Canadian Foreign Ministry to Host Consultation with Akwanga over Ambazonian Oil Assets

As a direct result of a Notice of Intent to submit a claim to arbitration under the Canada-Cameroon bilateral trade agreement filed by Dr. Ebenezer Akwanga and the African People’s Liberation Movement (APLM); the Canadian Global Affairs Ministry, Investment Trade Policy Division, has agreed to host a consultation with Akwanga and his legal team in August 2019. Akwanga is seeking damages for expropriation under the treaty as a result of a Canadian subnational government agency (Alberta Securities Commission) taking the position that Ambazonian claims to future oil and mineral rights are fictitious, false, and a façade.

Dr. Ebenezer Akwanga is leader of the Southern Cameroons Defense Force (SOCADEF) and the African People’s Liberation Movement (APLM) formerly called the Southern Cameroons Youth League (SCYL). Akwanga alleges that Philemon Yang, the former Cameroun High Commissioner to Canada and former Prime Minister, colluded with Canada to declare Ambazonian claims to oil and mineral resources false, a façade and fictitious as well as orchestrating a Camerounian, Canadian and French press campaign against Akwanga and others. The APLM (formerly known as the Southern Cameroons Youth League} was declared a violent insurrectionist movement by the Canadian government at the urging of Yang and its alleged members have been denied asylum in violation of international law.

APLM and Akwanga have raised the vital issue that the subnational (Alberta) administrative proceedings are being headed up by a lawyer from the energy division of a law firm that represented Addax Petroleum, a division of Chinese oil giant Sinopec, during the relevant times. Akwanga and his former Southern Cameroons government had denounced Addax Petroleum’s claims to the offshore Bakassi oil fields and invited two companies, Forest Gate Energy and Kilimanjaro Capital to dispute Addax’s exploitation of Ambazonian resources. Canada, at the urging of Yang and Addax retaliated by launching an investigation and ultimately seek a tribunal order that Ambazonian claims are false, a façade, and fictitious. Canada’s actions to date have amounted to an attack on Ambazonian claims to economic self-determination.

The African People’s Liberation Movement is the oldest of those organizations taking a militant approach towards the Cameroun regime. Dr. Akwanga was imprisoned, brutally tortured, and sexually molested by female paramilitary officers, locked up in solitary confinement for 24 months by the Camerounian regime before escaping and securing a UN Human Rights Committee ruling in his favor on 22 March 2011 (Communication 1813/2008).

The Ambazonian legal team consists of Cameroonian barrister, Dr. Martin Tumasang, an authority on international law, Dr. Jonathan Levy, a long-time legal advisor to the Ambazonian movement and Ashmit Patel who negotiated portions of the Ambazonian oil rights agreements.

The case is Akwanga v. Canada and can be downloaded here: https://tinyurl.com/Akwanga-v-Canada

The correspondence from Global Affairs Canada is attached.