Retired CRTV Journalist and Editorialist, Ephraim Banda Ghogomu, was March 31, assaulted by a Gendarmerie officer, whose only name we got as Zogo at the Akum Security Checkpoint.

Ghogomu was brutalised for trying to broker peace between a bus assistant (‘motor boy’) and the officer, who had stopped and grounded a commercial bus for several hours on grounds that the first-aid stock was incomplete.

After a protracted argument between the motor-boy, the driver and Zogo, Ghogomu decided to alight from the grounded bus and broker peace, pleading with the officer to liberate them.

“I went straight to the officer, greeted him politely and asked what the problem was with our bus. The perfume from his alcohol soaked breathe stank as he spoke waveringly and practically drunk! I pleaded with him to let us go because I had an imperative to get home to Bambalang before 6:00 pm, which he was unknowingly rendering impossible. He instead took a sip of the beer he had been drinking and moved towards his grey Toyota Avenxis car,” he recounted.
Ghogomu said his eyes fell on the half full 65cl bottle nearby and an already emptied one by that car.

“I took out my phone to snap the two beer bottles, when the Gendarme skipped over to me and with his boots, rained kicks on my belly, arms, chest and groin, seized the phone from my hands and smashed it. I did not retaliate.”

The passengers and driver, he said, were hurt by the action of the drunk and insolent gendarme and wanted to pounce on him, when he (Ghogomu) got up and pleaded with them to hold their peace.
Ghogomu said he had already pleaded with Northwest Governor, Adolphe Lele L’Afrique, to come to their rescue.

Governor Lele L’Afrique, the Director General of Amour Mezam, Jules Ngoula and the Senior Warrant Officer of Santa Gendarmerie Brigade, Samuel Koeko, arrived at the scene later when Ghogomu and other passengers had left with him to get medical attention for the injuries he sustained.

In a two-page complaint tabled before the State Counsel for Mezam, Ghogomu is praying the State Counsel to cause Zogo to pay the full cost of the injuries he sustained from his barbaric acts, plus prejudices he suffered and the fee of the legal counsel he has engaged.