Gendarme Charged With Destroying Official Residence

Warrant Officer Ngo Simb Martine is accused of removing fittings from a Yaounde flat in 2014 when she was transferred.

Warrant Officer Ngo Simb Martine, currently serving with the Gendarmerie Mobile Squadron at Ngoa-Ekelle, Yaounde, is on trial at the Yaounde Military Tribunal on a one-count charge of destroying the fittings of the home in which she lived for about a year. According to Captain Nkoa Akouna Josephine, the Prosecutor, the offence is punishable under Articles 74 and 316 of the Penal Code.

When the matter opened on Thursday, November 10, 2016, the accused pleaded not guilty to the charge. The prosecution told Lt. Col. Meffand Loaw Marguerite epouse Adelo, the judge that the offence was committed in 2014 when Warrant Officer Ngo Simb was serving in the Olanguina Gendarmerie Post in Mefou and Afamba Division of the Centre Region. She was asked to quit the flat after being transferred to the Gendarmerie Mobile Squadron at Ngoa-Ekelle.

Gendarme Staff Sergeant (“Maréchal de logis chef”) Moufou, who now lives in the two-room flat in the barracks behind Lycée du Clerc, Ngoa-Ekelle, said she found the home “completely ransacked, with door and window frames and shutters removed. The suck-away was blocked and the walls damaged after being pounded with a tool like a mortar pestle,” Moufou told the court. Under cross-examination by Barrister Manyim Jean Pierre, Counsel to Ngo Simb, Staff Sergeant Moufou said she did not witness the accused destroying the flat, but only received an anonymous telephone call informing her of the act.

“I reported the matter to the high command and an investigation was ordered. It took me about a year to repair and live in the flat,” Moufou said. Mba Clément, who represented the Ministry of Defence, agreed with Moufou&rs...