Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe still vividly remembers one random act of kindness during his 44-day lonely stay at the dreaded State Defence Secretariat detention facility in Cameroon’s political capital, Yaoundé, in 2018: the gift of a Bible. A rare, unexpected gift which helped him weather the ill treatment inflicted on him. “The Bible became my sole companion in the cell—it strengthened my faith and spirit and made me even stronger,” Sisiku Ayuk Tabe tells Africa Is a Country. “This is the best gift I have ever received in my entire life.”

On October 1, 2017, following a government crackdown on protesters, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe declared the independence of Ambazonia—a catch-all term for Cameroon’s English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions, known during the colonial era as the British Southern Cameroons.

In November 2016, lawyers from the two regions protested the government’s decision to appoint Francophone magistrates in Anglophone courts, despite lacking training in British common law. Teachers followed suit, calling sit-in protests in response to the appointment of French speakers in Anglophone schools who lacked the ability to communicate in English. The declaration of Ambazonian independence triggered deadly clashes between Cameroon government military forces and Anglophone armed separatists that resulted in widespread atrocities against the civilian population. Three months after that declaration, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was arrested at Nera Hotel in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, alongside 10 of his team members, and later extradited to Cameroon, despite claims that they were refugees and asylum seekers.

In August 2019, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his aides were charged with over nine felony counts related to terrorism and secession and sentenced to life imprisonment with a fine of F.CFA 273 billion (approximately $428 million) after a 19-hour long trial at the Yaoundé Military Court. They were then transferred to the Yaoundé Principal Prison. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe recalls a “sham” trial that violated every “smidgen of fairness.” “Although civilians, we were court-martialed before a heavily militarized tribunal, prosecuted by a panel of judges we had recused for being clearly biased against us,” he says. Their lawyers protested by staging a walkout. But this walkout, and their clients’ request for an adjournment for another counsel to be constituted, was ignored by the judges. “They were evidently mandated to conclude the case on that day,” recalls Sisiku Ayuk Tabe. “One of us even collapsed and laid placid on a bench throughout the hearing. But the judges went ahead and pronounced life sentences on us all, with heavy fines. How can you send people to life imprisonment in a court session without lawyers for their defence, and in a language they don’t understand?”

Today, the men remain in jail despite a UN human rights council call and three judgments from the federal high court of Abuja demanding their release. Years of grievances at perceived discrimination coalesced into Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s 2017 declaration of Ambazonian independence, resulting in a military crackdown in Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions. After nine years of fighting, Cameroon is still stuck in a festering conflict, unable to quell the tension and violence between its French- and English-speaking people. More than 6,000 people have died at the hands of separatist and government forces according to the International Crisis Group (although Ambazonian leadership puts the figure at well over 50,000), while at least a million others have been rendered homeless.

The roots of the conflict trace back more than 100 years. Initially annexed by the Germans in 1884, the territory was later divided and ruled as separate entities by the French and the British in the aftermath of the defeat of the Germans in World War I. After independence was achieved in 1960–1961, the two territories formed a federal state, with the French-speaking section constituting about 80 percent and the English-speaking section constituting about 20 percent, both in territory and population. However, the federal structure that guaranteed the rights of the minority Anglophone section was dissolved in 1972 following a controversial referendum. “The federal arrangement ensured that each state (East Cameroon and West Cameroon) maintained its linguistic, legal, educational and cultural systems and values,” Sisiku Ayuk Tabe points out. “French Cameroon achieved its independence on the 1st of January 1960 and the British Southern Cameroons were supposed to achieve theirs on the 1st of October 1961.”

Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his aides are not the only high-profile separatists to be arrested in the course of the conflict. Last September, Norwegian police arrested a 52-year-old German national of Cameroonian origin, Dr. Lucas Ayaba Cho. The leader of the Ambazonia Governing Council (AGovC), a separatist group involved in the ongoing conflict, is alleged to have coordinated the group’s armed wing, the Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF), remotely from Norway. Although the exact nature of the accusations against him remains unclear, initial police reports indicate that Ayaba Cho is being held on charges of incitement of crimes against humanity in Anglophone Cameroon. His counsel said Ayaba Cho denies all guilt and that the court had misunderstood events in Cameroon.

His detention has been repeatedly extended, most recently in March 2025. In 2023, nearly half a dozen other Anglophone Cameroonians were sentenced in the US for transporting and smuggling firearms and ammunition from the US to assist separatists fighting against the government of Cameroon.

Five and a half feet tall and smooth shaven, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was immaculately dressed in a white dashiki and leather clog-toe sandals, with a golden chain and wristwatch, when we visited him at the Yaoundé Principal Prison in late February. With the easy charm of a seasoned salesman and the swaggering self-assurance of a politician, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is eager to tell every visitor that the quest to restore the independence of the “homeland” is rooted in history, geography, culture, and international law.

According to him, the future Ambazonian nation (currently harboring approximately 8 million people), will be 23rd in Africa in terms of population and bigger than the Netherlands, Belgium, or Switzerland in both territory and population. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe likens their prison experience to a “furnace”—citing the poor quality food and bedding—but maintains that neither torture nor death can deter them from the pursuit of the “noble goal” which is the liberation of Ambazonia.

“We are resolute and ready to fight with the last muscle,” Sisiku Ayuk Tabe says. “We are in a storm, yet smiling because Christ is in it with us—you cannot defeat a people in their land. It is a divine fight.” Questioned whether he’s willing to trade Ambazonian independence for his release from prison, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe says that would amount to “treason.” “Doing so will betray those who have paid the ultimate price,” he says, “and those who will come after us to be trapped in the vicious cycle of assimilation and enslavement.” He calls on Cameroon President Paul Biya to do the right thing: Release everyone detained as a result of the conflict and begin negotiations to solve it.

“The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UN-HRC-WGAD) in its Communication 59/2022 of October 14, 2022, ruled in our favor,” Sisiku Ayuk Tabe says. “Article 45 of Cameroon’s Constitution stresses the importance of international instruments and an obligation to respect them.” Referencing a declaration made by an Anglophone lawmaker in parliament, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe also likens the two English-speaking regions that make up the future Ambazonia to “two undissolvable cubes of sugar” and the Republic of Cameroon, a sea. The two “can’t blend” and so would be forced to be separate nations, like Singapore and Malaysia, he says.

“We are more and more resolute in our conviction such that we have gained tremendous and uncedable grounds in our struggle for self-determination,” Sisiku Ayuk Tabe says. “No military in the world has ever defeated a determined and resolute people fighting for an ideology. Paul Biya has a choice—and a personal choice, at that—to make: whether Cameroon, which he has ruled for almost half a century, [should] coexist peacefully with Ambazonia as neighboring countries just like USA and Canada, or be hostile neighbors like Israel and Palestine.”

But some observers believe the violent and criminal behavior of people claiming to be Ambazonia freedom fighters has defeated the genuine purpose of the liberation struggle. An independent Ambazonia, according to many analysts, remains a dream. A distant dream. “It’s true that the group of agitating Anglophones are fighting for human rights, but it is even truer that the methods [used] have become unpopular and have disgraced the Anglophones: killing their own people, kidnappings, terrorism tactics, boycotting education, etc., have made sound-minded Anglophones withdraw from the struggle,” says Wilson Tamfuh, professor of public and international law at the University of Dschang and president of the Cameroon branch of the International Law Association. “It’s not only unpopular now, it’s also unnecessary. For if a tribunal were to be created to try those guilty of crimes committed between 2016–2025, the major leaders would not be spared.”

Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, however, distances his team from criminal actions carried out by Ambazonia freedom fighters, stating, “Wrong is wrong and no one should commit crimes in the name of the struggle.” To him, if there is no enemy within, “the enemy outside can do us no harm.”

Professor Tamfuh notes that past declarations claiming to uphold the rights and identity of the Anglophone community in Cameroon have yielded no dividends, describing it as a history littered with dissatisfaction. “Grumbling and complaints, for the most part unheeded, could be a deception for the Anglophones to waste their lives fighting instead of forging ahead with a fruitful destiny,” he asserts. “Another way of claiming your rights is to be more resourceful than the one oppressing you, especially in areas where the oppressor cannot reach you. Some African Americans have become great in the midst of color discrimination in foreign countries where their forefathers were transported as slaves.”

The political scientist further laments that the current unrest has meant the “erosion” of the spiritual and moral values that epitomized the strength of the Anglophone community in Cameroon. He cites the case of Anglophones who took loans and built houses but have since escaped from their houses to the cities and others who have abandoned their farms, the mainstay of their economy. “The Anglophones are more weakened than before: Strong marriages, which used to be one of the cultural strengths of Anglophones, have been broken. Anglophone girls have become sex workers in Francophone major towns and regions,” says Tamfuh. “Thousands are refugees, internally displaced and suffering in the bushes. Chiefs and great economic operators and school proprietors have moved to the Francophone major cities, carrying their wealth and investments with them, to benefit the Francophone population.”

Tamfuh fears for the future “obliteration” of the pure Anglophone identity in the Cameroonian nation. “There will be more intermarriages between the Anglophones and Francophones, more Anglophones expressing themselves principally in the French language and a deeper integration of the two populations into one,” he says. “If the Ambazonian struggle were to be considered a vehicle, it has missed its way into the bush. The vehicle should be brought back from the bush, repaired, and given a redirection on a sound path.”

Rebecca Tinsley, a UK journalist and activist who has been following the conflict from the onset, agrees, stating that violence in the current impasse benefits neither the Cameroon government nor the Anglophone separatist fighters. The greatest loser, Tinsley says, are civilians—children denied education and businesses grounded and extorted by both sides. “The stalemate can be broken if Cameroonians unite to reject the corrupt and inefficient government in Yaoundé,” Tinsley says. “The Anglophone dream should be for peace and prosperity, but the road to that dream might go through genuine federalism and devolution in the short term, rather than independence. The people should shape that journey, not the men with guns on either side.”

Today, tit-for-tat killings occur on a near-daily basis in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions. On Monday, March 17, suspected separatist fighters opened fire on a taxi in Buea, capital of the Southwest region, killing two civilians. Earlier the same day, Cameroonian soldiers raided a separatist hideout in Baba I in the Northwest, killing three fighters and rescuing six civilians who were held hostage. A similar raid on February 23 left six separatist fighters dead.

Dr. Elvis Mbwoge, senior lecturer of political science and public administration at the University of Buea, says the Cameroonian security forces have succeeded in cautiously capping the operations of Anglophone separatist militias. “It is also very clear it is the secessionists that are tired, weary, and worn out, who wish for a way out,” Dr. Mbwoge says. He argues that the so-called Ambazonia struggle has taken Cameroon back some 50 years.

“More than 7,000 lives are lost and more than half a million people displaced, all [due] to the recklessness of the power-mongering secessionist leaders who preferred to manipulate the minds of innocent youths to fight against the state while they themselves sought refuge abroad as they declared their so-called independence,” he says. Criticisms like these—coupled with disagreements and power tussle within the Ambazonia leadership—have become the hallmarks of the nine-year Anglophone liberation struggle in Cameroon.

But Sisiku Ayuk Tabe contends that this was to be expected. He insists that anyone who is against the Ambazonia liberation struggle is ignorant of history, geography, and international law governing the independence of the two former UN protectorates. Citing the Bible story of Daniel, Gideon, and the Hebrews, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe says that almost all past liberation struggles have had similar challenges and even more. While upset that the enemy has used “various tactics” to discredit the liberation struggle, he claims that the resolve and quest for independence among his people remain unchanged.

“Through the few opportunities for negotiations that have presented themselves, the supposed disagreements and internal wranglings you are referring to have quickly melted away and we have presented ourselves as one people,” Sisiku Ayuk Tabe says. “The differences you are insinuating are only a genuine attempt to forge a true Ambazonian democracy, pillared on diversity of opinions about the process and procedure to our freedom but solidly coalesced around a unity of purpose—that is, the liberation and sovereignty of our people—and once there, we’ll resolve our differences as family and build a strong democracy with a vibrant economy and solid judiciary like we had before our unfortunate annexation by French Cameroon in 1961.” His views are echoed by Chris Anu, Houston-based leader of a faction of the Interim Government of Ambazonia, who claims Ambazonian resilience has thwarted the Cameroon government’s military muscle. “We will not settle for anything other than a free and independent Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia,” Anu says. “Cameroon did not expect the war to linger on for nine years. In fact, if they knew what they know now, they would never have declared war. I don’t know when the war will end, but I can say that Ambazonia will not lose.”

But achieving Ambazonian independence undoubtedly requires respected international friends to support it. Tinsley believes the “violent” and “criminal behavior” of the separatist fighters have simply scared off such credible foreign backers. “France, which has leverage, is terrified of losing yet another client state in Africa, and the Yaoundé regime disregards even the Vatican’s criticism,” she says. “The African Union is afraid of causing offense, America has lost interest in Africa, and Russia and China favor the regime so they can take Africa’s wealth.” Tinsley cites three main reasons why the international community has remained silent on the conflict in Cameroon: First, the violence of Anglophone separatist fighters means that outside observers see no good guys in the struggle. Second, Anglophone civil society movements do themselves no favors by trying to relitigate the 1961 plebiscite. “The international community has no appetite for that discussion so it is better to tell the world about the current human rights abuses and corruption of the Yaoundé regime, which flirts with Putin,” Tinsley says. And third, Gaza is a “fashionable issue” among ignorant Westerners. “They don’t care about Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo either, by the way,” says Tinsley. “What a shame the African Union is silent about Cameroon. Where is the Black African anger about atrocities suffered by the Anglophone people?”

In the face of this loud silence and conspiracy of the international community, Tinsley suggests that Francophones and Anglophones in Cameroon must find a “common cause” in demanding a road map leading to a pluralist, democratic government that is transparent and accountable to all citizens. This, she explains, requires politicians and armed groups to “put their egos and greed to one side,” and to find the courage “to reject the current frozen impasse.”

Dr. Mbwoge feels that the Ambazonia struggle is over and that the two regions are currently experiencing the last phase of this struggle, which, he notes, has been infiltrated by “selfish criminals and rogue security forces” who do not want the conflict to end. “The government of Cameroon operates on the school of thought that Cameroon’s problems should be accorded Cameroonian solutions,” Mbwoge says. “Thanks to the efforts of the entire nation coming together during the Major National Dialogue initiated by President Paul Biya, their multiple proposals—including the special status, decentralization, and reconstruction—currently [being] implemented, have played a crucial role in ending this crisis and bringing back normalcy within the the two regions.”

Professor Tamfuh, for his part, thinks that both sides must humbly pave the way for a ceasefire. According to him, “grumbling and complaining” from one generation to another only help waste the precious lives of Anglophone youths. “We have seen grumblings about Nigerian treatment (1950–1959), grumblings about federalism (1962–1971); grumblings about unitary state (1972–2014), and now grumblings about [secession] (2014–present)—an era with the worst casualties. God hates grumbling and complaining. He loves people who have faith to move forward,” he says. Like Tinsley, Tamfuh proposes three key ways through which the conflict can be solved. The first is for Ambazonians to disband themselves, withdraw, and change their methods. The second is for the UN, which created the current state of union, to bring back the third option of complete independence as a separate state, which was ignored during the 1961 plebiscite.

“It was done in the case of Ethiopia and Eritrea and the recent case of Sudan and Southern Sudan. With strong leaders like Donald Trump who go beyond their reach to solve democratic problems in other states, don’t be surprised [if] this direction is adopted,” Tamfuh says. The third and last possible solution would be for the Cameroonian government to explore fresh peace overtures, such as opening a dialogue with the separatist leaders or reviewing the federalism option. “Don’t forget that internal divisions will play a lot on government positions,” Tamfuh says. “For example, it is doubtful if a federalism between the Francophone states on the one side and the Northwest and Southwest on the other is going to be a viable solution. Many leaders on both sides and many parts of the population have voiced an unwillingness for the [English-speaking] Northwest and Southwest regions to be a state together.”