules the country since 1982.
