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…
