Boniface Forbin (PhD) buried “quietly” in
Y’de
The publisher/Editor of Cameroon’s
epoch-making English language tabloid, The Herald, Boniface Forbin (PhD) has
been buried in Yaounde, The Median can confirm. Forbin was buried in his
private residence at OdzaYaounde few days after he passed on at the Yaounde
University Teaching Hospital, CHU, on Sunday 16 April 2017.
By Ojong Steven Ayukogem in Yaounde
 |
| Boniface Forbin (PhD) |
PhD, as Dr. Boniface Forbin was fondly
called by staffers of the now defunct Yaounde-based The Herald newspaper, was
buried at one of his several privately-owned residences in Yaounde, barely
several days after he passed on at the Yaounde University Teaching Hospital, in
the early hours of Sunday, 16 April 2017.
According
to information we got from a close family source, PhD was buried on Tuesday, 18
April 2017, at his private residence along the road to the Nsimalen Airport, on
the outskirts Yaounde.
The
family source said Dr. Forbin before his death, had instructed that in the
event of his death, his body should not be kept in the Morgue for long. That
Forbin had expressed the wish to be buried soon after his death and for his
surviving family and sympathizers to only celebrate his life later that is, if
they thought it necessary.
The
news of Dr. Forbin’s death on 16 April 2017 took the Cameroon media and
political community in general, and “The Herald Boys and Girls” especially, by
storm, with many wondering what could have caused the sudden death of their
very “lively, spritely and ever-smiling” father, teacher, mentor and
role-model.
A
Sasse Old Boy and a media guru of both national and international repute and
acclaim, Boniface Mamfe, as Dr. Boniface Forbin was also fondly called by his
boyhood contemporaries and peers (maybe because of his avowed confidence and
assertive disposition), was born in 1944 in Mamfe, in the then Grand Mamfe
Division.
For those who knew Dr. Forbin very well or
were acquainted with him, it was no surprise that he was buried in quiet and
only by his immediate family. For one thing, Forbin led a very quiet, reserved
and far from dissipative life style. He kept away from the public view as much
as possible. Although a leading media figure in the country, Forbin always
shied away from the cameras and microphones of prying journalists.
“Doctor was hardly a man of the public. He
hardly took alcohol or smoked cigarettes or womanized. He was very jealous of
his health and would always thank God for affording him a “body made of
steel”,” recounted one of Forbin’s very few acquaintances in Yaounde, who
elected not to be named in this report.
“I
have just done my routine medical checks and my system is functioning
perfectly,” Forbin would also always say to this reporter, whenever we met, as
we continued meeting, even after the closure of The Herald in May 2009 and
until his sudden death on that fateful Sunday morning. And Forbin would always
advise me and whoever cared to listen, the youths especially, to be watchful of
their lifestyle and their health.
Yet,
the same God who gave Forbin his “health of Steel” has decided to call him to
his side only now. Did somebody not say the mystery of life unravels itself by
the day?
Dr.
Forbin is survived by his lovely and graceful wife, Mrs. Dorothy Forbin (the
very emblematic president of the famous CAMELTA and one-time Technical Adviser
No I at the MINESEC), their seven children and 8 grandchildren, family members,
sympathizers and a long line of “The Herald Boys and Girls”, many of who have
not stopped expressing their consternation at the sudden death of their mentor,
teacher, role model and inspirer – PhD. Death why art thou so cruel?
Adieu Doctor!
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