Lake Nyos, Foreign Allegiances, and the Long Shadow of Silence: Time for Truth and

Over 1,700 lives were lost in one night, allegedly due to a limnic eruption—a rare natural event involving the sudden release of carbon dioxide from the lake’s depths.

By The Independentist Editorial desk.

YAOUNDE August 5th 2025 – On August 4, 2025, during deliberations before Cameroon’s Constitutional Council, an unexpected voice from within the Francophone establishment broke the political script. In a moment that startled observers at home and abroad, a delegate directly accused President Paul Biya of allowing a foreign government—specifically Israel—to test a bomb in Lake Nyos in 1986, an act that, if proven, resulted in the silent massacre of thousands of Southern Cameroonians.

The Lake Nyos disaster remains one of Africa’s most haunting tragedies. Over 1,700 lives were lost in one night, allegedly due to a limnic eruption—a rare natural event involving the sudden release of carbon dioxide from the lake’s depths. That is the widely accepted explanation, upheld in international academic and scientific circles for nearly four decades.

Yet for many survivors and observers, especially those from Cameroon’s northwest region, this explanation has always felt incomplete. Their suspicions, long dismissed as fringe or unfounded, now resonate with renewed urgency in light of this allegation raised at the highest level of constitutional discourse. This is not an anonymous whisper in the margins—it is a call from within the inner circle of Cameroon’s own political class.

To be clear: this allegation has not been independently verified. There is no conclusive forensic evidence currently available to confirm that any bomb testing occurred in Lake Nyos. Israel has never admitted to such an operation, and the Cameroonian government has always maintained the scientific account. But the pattern of distrust, secrecy, and state-aligned impunity that characterizes the Biya regime makes it impossible to ignore such claims outright—especially when they resurface in official chambers.

The gravity of the accusation lies not just in what may have happened in 1986, but in what it implies today.

The same Israel allegedly involved in that unverified past tragedy is now one of Cameroon’s most critical military allies. Israeli contractors are known to train the Bataillon d’Intervention Rapide (BIR)—Cameroon’s elite combat unit often deployed in the Anglophone regions. For many in Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia), this feels like déjà vu: a foreign alliance built not to protect the population, but to suppress it.

Since 2016, the BIR has been widely accused of extrajudicial killings, village burnings, arbitrary detentions, and torture in the Anglophone regions. Human rights organizations have documented the abuses. Victims have testified. And yet, the international response has largely been silence—sometimes out of ignorance, often out of geopolitical convenience.

As an editorial board, The Independentist does not jump to conclusions. We are not interested in stoking unfounded conspiracies. But we firmly believe that allegations of this magnitude—raised in such an official setting—demand an equally official response.

We therefore call for the following:

An independent, international investigation into the events of Lake Nyos, revisiting both scientific data and classified archives, including satellite and military records.

A public inquiry into the scope and terms of Israel’s security cooperation with the Biya regime, especially regarding training and deployment of forces in conflict zones.

A platform for survivor testimonies—including those whose voices have long been excluded from formal state processes.

Truth and accountability are not luxuries. They are prerequisites for healing. For the people of the Savannah, Midland, and Atlantic zones of Southern Cameroons—whose pain is still raw, whose homeland is still under siege—these questions are not historical curiosities. They are matters of survival.

If Lake Nyos was indeed a site of silent experimentation, then the silence must now end. If it was not, then let the facts clear the air with full transparency.

In the meantime, let the world remember this: when a state suppresses its own people, when it forges alliances that fuel internal repression, and when the cries of its victims are ignored—those victims will write the history that others refused to speak.

The truth has waited long enough.

The Independentist Editorial desk