From Njingang Godwin and Mua Patrick Mughe on
special assignment in Mamfe
Late Chief Ayambe of SCNC |
As earlier suspected, heavily-armed troops were last weekend deployed by
the Yaounde authorities to disrupt the planned “state’’ funeral that was
programmed for the fallen SCNC national chairman, Chief Ette Otun Ayamba. A high-powered police squad from the Mobile
Intervention Unit (GMI) in Buea stormed Mamfe on Friday July 25, 2014; the day
which was programmed for Chief Ayamba’s corpse removal. Also stationed at the mortuary were gendarmes
and soldiers.
The squad, headed by a Five-Star police commissioner surrounded Chief Ayamba’s
premises; another took control of the mortuary at Besongabang, while the third
besieged the hotel belonging to the main organizer of the funeral, Ako Abunaw.
Over 300 Southern Cameroonians who had arrived and assembled at the hotel to get
further directives were trapped inside the hotel.
Hon. Paul Ayah’s convoy that had
taken off from Akwaya via Bahuru-Bamenda was blocked on the way while Southern
Cameroonian activists who left Buea, Kumba, Mutengene, Tiko and Limbe were blocked
at Bateke by heavily-armed security officers. Other accounts have it that those
spotted entering Mamfe in groups were rounded up and detained.
The special coffin prepared by Diaspora SCNC militants abroad was
blocked at Eyumodjock. The police seized the coffin and confiscated all the burial
and funeral materials flown in from Europe and USA.
On July 26, 2014, all vehicles entering Mamfe from the Bamenda or Kumba
end were stopped and thoroughly searched. Anyone found with SCNC literature,
Chief Ayamba’s funeral program or Southern Cameroons flag was not
only brought down, but made to sit on the tarmac and later transferred to an
unknown destination.
Chief Ayamba’s widow was coerced into signing an undertaking that there
will be nothing of SCNC at the funeral, else the husband will not be buried.
She was forced to make an announcement to this effect. As the corpse left the
mortuary, five police, gendarme and BIR vehicles, loaded with heavily armed men
followed, rendering the occasion a veritable official funeral. Despite the
intimidating presence of troops, freedom songs, dance, chanting and blasting of
horns by bike-riders characterized the convoy from the mortuary to the
compound.
Matters however came to a head when one of Chief Ayamba’s daughters took
a photograph of the deceased; dressed in SCNC regalia and approached the police
commissioner, hurling insults at him;
challenging them to summon the courage by facing her. She not only gave them a
dressing down but lectured them on the heroic deeds and acts of Ayamba as a fighter,
a statesman and a true Southern Cameroons patriot. She threw more invectives at
the authorities of La Republique du Cameroun for daring to deprive her father
of a befitting burial.
Attempts by an overzealous pro-regime family member to stop the reading
of Chief Ayamba’s biography hit the rock as Larry Ayamba seized the microphone
and speedily read out the hero’s biography, skipping only sections that
mentioned SCNC and the Southern Cameroons. The family succeeded to put the
Southern Cameroons’ flag on the coffin while the Bahai family made the interment
prayers.
It should be recalled that the funeral of Chief Ayamba was expected to see all SCNC factions reconcile and a new national chairman elected at the Mamfe rendezvous which unfortunately could not hold because of the troop-disruption.
It should be recalled that the funeral of Chief Ayamba was expected to see all SCNC factions reconcile and a new national chairman elected at the Mamfe rendezvous which unfortunately could not hold because of the troop-disruption.
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