Kondengui: Inoni in bad shape!

·       Failing health, growing haggard

·       Sleeping in bunk bed with tiny mattress; in air-tight, heavily- guarded room

Inoni Ephraim

·       Still weeping profusely

·       All bank accounts frozen

·       Abandoned by SW elite, friends, close aides

·       Surviving only on goodwill of Kondengui visitors

·       Shabby treatment from warders multiplying

By Douglas A. Achingale in Yaounde

Of all the high-profile detainees in the Kondengui maximum security prison in Yaounde, Ephraim Inoni is arguably the saddest. Prison sources told The Guardian Post at the weekend that the physical and emotional condition of the former prime minister, incarcerated since April 16, 2012 on charges of embezzlement of public funds, is getting worse by the day.

The traditional ruler of Bakingili is reported to have grown frail and gaunt owing to ill health. His meals are not only irregular but also very poorly-prepared. Inoni only eats with relish when his wife, Gladys, or other family members take food to him. Or when some other visitors who come to see their close ones, out of sympathy, offer him some of the food they bring.

The condition of the former assistant secretary general at the presidency is worsened by the fact that he literally sleeps on hard, rough wood as the mattress placed on his bunk bed is so tiny as not to provide him any comfort. Inoni is said to complain of having acute pain in his ribs, but no one seems to pay attention to his plight. He has never been taken to hospital for treatment unlike other detainees like Jérôme Mendouga who is made to undergo physiotherapy from time to time at the Etoug-ebe National Centre for the Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities Cardinal Paul Emile Leger.  

In addition to his awfully uncomfortable bed, the cell in which Ephraim Inoni is lodged is said not to be sufficiently airy and lacks enough natural light. According to our findings, Inoni sleeps below the bunk bed while a warder; guarding him sleeps on top. For someone who has for long years been used to good, decent living, this is simply nightmarish.

And so the former prime minister finds himself weeping profusely every so often. Eyewitnesses say his now sunken eyes are permanently bloodshot and swollen as a result. Loud –sounding lamentations of “Qu’est-ce que je fais ici?” (What am I doing here?) which he used to voice out in the early days of his detention are now reportedly being heard again each time he weeps.

“Five months after the former prime minister was brought here,” a prison informant told us, “he has not ceased to cry. It is not like he cries every day, but I see him shed tears often. And he has grown really pale. He complained lately of back and rib pain. But I don’t know why he has not yet been taken to hospital. His situation is not pleasant at all. It behoves the authorities not to allow it to further degenerate.”

There is no question that Inoni’s agony is further deepened by a number of distressful thoughts which should be flooding his mind at the moment. He certainly does not understand why his case has not been called up whereas Marafa Hamidou Yaya with whom he was arrested and detained on the same day has already been tried (and sentenced).    

Ephraim Inoni is also undoubtedly saddened by the freezing of all his bank accounts by the powers-that-be. Given the high functions that he has occupied for decades at the ministry of finance, at the presidency of the republic and at the prime ministry, the amounts of money stashed in his accounts surely run in tens or hundreds of millions and why not billions? Losing such astronomical sums of money at a go is enough to render one mental.   

Furthermore, the president’s former close aide is definitely not happy with the way he is being treated by his traditional ruler colleagues and other elite of the South West region from where he hails. They have turned their backs on him at a time when he needed their support most. Those of them who have so far visited him in prison cannot even be counted with the fingers of the hand.

Meantime, The Guardian Post has gathered that if South West elite are shunning Inoni, it is because many of them do not want to be identified with his alleged financial rascality. One of them who is based in Yaounde and who spoke to us on conditions of anonymity, said: “I have visited him in prison once and that is enough. If you visit him two, three or four times, they will start considering you as a partner in the crime he is accused of.”

The Guardian Post further learned that warders in the Kondengui prison are not making things any easier for the former PM. As if acting on instructions, they seem determined to make life very uncomfortable for Inoni. They are said to refuse the Bakingili chief the preferential treatment that they give other VIP detainees. Some of them are reportedly saying that they are only paying back Inoni in his own coins because, according to them, the former PM was too tight-fisted and never treated them preferentially while he was in authority.