Assassination Of Delegates: Another Senseless Act!

 
Many had hoped that some miracle could occur. Since the sad news of the kidnapping on 15 June 2021 of six officials including five Divisional Delegates of different government services in Ndian Division of the South West region made waves across the country, people kept expecting that their lives would be spared. And when the corpse of one member of the group was found, people never gave up hoping that the five delegates could still be alive. A prolonged silence over their absence sent eerie feelings across the country. In the first half of this year, the news filtered out from a repentant separatist fighter that the five officials still missing were actually massacred and buried in a mass grave. The tragic denouement was confirmed with the remains of the officials exhumed and an official ceremony organised in Limbe in their honour on 10 August, 2023. 
Many would never come to understand why five officials who went out to do their job were not only captured, but brutally killed in such a macabre manner. Exhuming their remains on 6 August, 2023 from a mass grave to give them a public funeral worthy of a human society on Thursday,10 August, 2023 brought to mind the unexplained killings in the South West and North West Regions since 2017. Families have either witnessed the tragic slaughter of their loved ones or just got up one morning to discover that a family member or worse still, a bread-winner in the locality, has gone missing under gory circumstances for a cause they are unable to make sense of. 
As the nation joins family members in mourning what has now been known as the Ndian hideous crime, there are enough reasons for a collective awareness over the sacrosanct nature of human life and the futility in pursuing a cause that can only jeopardise harmonious living-together and conjure up memories of sufferings in the community. People today quickly talk of happy moments that they spent a few years back in the two regions either with their kids on holidays, with friends or family members. The burgeoning business and educational activities that were characteristic of the two regions and how sweet life was in general. For some individuals to have turned the hands of the clock with a project geared at bringing sufferings and killings in the most horrendous manner on innocent citizens that only went out to do their job, is above any human comprehension.              
Beyond every reasonable doubt, some Cameroonians abroad and their relays in the country have often masterminded the gruesome scenes witnessed in the North West and South West Regions. Depriving people of their hard-earned income and still going ahead to assassinate such persons and thinking such acts could go unpunished is utter naivety. Educational activities have also suffered from unjustified targeted destruction under the present circumstances. Unfortunately for the organisers of such acts, the American Justice Department in 2022 and 2023 started sending home strong signals that the world will not continue to watch such merciless killings go on. As investigations continue to unmask other ring leaders in such a foolhardy enterprise, it is obvious that other nations will follow the American example for peace and stability to return to the North West and South West Regions.              
The methodical steps taken by the national defence forces to unravel the mystery that sustained the disappearance of the five Ndian Divisional delegates for two years, are an indication that many more such painful stories will be disclosed to the general public and those responsible called to answer for their actions. Several unfolding occurrences in both restive regions are certainly sending home strong messages to many that the Head of State has constantly maintained a logical stand on the issues by telling those who cared to listen that solutions exist at home to the grievances that teachers’ and lawyers’ trade unions presented to the government back in 2016. Even in the height of the destruction of hospitals, schools, markets, houses, and the entire social life of the people, such anti-c...