Tight security as Ngota is led to burial

Written by Eugene N. Nforngwa & Steven A. Ojong

Wednesday, 12 May 2010 15:16

YAOUNDE—Several scores of gendarmes and policemen were deployed outside the mortuary of the Yaounde University Hospital Thursday as the corpse of Bibi Ngota, the journalist who died in jail last month, was being removed.

A police escort led the body, conveyed in a black funeral van, to the Ngotas in Mendong on the south western side of the city, as authorities took no chances on rumours that friends had planned to parade Mr Ngota’s remains through the streets of Yaounde.

Several hundred mourners, including senior administrative and military officials turned up at the mortuary for the corpse removal.

For some two to three hours, there was tight traffic holdup at the Melen area, where several other corpses were also being taken away from the morgue.

Troops kepts a close watch from about fifety metres to mourners, loaded in trucks outside the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (FMBS).

But embedded in the crowd were dozens of senior military officers: gendarmerie captains and police superintendents.
Troops were expected at the corpse removal following a protest by journalists at the city centre on World Press Freedom Day, May 3.
But security concerns rose following rumours of a plan to march the corpse to the home of Laurent Esso, the secretary general at the presidency, who was behind the arrest of Mr Ngota and two others.

“We are here to maintain security and to ensure that you journalists don’t make an issue of the corpse removal,” said a gendarme officer.
Mr Ngota’s children were dressed in white West African jumpers over black trousers and spent the afternoon by the side their shattered mother, also in white.

A second woman, whom the some relatives called Mr Ngota’s “real wife” stayed in different company, dressed in black and also visibly devastated.

The corpse removal was planned for 2pm but it was only about an hour later that it was displayed for public viewing in a narrow hallway.

Turn-by-turn, nearly a hundred people, including scores of journalists, paid their last respects, nodding or making signs of the cross at the foot of the blackened remains.

About 30 minutes later, it was hauled onto a black van. The widow in black was crammed into the front with another passager and the driver, carrying a photo of the dead journalist.

Mr Ngota died April 22 at the Kondengui prison in Yaounde and public revelation by the minister of communication that he had been killed by AIDS related infections have sparked outrage and rejection.
Authorities have not commented on allegations that he was arrested while sick and was tortured.

Mr Ngota’s remains were Friday taken to Menguela near Ebolowa in the South region, where it was buried on Saturday. He is survived by three kids and two wives.