*While recently attending the trial of the Anglophone detainees at the Yaoundé military tribunal, I met with several detainees among which was Patrick Ndangoh an SDF militant, who seem upset with his party. He claims, his party has abandoned him. In the following conversation that, I had with him, he explained the circumstances that led to his arrest and also the conditions of their incarceration in an underground cell, which traumatized Cameroonians when it was made public through social media*.
*Sir, the world was shocked and awed when a video of your incarceration along with others was made public through social media, could you please tell me the circumstances under which you were arrested*?
*Patrick Ndangoh*: In early June 2017 I went to Nkambe looking to establish a business. On the 15th of June I left my hotel and walked up to the town centre in the hope of getting a cup of coffee and also checking on my Hilux truck that was being repaired. As I sat in front of the coffee shop, a truck of police officers in full military fatigue and with machine guns drawn, pulled up along the road where I was sitting, jumped out and walked straight to me. Without altering a word they seized my phone and my wallet both of which were in my hand and asked me to get up and follow them. I was driven to the Police station in Nkambe where, I demanded to know what was going on. The police commissioner simply asked one of his assistants to prepare a section of the holding cell for me. All this while, I had still not been told why I was brought to the Police station. The commissioner emptied my wallet on his table. And kept interrogating me about the purpose of my presence in Nkambe, Where I came from, where I reside permanently, how much money I had in my bank accounts and how many bank accounts I had etc etc. When he asked me to give him the password to my phone I refused and told him that, it would be a great violation of my privacy, since he hadn’t even told me why I was at his office. Upon that refusal, the commissioner asked to have me detained in the cell that was being arranged to hold me. And I spent four days and night there, before I was transferred to the judicial Police in Bamenda, in a convoy that accompanied the Governor of the region who had come to Nkambe.
*Until your images you and your co-detainee in an underground cell, allegedly in Yaoundé, went viral, people didn’t know much about you, what were you doing for a living before your arrest*?
*Patrick Ndangoh*: When I left high school in the late 80’s and traveled first to France and then to the United States to further my education and my dream had always been to return to Cameroon as soon as possible and to engage myself in business and contribute to the growth of my home. And luckily in 2001, my wife and I were able to start a small import business in Bamenda through which we imported quality American household products into Bamenda and started a retail business. Our company MANASATA became a household name in Cameroon, synonymous with quality service and providing access to our people to the same quality goods found on every American shelf. And with that business we had, we continued to do it, as we shuttled between Cameroon and the United States. I have also been a passionate farmer. Growing both crops and keeping hogs.
*It was speculated that you were jailed in Yaoundé, now it is certain, what is the name of the prison that you jailed in and what is the exact number of those with whom you are detained*?
*Patrick Ndangoh*: Since I was smuggled into Yaoundé one night by the judicial police officers, in Bamenda I was in the company of three other detainees. We got to the Judicial Police Headquarters in the wee hours of the morning and we were thrown into a cell were we met 12 other Southern Cameroonian detainees. From there, all 16 of us were transferred after about 2 weeks to SED Yaoundé, where we were deposited and locked up in an abandoned BUNKER that had been decommissioned for holding any inmates for more than three years and as a result, had fallen completely into ruin. The bunker had no toilet, no water, no lights and a very tiny broken hole at the top of one wall that passed for our window.
*Why were you put in such degrading solitary confinement*?
*Patrick Ndangoh*: After we spent months at SED in the most egregious conditions which left all of us with bad eyesight, respiratory problems and the likely possibility that we would contract cancers since the entire decapitated cell was full of old asbestos paint we were forced to go on hunger strike for a month and in doing so, we managed to make a video with the aid of candles for light and a smuggled cell phone for videotaping, to be able to tell our families and the people of Southern Cameroon’s where we were being hidden. It was truly a Frankenstein Shop. And because of the pressure from the video tape exposing our conditions of incarceration the gendarmerie was forced to transfer us one more time. This time, they brought us to the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaoundé where we are still being held.
*I understand you were a militant of the SDF, have you had any support from them*?
*Patrick Ndangoh*: From the time I dabbled into politics, I got persuaded by the vigorous energy I noticed within the SDF, especially from its leadership and was very impressed by its platform of a federated state for the administration of Cameroon. So I enthusiastic joined the party and had remained an active member of the party to whom the privilege had been given to serve in the capacity of Deputy Mayor for Bamenda 1 subdivision. Well since my arrest, I have NEVER heard from the party in any way whatsoever. With so many other matters of greater gravity like the preparations needed compete in the upcoming elections that Paul Biya is planning to hold whenever he chooses to schedule it, among others, I am pretty sure the party officials’ hands are full.
*What is your appraisal on the current political situation in Cameroon and in Anglophone Cameroon in particular*?
*Patrick Ndangoh*: The mutations that the Federal Republic of Cameroon had had to undergo to get to this stage of a “one and indivisible” state had just been a time tomb waiting to explode. And it was inevitable. In every FAILED country, there has been at the centre of this failure an individual called a PRESIDENT around whom everything turns. The institutions of the state begin to function at the whims and caprices of this individual and very learned adults cowered by self interest, allow themselves to be manipulated for selfish reasons for the benefit of this tragic PRESIDENT and to the detriment and ultimate total destruction of the state and the nation. And Cameroon has unfortunately been a victim of this myopia. Southern Cameroon’s has been over the years, since its unfortunate union with la République du Cameroun, the only bright spot in the entire nation. Whatever measure of freedom, liberty and dignity the citizens of Cameroon have enjoyed since the last 57 years has been thanks to the blood and sweat of the Anglophone population. And once more, it is a humble feeling of respect and profound respect to see these same people knowingly prepared to pay such an untold price, for the sake of their freedom from tyranny and colonisation. Freedom, my dear friend is a very expensive investment. Yet it is an investment which cannot be deferred.
*I don’t know whether you are informed of current developments, I mean the arrest of AyukTabe and his team in Abuja, Nigeria; will such break the momentum of Anglophone nationalism or exacerbate it*?
*Patrick Ndangoh*: I have heard over the radios and watch on TV debate programs here in Yaoundé that the Interim President of the Fed Republic of Ambazonia and his cabinet members were abducted in Abuja as they struggles to find solutions to the mounting Southern Cameroonian refugees streaming into south eastern Nigeria. The kidnapping of these individuals is a terrible sign of desperation on the part of those from whom they are struggling to free their peoples and it is the kind of disregard to the laws of nations and international laws that has continued to wreck African nations, forcing its youths to flee in desperation across deserts and oceans, leading to the unfortunate scenes of Africans being once again sold on open slave markets in the Maghreb and beyond.
*If you had any advice or which, what will they be regarding the current crisis*?
*Patrick Ndangoh*: The war in Cameroon between the state of Cameroun and the people of Southern Cameroon is one with profound ramifications.
It reminds us of the burden and cost of freedom, justice and dignity. There are always some fundamental issues at stake in human existence. Key among which are the quest to be happy and to live in a just, equitable, and dignified society. Of these fundamental issues none is so irrelevant that it has to be negotiated away or just be dispensed with for the sake of false sense of security. So I am gratified to know that my people and eventually the people of all of Africa are realizing that there is no sacrifice too big to offer for the opportunity to live in, and eventually be able to bequeath, FREEDOM, JUSTICE& DIGNITY to their posterity.
