By Ken Neba, Yaounde, Cameroon – Saturday, November 30, 2019.
The news Wimbum people from Donga-Mantung Division in Cameroon’s North West Region working in the HEVECAM rubber plantations in Niete, Ocean Division of the South Region had feared in the past six months was finally confirmed by local gendarmes.
In a crisis meeting on Friday, November 22, 2019, the head of the gendarmerie post in Niete formally informed leaders of the Wimbum community that Eugene Nyako, 22, a commercial motorbike rider, who went missing last May, was actually killed after his abduction. He commended the people for not allowing the news to degenerate into inter-communal violence.
While calling on them to accept the sad reality that Eugene Nyako was no more, he singled out two Wimbum men – Ibrahim and Seidu Lai – who arrested one of the suspected murderers, Binzoline Tera. Tera, who was armed with a machete, was overpowered by the men who later handed him to gendarmes.
The late commercial motorbike rider from Lower Mbot in Nkambe Central Subdivision was brutally murdered in May 2019 while transporting the two men to Akom II village – a neighbouring village to Niete.
Eugene Nyako, 22, unmarried, was son to Kongor Marcel Nyako, a HEVECAM worker who also hails from Lower Mbot. After Binzonline’s arrest on November 19, 2019 – sequel to the earlier arrest of a first suspect, Aime Tonye – the two were November 22, 2019 handed over to the State Counsel for Ocean High Court in the Ocean Divisional headquarters, Kribi.
The suspects who are now in prison custody in the coastal town have been charged amongst others with kidnapping, murder, and theft of motorbike.
They described to gendarmes how they bundled off Nyako and slit his throat while he was transporting them to Akom II. They then dumped the body into River Niete before fleeing away with the motorbike.
Tera had been on the run since May 2019 until he was recently spotted in Niete when he came to repair the stolen bike. Unfortunately for him, the mechanic recognised the motorcycle as belonging to the missing Eugene Nyako. Sensing danger, Tera fled away with the bike and later told gendarmes upon arrest that it was later stolen in Yaounde.
The Wimbum community in Niete then launched a manhunt for Tera until they got news recently that he had taken refuge in a nearby Bagyeli Pygmy forest settlement, where he was later tracked down.
According to a Pygmy soothsayer, Tera claimed that something terrible happened to him and he wanted mystical protection so as to be invisible to those who were after his life!
Meanwhile, the Wimbum community in Niete is still to fix a day to mourn Eugene Nyako – without his remains. Some rites were performed at the site where his murderers dumped his body last May into River Niete.
Following the arrest of Nyako’s suspected killers last week, the Chief Executive Officer of HEVECAM, Patrick Grandcolas, held a meeting with representatives of Wimbum people. He expressed his condolences and promised his company’s support in the investigations and in mourning him.
