This editorial is not written to mock the dead. It is written to protect the living. Because every baited killing strengthens a lie—that Ambazonia is chaos rather than a people resisting annihilation. Every staged death stains the truth of the struggle.
By The Independentist Investigative Desk
There is a stupidity more lethal than bullets: refusing to read the battlefield while walking straight into it. The pattern is now undeniable. So-called Ambazonian “community leaders” and low-ranking politicians operating inside the French Cameroon administrative system are deliberately exposed, abandoned without protection, eliminated, and then weaponized in death. The connivers in Yaoundé watch with glee. The propaganda machine accelerates. And Ambazonian self-defense is instantly blamed. This is not accident. It is design.
Deliberate set ups to discredit the resistance.
Consider the cases of Abe Michael and Ngwang Njeba. Both were drawn deeper into a hostile system that had already militarized civilian space. Both were made visible at precisely the wrong moment. Both were denied meaningful protection. And when they were killed, the regime did not ask who benefited—it rushed to declare who to blame. Ambazonia.
Now add the case of Frida Joko. Mayor Frida Joko was killed on October twenty-seven, two thousand twenty-four. Yet the political exploitation of her death unfolded later, on January three, two thousand twenty-five, as her killing was folded into the same cynical narrative machinery—another coffin converted into an accusation, another life used to stain the resistance. No investigation. No restraint. No credibility. Just the familiar colonial reflex: manufacture corpses to manufacture consent.
A perfected practice for finger pointing
Under Paul Biya, French Cameroon has perfected this method. When legitimacy collapses, blood becomes messaging. When repression fails, funerals are staged as evidence. When the world asks questions, Yaoundé points at Ambazonia and shouts, “terrorists.”
Let us be brutally honest. Abe Michael, Ngwang Njeba, and Frida Joko were not protected because their lives were less useful than their deaths. Low-ranking officials are perfect bait: visible enough to mourn, expendable enough to discard. Their killings serve two purposes—terrorize communities and criminalize resistance. This is not governance. It is human sacrifice as statecraft.
The most painful truth is not only the regime’s cynicism. It is the recklessness of those who continue to accept roles inside a system that treats collaborators as consumables. Some mistake appointment for authority. Others mistake proximity to power for safety. All forget the same lesson: the French Cameroon system does not save people when their deaths can be turned into headlines.
The Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has never claimed it can provide universal security under occupation. No government in exile can. What it has consistently done is warn civilians against entanglement in enemy administrative structures whose primary function is to bait death and assign blame. This warning is not ideology. It is survival.
If you accept a title from a regime at war with your people, you are not neutral—you are exposed.
If you attend regime ceremonies in militarized zones, you are not a peacemaker—you are a prop.
If you believe your minor rank makes you irrelevant, you misunderstand the strategy—minor figures make the best martyrs for propaganda.
History is unforgiving on this point. Colonial systems have always trafficked in useful corpses—from Algeria to Kenya to Indochina. When legitimacy dies, bodies speak for the state. Today, French Cameroon speaks through coffins. And too many keep volunteering to be the message.
Warning to those ready to listen
This editorial is not written to mock the dead. It is written to protect the living. Because every baited killing strengthens a lie—that Ambazonia is chaos rather than a people resisting annihilation. Every staged death stains the truth of the struggle.
So let it be said without poetry and without apology: Stop walking into traps dressed as opportunities. Stop confusing regime recognition with leadership. Stop mistaking visibility for protection. Stop lending your bodies to a system that feeds on funerals. Critical thinking is no longer optional. It is a life-and-death discipline. The French Cameroon system knows exactly what it is doing. The only remaining question is whether Ambazonians will continue to help it do so. The guillotine does not fall only on tyrants. It falls on illusions. Choose wisely.
The Independentist Investigative Desk
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