Thursday, 31 December 2015

Ambazonia activist charged with secession, refused bail


Muluh Mbuh Justice is still awaiting trial more than three weeks after he had been made the unwilling guest of the Bamenda Prison. Reports filtering from the prison say he has been charged for secession. He was incarcerated on Thursday September 4, 2009 at about 4 p.m. On Thursday October 1, 2009 he was refused bail. The application for bail had suffered a few adjournments.

The story goes that a certain lecturer in National Polytechnic Bambui of Nigerian origin, a certain Ikechukwu Christopher Lebecke was arrested after his house had been searched in Bambui and some incriminating objects were found. Among other things was a list of students he was keeping for what he alone knows why, a reasonable quantity of marijuana and a pile of documents on Ambazonia. The Vanguard equally learnt that he had been charged for “sexually transmitted marks”, as well as trading in marks with students, among other things.

On Tuesday September 1, 2009 Mr Muluh Mbuh, who is a lecturer in the same school, reported himself at the Judicial Police in Bamenda, precisely Room 17, as the summons he received through the school authorities indicated and at the appropriate time. He went through real grueling questions.

He told this reporter later that Tuesday, “I sweated under my armpits. The policeman displayed a lot of knowledge about me.”

Quizzed on what questions he was asked he said they revolved around his involvement with the Ambazonia Southern Cameroons struggle, his stay in the USA and others. He said the police asked him how he returned to Cameroon and he said he returned on foot.
He did everything to convince the policeman he had long left the Ambazonia struggle, exemplifying it with the fact that he had tendered an application to be a permanent lecturer in ENS where he was presently part-time lecturer. Muluh Mbuh even went further to say he had a note he had written to Fon Gorji Dinka, the President and Founder of Ambazonia Republic stating he had resigned from the struggle. “I could not have travelled to Yaoundé to deposit an application to work in Cameroon when I was still an ardent member of the Ambazonia movement,” Mr Mbuh told The Vanguard, he had told the investigator.

Thereupon he was told to go and bring the letter the next day. It is not clear what transpired the next day but when this reporter met him at the Judicial police he simply told him the police had said they were taking him to the State Counsel. Sources say they met the State Counsel in a restaurant and it was in this restaurant that the learned State Counsel signed the remand. Later he was remanded.

Application for bail, Missing file, Missing President of High Court, accumulated case files

Following the new Criminal Procedure Code in Cameroon which gives one a right of not being guilty until he is proven guilty, his personal Lawyer was called from Buea and he reached Bamenda the next day to try to secure a writ of habeas corpus for him. Reports say at the court they were unable to trace his file.

Speaking to The Vanguard on phone Barrister Nyah Marcel, sitting in for Barrister Blaise Berinyuy said for more than a week the President of the High Court has not been on seat. This had resulted in an accumulation of case files in his chamber. After several attempts to meet the President of the High Court in vain, the matter was handed to the Vice President, the Vanguard learnt. It was on Thursday September 24, 2009 that the matter first appeared in Court. The accused was not present for some strange reason. Reports say when the accused was visited in prison after it was found that he had dressed up to go to court but no warder came to take him there. He further said the Registrar on Monday September 14, 2009 was planning to transfer the case to the Vice President of the High Court.

Who is Justice Muluh Mbuh?

Justice Muluh Mbuh is a Cameroonian born in Pinyin. He lived, studied and worked in the United States of America from 1994 to about 2007 when he returned to Cameroon. he obtained a Masters Degree in Economics and International Conflict Resolution. He started teaching as a part-time teacher in ENS Annex Bambili. He worked with Fon Gorji Dinka and others in the Ambazonia Movement until he fell out with them. He has written so many books and essays on the Cameroonian situation.

His feelings about the solution of the Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia)/La Republique du Cameroun situation are quite moderate. This is expressed in his easy “Open Challenge to the Leaders and intellectuals of Cameroun”

This author for one would bear everlasting grudges against Cameroun government if such grudges were meaningful. But do not the lessons of the Bible teach us to strive to live Christ-like lives—thereby forgiving our enemies and sins committed against us as we would want done onto us by God and others? Would we not pass for hypocrites if all we do is seek our own redemption but ignore the suffering that Cameroun masses and other Africans have and are going through right at the moment? Some people in the liberation struggle may consider this write-up betrayal of the struggle to free Ambazonia from Cameroun but if they want to hear of betrayal, they will not wait too long to have more details from this very author.

In the tradition of our country, did we or did we not grant asylum to Union du Populations Camerounaise (UPC) exiles? Does anyone think God Almighty has forgotten the good we have done in this sour union since the last forty-six years? If we must continue doing good, then nothing stops us, even at the eve of our freedom from feeling sorry for these, I must say, silly, greedy and mean-spirited Camerounians. That is why, in tradition of erstwhile Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) I have decided to throw this carrot (and not the stick rule) to Cameroun authorities and let us see how they take it; if they despise it, nothing stops us from calling them bad names and moving on! By then, we would have been on the record for having made very succinct propositions for peaceful resolution of this impasse.

Reactions

Some students from National Polytechnic Bambui spoke in a fitful outburst of anger condemning the whole situation and attributing Muluh Mbuh’s plight to the school administration. They hailed Mr Muluh Mbuh as one of their best teachers and even dared that he was framed out of jealousy. As Director of the Degree program in National Polytechnic Bambui, some of those “old people with demented brains thought they should be the ones to be there instead of him,” the boys fumed.the boys went further to condemn so many things in the National Polytechnic predicting that if Mr Yong Francis did not take quick measures “all those beautiful buildings he has constructed will one day come to naught.”

“We need good and young modern teachers, not old men who left school in the sixties and have forgotten all they learnt or are not conversant with modern methods!”

Contrary to some claims that Mr Muluh Mbuh was involved in the examinations malpractices the students averred that Mr Muluh Mbuh had never been so mean. “As for One Love we know he was doing it,” one student said. “One Love” was referring to the other teacher, Lebecke, who was detained too.

Pundits and sympathizers are of the opinion that Mr Muluh Mbuh has been a little too vocal about the liberation struggle. He has written so much on it and some of his literature must have been offensive to the regime.

By Nke Valentine

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