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BBC Reporting

The speaker of the senate in Gabon has been sworn in as the country’s interim head of state, following the recent death of President Omar Bongo.

Under the constitution, Rose Francine Rogombe, an ally of Mr Bongo, must organise elections within 45 days.

On Thursday, Mr Bongo’s body will be repatriated from Spain where he had been undergoing medical treatment.

Access to the internet in the oil-rich nation remains cut off, but the state’s borders have been reopened.

Minute’s silence

Ms Rogombe was sworn in at the International Conference Centre in the capital, Libreville, on Wednesday morning, a day after her appointment was confirmed by the constitutional court.

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Sapa-AFP Report

Libreville – Gabon’s defence ministry announced on Monday the closure of air, land and sea borders after the death of President Omar Bongo Ondimba, Africa’s longest-serving leader.

The ministry, headed by Bongo’s son Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba, also announced in a statement read on public television that “all components of the defence forces were put in place across the territory.”

Story from BBC NEWS

Rebels in Cameroon have freed 10 people – mostly French nationals – seized from an oil vessel last month, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says.

They were captured off the Bakassi peninsula by a group opposed to the transfer of the oil-rich region from Nigeria to Cameroon.

The group had threatened to kill the hostages if Cameroon’s government did not talk to them.

There is no word so far on the circumstances of the release.

The 10 crew members of the French oil supply vessel include seven French nationals, two Cameroonians and a Tunisian.

They were seized by gunmen in speedboats on 31 October.

Story from BBC News

Armed gunmen in speedboats have kidnapped and threatened to kill 10 crew members from an oil vessel off the West African state of Cameroon.

The vessel’s owners said those taken hostage were seven French nationals, two Cameroonians and a Tunisian.

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Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited
By Tansa Musa

Cameroonian soldiers killed 10 gunmen who attacked them on Thursday in the Bakassi peninsula, a long-disputed territory Nigeria is transferring to Cameroon under a World Court order, Cameroon’s Defence Ministry said.

A spokesman for the Niger Delta Defence and Security Council (NDDSC), a little-known armed Nigerian group opposed to the handover of the oil-rich territory, said its men had launched Thursday’s attack but said only four of them had been killed.

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Agence France Presse Reporting
Copyright © 2008 July, 13

Armed men wounded three Cameroonian soldiers in an attack in an oil-rich area of the west of the country on Sunday, a source close to the defence ministry told AFP.

“A post of around a dozen soldiers was attacked… by armed men who came in a pirogue,” a type of canoe, before 0700 GMT on the Bakassi peninsula near the Nigerian border, said the source, who asked not to be named.

“Three of the soldiers were wounded in the exchange of gunfire,” the source said, adding that the attackers made off by boat with arms and ammunition.

Officials were not available for comment.

In November 21 Cameroonian soldiers were killed on the Bakassi peninsula, which juts into the Gulf of Guinea, in an attack by unidentified armed men. They were found dead in the bush days later.

Nigeria officially handed the peninsula to Cameroon in August 2006 after a territorial dispute that led to a series of bloody clashes between the west African neighbours in the 1990s.

Cameroon’s Defence Minister Remy Ze Meka last month spoke of “a new type of conflict with an invisible enemy” in Bakassi, where he said armed bands were operating after fleeing from the authorities in Nigeria.

Culled from THISDAY newspaper, Nigeria
From Ernest Chinwo in Calabar, 06.12.2008

Barely two months to the August 18, 2008 date for Nigeria’s pull-out from the remaining parts of Bakassi Peninsula, there are fears of a possible showdown between Nigeria and the Republic of Cameroon following reprisals from the gendarmes after recent clashes with suspected militants in the area.

Already, Nigerians in the Peninsula have declared 300 of their compatriots missing, while more than 1000 refugees, mostly women and children, have arrived Ikang Central in the New Bakassi Local Gover-nment area in Cross River State.

Cameroonian Armed Forces have also condoned off the northern axis of the Peninsula already handed over by Nigeria on August 14, 2006 and stationed military gunboats in the area less than 12 miles to Ikang.

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 AFP Reporting – 4:56 PM ET

Armed men abducted a top regional official in an attack Monday on Cameroonian troops on the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula bordering Nigeria, a defence ministry official told AFP.

The deputy regional governor, whose name was not released, had been accompanying the soldiers on the Akwa Yafe river, near the Nigerian village of Ikang, when they were attacked by men from another craft.

“We are trying to understand what happened,” the defence ministry official said, requesting anonymity.

Communications Minister Jean Pierre Biyiti Bi Essam said he was investigating reports of the attack.

Last November 21 Cameroonian soldiers were killed on the Bakassi peninsula, which juts into the Gulf of Guinea, in an attack by non-identified armed men.

Nigeria officially handed the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon in August 2006 after a territorial dispute which had led to a series of bloody clashes between the west African neighbours in the 1990s.

Mr Mila Assoute served as a member of parliament for the Camerounese ruling Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounais (RDPC) from 1983 to 1988, and later in the RDPC Central Committee.

In this video released on May 13, 2008, Mr Assoute accuses the Camerounese president, Mr Paul Biya, amongst other things, of putting an end to democracy in the Cameroun Republic and breaking the social contract with the Camerounese people by changing the state’s constitution to perpetuate his rule for life, and then offers himself as the man to rescue the Camerounese state.

TFT Magazine has learned that part of the revision of the Republic of Cameroun constitution will include provisions protecting the president from any sort of prosecution for actions carried out while in office.

After receiving the French Ambassador to Cameroun in the morning of April 4, 2008 in his palace, president Paul Biya’s ruling RDPC party submitted a draft law later that afternoon to parliament in order to modify the constitution of the country to remove any presidential term limits, according to media reports from the Camerounese capital.

Quoting state radio in the Cameroun capital, Reuters reported late Friday April 4, 2008 that the Biya “government has presented a constitutional reform to parliament to remove term limits for president Paul Biya, who has ruled the central African country for 25 years.” Biya’s RDPC has 153 of 180 seats in parliament.

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