OFFGO is a farmers association, located in Cameroon. In the North West Region of Cameroon, OFFGO provides education and legal support to 700+ victims of land abuse.
In January 2019, we launched a campaign for justice and redress and against impunity. The situation started in 2015, shortly after the transmission of a report from traditional communities to the Governor of the North West Region about the situation of land grabbing in the North West Region. The Chief of Tudig village, Cameroon, requested OFFGO to assist with the redaction of this report. In reaction, our chairman got arrested, detained, he lost his residency permit and got removed from the country. They killed his animals, destroyed his farm house. Other OFFGO members received numerous death threats, and their farms destroyed.
On March 31, 2017, we filed a complaint with the Cameroonian National Human Rights Institution NCHRF, requesting for investigation and action. After almost two years of investigations, the Human Rights Institution shared its findings on December 28 2018. It concludes gross human rights violations. Our chairman was targeted in his function as human rights defender. The NCHRF finds business magnate and politician Baba Ahmadou Danpullo complicit in the human rights violations. The NCHRF declares the arrest of our chairman arbitrary and the detention abusive, his expulsion “illegal” and orchestrated by State security departments. The NCHRF also made the observation that the local administrative and judicial authorities produced multiple trumped up charges against our chairman. The report identifies malice aforethought in their actions and that the motive of the expulsion was “control over land”. The reports are made public on our site: www.capacityfordevelopment.org/news/