Southern Cameroons- Another Giant Land-Grabbing Scandal in Victoria:

Southern Cameroons- Another Giant Land-Grabbing Scandal in Victoria:

Another Giant Land-Grabbing Scandal in Victoria: How the Biya Regime and Its Agents Continue Dispossessing Southern Cameroons

Another major land-grabbing scandal in (Victoria) Limbe once again exposes the systematic dispossession of indigenous people in Southern Cameroons, also known as Ambazonian territory, by the Paul Biya regime and the network of officials, chiefs, brokers, and business collaborators who act in its interest. In this case, about 20 hectares originally allocated to the National Hydrocarbon Company (SNH) near Mokundange village for a gas bottling project were allegedly taken over, divided into plots, and built upon without transparency or respect for local communities. Reports from those on the ground indicate that prospective land buyers were told the transactions had the backing of powerful state authorities, including the Governor, the Senior Divisional Officer of Fako, and the Divisional Officer of Limbe II. This pattern reflects a broader reality in which administrative power is routinely used to intimidate communities, manipulate ownership claims, and convert ancestral land into private profit for politically connected actors.

What makes this scandal especially disturbing is that it mirrors many other cases across Fako, Meme, Ndian, and Mezam, where land in Southern Cameroons has been steadily seized through deception, coercion, and abuse of state authority. Communities have repeatedly complained about the expansion of elite land capture in Limbe, Buea, Tiko, Idenau, and along valuable coastal and plantation zones, where local families are pushed aside. At the same time, influential officials, military-linked figures, and regime loyalists acquire strategic property. Similar accusations have surrounded the misuse of CDC lands, forced occupation around urban expansion areas, encroachment on village commons, and the conversion of community land into state-controlled or privately resold parcels without meaningful consent. In many instances, traditional rulers are pressured, misled, or used as instruments in the process. At the same time, surveyors, administrators, and land intermediaries create paperwork designed to give illegal or contested transactions a veneer of legitimacy.

The Mokundange affair, therefore, is not an isolated dispute but part of a wider structure of exploitation under the Biya government, where land in Southern Cameroons is treated as spoils to be distributed among allies of the regime. The claim that the chief was misled into believing SNH no longer needed the land only reinforces how state officials and their agents allegedly manipulate information in order to trigger surrender, resale, or reallocation of valuable territory. Whether in Limbe’s rapidly urbanising neighbourhoods, in rural villages targeted for plantations or extractive projects, or in areas where displacement has been worsened by the ongoing conflict, the same accusation persists: indigenous land is being appropriated while the people with ancestral rights are ignored, impoverished, or silenced. This latest scandal stands as yet another example of how land grabbing has become both a political weapon and an economic enterprise in Southern Cameroons.

By Fritz Misodi Oponde IMM News