Below is the lamentation of a regular reader and fan of this column, Karen J.L. (name abbreviated upon request of the author to remain anonymous) reporting the plight of an acquaintance over difficulties in acquiring a national Identity Card and the jeopardy thereof:
Dear Outside the Presidency,
Is the Presidency Outsider aware of what is happening to Cameroonians in respect of National Identity Cards?
A young friend of mine has been hampered in efforts to open a bank account and to carry on his petty trading business by the lack of an identity card. For the past several years he has been moving around with the temporary receipt which has been renewed and re-extended multiple times. He has spent hours queuing up at the Identification Office attached to Limbe Police Station. Eventually a policeman called him to one side and advised him that he will never receive an identity card in Limbe, that he should instead go and do it in Yaounde.
He has now spent a week in Yaounde, going from one office to another, assisted by the family members with whom he is staying. He informs me that not having a valid identity card is of little concern in Yaounde, since there are no police checkpoints inside the town. But the identification offices in Yaounde are full of people from the regions desperately trying to get identity cards.
Today (January 28, 2020 –Ed) he called to say that he has now been told to bring 50,000 francs in order to have an immediate identity card without any need for a receipt.
I have assisted him with some finance, but I’ve warned him that what he (and I) are doing is not only illegal by the law of the land, but also sinful. I’ve additionally warned him that he may be the victim either of a scam (in terms of losing his money and not receiving the promised ID card) or a sting (an entrapment planned by police officers with the purpose of catching citizens in the act of bribery).
In so far as a family friend is the intermediary in all this, I wished to make him aware that where money is concerned, even friends are not to be trusted – but I knew that such a warning would fall on deaf ears, so I didn’t deliver it.
My questions about this ID card situation are:
1. Can this be true? And, if so, are you gentlemen of the media aware of the situation?
2. Has the anti-corruption office been disbanded?
It is said that the outsider sees most of the game. May your eyes and ears be as sharp as ever.
KAREN J.L.
outside sport
Ebanga Maurice also went to Bachuo
The well-travelled sport photographer, Ebanga Maurice who died in Yaounde January 28, 2020, also travelled to Bachuo-Akagbe. Is Bachuo-Akagbe too close by to be a remarkable travel for a man who travelled the length and breadth of the world taking photographs?
Ebanga Maurice is reputed to have covered seven world cups, three Olympic Games, 15 Africa Cup of Nations and two Confederations Cup tournaments. I was with him at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. He travelled far and wide and also travelled near and deep into the hinterlands. He was 55.
I first met the funny, little talkative man in 2005. It was at the funeral of the late minister Emmanuel Tabi Egbe (E.T. Egbe) in Bachuo-Akagbe, a few kilometres to Mamfe. I was an editor for The Herald newspaper on special assignment. He was a freelance photography making pictures where events happen.
I do not quite remember how we began talking but I recall Ebanga telling me how surprised he was to find his name labeled on a roadside plaque as a village along the Kumba-Mamfe road. He was referring to Ebanga village, incidentally in my Upper Balong clan, one of the three-in-one with Betock that are generally called greater or grand Manyemen.
Maurice Ebanga had travelled all the way from Yaounde to make pictures of E.T. Egbe’s funeral from Yaounde where the early day politician lived for decades as member of Government in different portfolios since the reunification of 1961 of which he was an architect, till his death in 2005 as Roving Ambassador.
Besides his fun and talkativeness, another curiosity about Ebanga was his outfit. He wore a black plastic kneecap over his trousers on his left leg like BIR soldiers, which I later understood eased his kneeling to take “aim” at objects from curious angles with his camera.
My next close encounter with Ebanga was in 2010 during the world cup in South Africa. I will not narrate my sad experience with him there. I prefer to let go of the 300 euros story which many colleagues on that assignment may remember. I recall with pleasure that when we left the hotel in Durban for the airport to fly to Cape Town for Cameroon’s last group game with Holland (the Lions were already eliminated), I helped Ebanga carry his mighty bags full of his photography gadgets, to the bus. He was already sickly and frail and I knew he needed help with his luggage which no one else had bothered to help him with.
I am proud I did in spite of the 300 euros issue.
Rest in peace, funny little big bother, Ebanga Maurice.