The National Gendarmerie road safety campaign was recently on the Yaounde-Atok highway.

The National Gendarmerie is pursuing its drive against untoward driving that causes untold hardship to Cameroonians every day. With focus on heavy-duty, military and administrative vehicles, a team from the National Gendarmerie headquarters was on the Yaounde-Atok highway on Saturday, April 30, 2016.

A Toyota pick-up van was intercepted by eagle-eyed gendarmes at Mayos Checkpoint near Atok, in the Upper Nyong Division of the East Region. The village is located 68 km from Abong-Mbang. The driver told Captain Nkenglefac Charles Forsah and his men that he was commissioned by his boss in Yaounde to go on a family errand to the East Region. The vehicle bore a private registration number, CE 174 HP, but inquisitive gendarmes later discovered that there was another number plate, CA 1113 D, on board.

Quizzed why the vehicle had two number plates, the driver claimed that the pickup van belonged to the Cabinet of the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, MINEPAT. Meanwhile, the vehicle’s Registration Certificate shows that it previously belonged to MINEPAT, but now has a new number, CE 174 HP, though MINEPAT Cabinet was still maintained as the address of the supposed buyer.

According to ‘Adjudant’ Chef Sonday Samuel, Commander of the Atok Gendarmerie Post, the paper suggests that the vehicle was sold to an individual, but he questioned the manner in which the auction was carried out. He explained that as State asset, there ought to have been a notification of auction of the vehicle by the Ministry of Land Tenure, Surveys and State Property. The Commander added that the responses of the driver and available papers suggested that this was not done.

Also as evidence that the vehicle Registration Certificate was fake, Sonday Samuel said it was signed by a certain Josué R. Meyoua Me Mah, as Regional Delegate, without mentioning the concerned region. Consequently, gendarmerie authorities in Yaounde ordered that the vehicle be impounded and the driver locked up while investigations continued. The fairly new 9-Horse Power Toyota pickup van, according to papers, was first put on the road on October 31, 2015.