Mama Abakai, Mayor of Lagdo in the North region and 15 others taken hostage by rebels from the Central African Republic on March 19 near Garoua Boulai in the East region are still under the custody of the rebels.

They were abducted by the rebels while on board a bus belonging to Luxe travel agency as they returned from a funeral in Bertoua.

The Cameroon Journal learnt that when they were captured and the Cameroon gov’t started negotiations to free them, the rebels requested for a ransom of FCFA 5 billion for their freedom. But just when mayors of Councils in the North region were said to have started mobilising finances to assist the government get their colleague freed, the rebels gave another condition of the release of one of their own, one Aboubakar Sidiki who is being held by Cameroon authorities.

We also learnt that some people suspected to be accomplices in the kidnapping of the Mayor and his friends have since been arrested and taken to Yaoundé for interrogation.

Aboubakar Sidiki whose liberation, the rebel movement is demanding for is the President of “Mouvement Patriotique du Salut Camerounais” MPSC. He was arrested on June 9, 2014. He is suspected by the Yaoundé regime of belonging to an armed group in Central Africa – a group preparing to destabilize Cameroon from Central African soil. He is still held in a secret detention facility in Yaoundé.

The Democratic Front of Central African People (FDPC), a rebel movement in November 2014 freed 15 Cameroonians and a Polish priest Mateuz Dziedzic whom they had abducted when their leader General Abdoulaye Miskine accused of war crimes by the International Federation of Human Rights was arrested in Cameroon in 2013. It was only after his release that the rebels granted freedom to the Cameroonians in their custody.

As at moment, it is not certain whether the Yaoundé authorities will accept the condition of the rebels to release Aboubakar in order to get the Mayor and his companions freed.