The women mourned and sang dirges on Tuesday, November 24, 2020 at the Bamenda, Grand Stand.
A month after the Kumba massacre, the queen mothers known here as Ma Fo’os denounced the killings in the Northwest and Southwest regions. One of them, Ma Fo’o Judith Yah Sunday Achidi, current General Manager of Cameroon Telecommunications, CAMTEL, coordinated the women. Violent clashes between the military and scattered armed groups in the English-speaking Regions have left many dead. Combatants engage in targeted killings. The Kumba gruesome murder of seven schoolchildren in a classroom by gunmen on October 24, 2020, that shocked the world was the cusp, according to the women.
The women came [out] to demand an end to the killings. Also, the women prayed for the souls of the victims during an ecumenical service. Rev. Caroline Memoh led the queen mothers from Ndu, Nso and Nkwen, and other women in a requiem prayer. Men joined the female folk to denounce the killings.
In a statement delivered by Judith Achidi, the Ma Fo’os said, “We deplore and condemn in the strongest terms the constant killing of our children since the escalation of the crisis in our beloved Anglophone regions. Women are hardest hit as we live through the unbearable pain of seeing our offspring dying daily due to the crisis currently rocking our two English speaking regions,” Judith Achidi read in a quavering voice. She cited Ngarbu, the hacking of Comfort Tumasang in Muyuka and Florence Ayafor in Pinyin and the brutal assassination of children in Kumba. “As queen mothers we don’t know discrimination,” she said while begging combatants to “drop the guns and stop the violence.” The women want children to “never again be targeted… we plead sincerely with the belligerents to render our two Anglophone regions peaceful as they used to be” the women yearned for a return to normalcy in the two troubled regions.
Jude VIBAN
