Holdup at Ngyen-Mbo & Mile 20 as Mbon Booms

Holdup at Ngyen-Mbo & Mile 20 as Mbon Booms

It's a bright and fair Tuesday morning, June 18 2019. The sun rises from the hills as the birds and flowers welcome the rays with chirps and blooms. It's another promising day for economic activities to boom. Commercial motor bikes and township cabs alongside pedestrians hit the roads criss crossing one point to another. The liveliness is symbolic of the return of past hay days.

Little did forecasters foresee a fun spoiler that soon marked his undesired presence in some outskirt areas of the Mbengwi municipality. News soon went wild like the fires of California that "Amba Boys" (non state armed groups fighting for the independence of a state they call Ambazonia) are in a shooting spray with government soldiers at Mile 20. The exchange  halted movement of civilians from the suburbs to Mbengwi central town and vice versa.

Stranded Passengers at Sam Tabeng, Ngyen-Mbo Running Away as Military Trucks Pass By

Mile 20, Mbengwi has often been a battle fief in the course of the ongoing armed conflict raging on in Anglophone Cameroon, reason being that government soldiers have been mounting checkpoints there and even in Acha together with Tad market in Nyen. After using fetish objects like dead owls and coffins to chase away the soldiers from the area to no avail in the early stage of the conflict, the non state fighters finally resulted to using dane guns.

The soldiers finally abandoned Acha, Tad and Mile 20 and concentrated their controls in Mbengwi central town. New checkpoints were mounted around SAR/SM Mbengwi, the council hall, Njembeng junction. This went on for over half a year and calm reigned in Mbengwi. Soldiers became in charge of Mbengwi town and "Amba Boys" in charge of Side Down, an appellation for all the villages located in the Gutah, Medig and Tondig zones of the Meta clan.

Stranded Passenger Observing the Military Trucks Pass By

But of recent, government soldiers started testing the deepness of the waters with their legs again. They started descending to Mile 20 from time to time to mount checkpoints. Denizens have been complaining of how only their faith keeps them in church because almost every Sunday, each time they are in church, close to twenty soldiers usually come and start doing control only around the church house. Some even take cover in the quarters.

Analysts say the soldiers chose only church service time because for the sake of the innocent civilians, "Amba Boys" can't attack them. From Sundays, they continued descending to Mile 20 on ordinary days. The pull factor to such a said to be danger zone has been money as opined by an anonymous Mile 20 inhabitant. At the end of everyday, the money they return with, collected from bike riders and cars  without documents plus travellers without ID cards is seemingly worth the risk, he opined. Thus the "Amba Boys" had been attempting to prohibit the soldiers from crossing into their own "carved out territory" through few distant shots.

Halted Cabs Waiting to Hit Back the Road

Sensing that the government soldiers are gradually testing the grounds to mark a return to resume their control at  Tad and Acha, the separatist fighters, said to now be in possession of more sophisticated weapons decided to step up their game by reinforcing and launching an attack on the soldiers at Mile 20 last Tuesday June 18. The gun battle raged on for hours as birds, animals and humans took to their heels. We are yet to independently confirm if any casualties were recorded though it is highly alleged the firings were mostly in the air than at a target since both enemies kept a long distance from each other. The fear of death keeps you to fight the next day, a strong believe users of arms have.

Public opinion holds that if soldiers stay away from the outskirts and concentrate only in the central town, serenity will reign. However unofficial  opinion holds that government functionary will never ever be determined by commoners. Meaning soldier master what they were trained to do reason why they chose where to go and what to go do there not based on whether their presence will be welcomed or not.

Same day, at about 4pm, traffic was halted on the Ngyen-Mbo road. Gunshots were also reported to have been heard on the highway around Mile 17. From findings, it wasn't any exchange but soldiers returning from a mission in Ngie-Njikwa marking their passage by firing in the air. It should be recalled that on Sunday 19th May 2019, over eight fully loaded trucks and a caterpillar passed through Mbengwi to Ngie/Njikwa and returned on Tuesday. The purpose of their mission and if it was accomplished is still not known. Last Sunday, June 16, they passed again with same caterpillar herding to Ngie/Njikwa and like before, returned on Tuesday through Mbengwi back to where they came from.

Hearing the gunshots around Mile 17 yesterday, traffic became halted around Ngyen-Mbo. All cars coming from Bamenda were compelled to prematurely terminate rolling their wheels on the tar mark at a junction called Sam Tabeng. More than 10 cabs and close to 50 passengers became stranded here for close to an hour, metres away from the Wednesday Market Checkpoint. It was finally at about 5pm that the military trucks and their caterpillar made their "triumphant" exit out of Mbengwi back to where they came from. Traffic flow resumed on the road till evening.

All of this went on at the outskirts while deep in the heart of the municipality, Mile 18 Mbon, it was business as usual. Persons in Mile 18 only heard the news through phone calls and eavesdropping. Many received calls from their relatives in other towns saying they've heard Mbengwi is hot and they were like which Mbengwi? To them, nothing is happening here but to those at Mile 20, the story was true.

One certainty is that news about gunshots in and around Mbengwi is often exaggerated and the source is always "hearsay". I hear say it's hot in Side Down, I hear say it'd hot in Bome, I hear it's hot in Acha, in this and that place yet when one digs deeper to get the details of what was really hot, the reality will be that few gunshots were heard. Some Mbengwi sons and daughters resident out of home took to their social media handles with posts like "Pray for Mbengwi" seemingly passing across the amplified message of the worst has happened.

Today Wednesday June 19, Mbengwi inhabitants are all indoors as a ghost town is being respected. Who called for it and why are some of the questions yet to be answered. Till now no announcement of a ghost town has been seen on social media yet just by word of mouth, the news was spread and right now, it's fully being respected.