Patrick Ekema Esunge did not fear death. Those were not his words, though. “Where I come from and how far I’ve come, should the ship wreck anywhere, I’d have come a long way. I won’t regret it,” Ekema told me one day in 2016 at the balcony of his office. His ship wrecked on Sunday, October 27 in Douala. He was 49.
I had been received by the Mayor at my request. About a week earlier, I had requested to meet him. I wanted to express my sympathies for the tribulations he suffered at the hands of past, present and future and imaginary rivals and foes. I had observed with disdain that his own kinsmen, especially Fako Yaounde elite, but perhaps no less local elite and would-be elite all had their guns turned against the young boisterous Mayor. I am a natural advocate for justice, a natural combatant against injustice of any kind.
In a Facebook comment, I had rebuked fans of a darling Fako politician for their Ahidjo versus Biya approach to the Buea mayorship. I thought Ekema had to be allowed to bid his time. I reasoned he not being the first Mayor of Buea, would also not be the last. I thought other Mayors had served their tenures with varied records and even the greatest among them could not be Mayor forever. (I wonder whether he, who now has taken other duties on the national stage which he is obviously enjoying…There is little reason to imagine he would want to return to the local league. I thought it was unfair to bash the sitting Mayor even because of excess love or nostalgia for (the) past one(s). I was not oblivious of his own overzealousness, though. This was prior to the certificate scandals, the barefaced highhandedness and his lone-ranger drives to punish adherents and victims alike for respecting or suffering from the edicts of Ambazonia leaders. This was in pre-Ambazonia Cameroon (PAC).
After a couple of failed appointments with him due obviously to his tight schedule, the Mayor requested that I be ushered in and briefly left some guests in his office to speak with me on his office balcony. I requested to have his communication team present to listen to my proposals, partly to dispel whispers that had come to my hearing that I was “scheming” for their positions. The Mayor told me bluntly, “I decide who sits in my meetings. Let’s proceed.”
At the end, he looked me in the eyes, shaking my hand, thanked me for my concerns and told me he would never forget my words, but said he had no intentions of relenting even at the cost of a mishap. We parted ways and never had a similar encounter ever again. Today, he is dead. I do not know whether it is as a result of a wreck or of natural causes. Most of the reactions I have received concerning his death have suggested he was done with. Mystical or physical mischief, if any? Who can tell? Many are asking me “who killed Mayor Ekema?” I wish I knew who or whether. But he obviously had many enemies, most of them made in his line of duty or his politics. I hear many are jubilating at his death. Even if they were not, it is easy to guess who is not weeping their eyes out at his death. Nothing to do with who would have killed him or not. But looking at his bulk, it makes sense to believe he might have suffered a natural sudden health crisis.
However, sourcing from my familiarity with sports, both as a player and reporter, I may rather use the analogy of a player who might have lost his breath on the field of play, because he chased the ball too much, had the Mayor dropped dead off his feet during one of his infamous ruthless tours in Buea. Like a former Indomitable Lions captain, Ekema was on every ball (free-kick, throw-in, corner-kick) and was tackling everyone (opponent, team-mate, referee). He was sure he was right and they all were wrong. And he was sure those who matter loved what he was doing and would reward him for his troubles. Some speculated he looked up to being appointed minister. Earlier, they speculated he had his eyes on an eventual post of Government Delegate of a future Buea City Council, especially after hints in that light from the 2014 Reunification golden jubilee celebrations in Buea and his reception at the Presidency shortly after.
It looks like Ekema Esunge was destined to die in Douala. He might have come close to a tragic death, caught in a curious gun battle at Sawa hotel in Douala in September last year. Or perhaps he just did not have to be killed or be seen to have been killed.
Literally speaking, Mayor Patrick Ekema Esunge was right. We all live to die and we die to live again in the world beyond, in the memory of those we marked with our lives, in our legacy. We all shall die. Whether we die chasing the ball restlessly or killed by wicked enemies or in a boomerang from our own venture to kill others or in an accident or of natural causes, including peacefully in our sleep, we shall all die some day. Whether we die heroically or shamefully, valiant or villain, celebrated or incognito, we shall all have gone.
I am not one of those jubilating at his death, yet, I cannot pretend to have remained one of his fans. I republish below some of the articles I wrote about him in different editions of this column.
Nyamoto the slave-master!
My article in this column in The Sun No. 0553 of August 5, 2019
So they – they – crowned Mayor Patrick Ekema Esunge as Nyamoto Kpatolo, Bulu for “The Great Warrior”. But what would traditional rulers of the South have meant by that? Who is Ekema fighting against? Who receives and enjoys the booty from his “great conquests”?
Let me point this for starters: I have loads of sympathy for Mayor Ekema and have had occasion to say it to him and in my writings, some not too long ago in this column. I sometimes had the feeling he was being victimized by fellow Fako political elite as if he did not have the right to exist and breathe his own share of oxygen. I admired the way he fought hard (against their scheming) to mobilize potential CPDM voters ahead of party reorganization in 2015 before he was disqualified from the race. I thought his political brothers ought to live and let live Ekema. That was before the current Ambazonia revolution erupted. Since then, I have found him overzealous in trying to show, more than achieving any cost-effective results. (And in fairness to Ekema, I believe he is going farther afield in search of political godfathers because of hostility from home and threats to his political career in view of expected elections.)
Chief Effa Rene Desire of Mbone Nkok who led his peers in decorating Ekema in his capacity as President of the South Regional Chiefs’ Conference, said the Buea mayor earned the title thanks to his brave fight to preserve national unity, that is, by standing (supposedly) as a bulwark against the Ambazonia movement. So question is, when such a conferment comes from traditional rulers of the South – the ruling clan – how does it resonate with the rest of the country, especially Anglophones?
It is also about political communication and marketing. Or as communication experts may easily understand from Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message”, even a deserved title coming from the wrong forum in the wrong context may derive negative connotations. This one easily does. And this is nothing to do with negative characterization of the South; it is just the obvious.
The move was poorly calculated in both structure and content. Structure-wise, the casting for the awarder was poorly done. Were this title coming from the northern regions, West, East, or Northwest, it would be seen to be a statement from Cameroonians without obvious special interests. Had it come from the Littoral, it may have been viewed as coming from Sawa cousins and seen in the light of a Sawa “conspiracy” to throw the spanner in the works of the Anglophone struggle under the slogan that there is no Ambazonia nation because Southwesterners are Sawa while Northwesterners are Graffi. Yet, it would have been less controversial than one coming from the South who, for being the home-base of the President of the Republic and viewed as partakers of the privileged meal or “pays organisateur” as the late Eteba Eyene put it, are major benefactors of the subjugation of former Southern Cameroonians. It secures their “chop farm”, kind of.
Straight to the point, Mayor Ekema is being rewarded for using the chains placed in his hands by those now rewarding him, to bind his Anglophone brothers, hush them to submission and deliver them a second time to their master. If anything is disputed in this political crisis, it is not the fact that Anglophones from wherever – whichever region – are victims of unfair domination and forms of exclusion which some have described as enslavement of an unconquered people. Whatever great conquest Ekema is supposed to have made to deserve praise from traditional rulers of the South tells its obvious story.
Lest I forget, resembling the Bulu Nyamoto, Nyama Moto in Ekema’s Mokpe (Bakweri language) literally translates to “Meat Man”. Certainly nothing to do with Ekema’s physical mass. Literarily, it could mean hunter of animals. Knowing that protesting former Southern Cameroonians – only protesting with peace plants, no weapons at the time in September-October 2017 – were described as dogs by who we know, can it be understood that the South is saluting Ekema for hunting those dogs? Na tok di bring tok!
By the way, has Ekema been effectively hunting any “dogs”? He seems to have been agitating more than acting and achieving anything. Ghost towns are still effective in Buea. He is not the bane of the Ambazonia movement as some paid stories suggested.
Off topic: They shut down schools, you force open shops
My article in this column in The Sun No. 0559 of September 9, 2019
Schools did not resume in the two Anglophone regions on September 2 and throughout the week. The trickles of daredevil school children taking the bold step, dotted here and there in some towns is not back to school and with any hard luck, it would not yield the pipe-dream bandwagon effect for the expected floodgate that would once again bring joy to our hearts to see our kids paint our streets in colours of school uniforms.
While we watch, helpless, at the four-year education tragedy befalling our children, fearful for their security and wishing for a return to normalcy for our kids to fully return to school without having to be looking over their shoulders or dodging bullets, those fooling Yaounde that they can cure diarrhea by stuffing the rectum are once again scoring off topic points by forcing shops in Buea to open for business. Southwest Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai and Buea Mayor Patrick Ekema Esunge went around Buea sealing closed shops and forcing some to reopen. Do kids receive lectures in shops? Who cares the pipe-dream reasoning that with shops open and hopes that the imposed ghost would thus have been chased away, schools may also resume?
Even corporate bodies have come to the reality that school resumption this year is lost. MTN has been acknowledging the effectiveness of the lockdown, sending out messages to that effect in relation to its back-to-school campaign to reward users of its Wanda airtime options thus: “MTN Back2School: Dear customer, following the unavailability of shops in the region, your supplies will be paid directly by MoMo at the end of the promo.”
We are saddened that those who can address this crisis and bring us respite are playing politics with it and trying to make us blame ourselves for it. Without a lasting solution through meticulous dialogue, half-measures will only play to the gallery. How long shall it take for us to come to terms with this reality?