Musa Usman Ndamba, Cameroon
In the two months since the beginning of 2016, Front Line Defenders has allocated 95 grants amounting to approximately EUR 213,000 in grant support to human rights defenders at risk.
Human rights defender Musa Usman Ndamba is the Vice President of MBOSCUDA (Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association) and an elected member of Cameroon Chamber of Commerce Industries Mines and Crafts (CCIMA). He is a strong voice for the Mbororos people, a community of indigenous cattle herders in north-western Cameroon, who graze their cattle on communal lands. The Mbororos people are often targeted by powerful landowners and land speculators who engage in acts of intimidation and illegal demolitions as they want to subsume these communal lands for their own commercial gain.
Musa Usman Ndamba with his lawyer Kemende Hendry
In May 2013, Musa Usman Ndamba was arrested on the basis of a defamation accusation made by wealthy landowner and central committee member of the ruling CPDM party of Cameroon, Alhadji Baba Ahmadou Danpullo.
Despite the accusation being made against a 'Musa Adamu', and not the defendant Musa Usman Ndamba, all attempts by the defendant and his legal team to have the case abandoned on the basis that Musa Usman Ndamba is not and never has been Musa Adamu were made in vain and Musa Usman Ndamba was eventually charged on the strength of the complaint by the allegedly aggrieved Danpullo.
Throughout 2013 and up to May 2014, the case against Musa Usman Ndamba was postponed on 10 different occasions as Alhadji Baba Ahmadou Danpullo and his legal team failed to appear in court to prosecute the issue. Eventually in May 2014 the case was dismissed, only for Musa Usman Ndamba to be served with a summons in September 2014 on the same false charges.
It is not usual for advocates for the Mbororos land rights to be targeted by wealthy commercial ranchers in an attempt to silence them from speaking out for the rights of the Mbororos people. Given the power differential between the two parties, land rights defenders like Musa Usman Ndamba are often forced into silence or caught up in lengthy legal battles that they can ill afford and that take them away from their human rights work.
Front Line Defenders has been able to assist Musa Usman Ndamba in this on-going campaign to clear his name by providing him with a grant of EUR 1,840 to cover the legal fees occurring from this protracted case.
Today as I speak, indigenous peoples of Africa are losing their ancestral lands to the multi-millionaires. Cooperate owners are complicit with corrupt government officials who act with impunity, and render communities even more vulnerable to exploitation and human rights abuses.
- Musa Usman Ndamba
