Popular homage: Ateba Eyene proclaimed national hero

A heavy deployment of police and gendarmes could not control the crowds that converged on the mortuary of the Yaounde General Hospital on Thursday, to pay their last homage to renowned scholar, politician, social critic and prolific author, Charles Ateba Eyene.

By Mbeh Moses Eben in Yaounde

Ateba Eyene for ever

The crowds dictated the pace of the program of the day, to the discernible chagrin of gun-totting security forces and even family members.

                After the routine ceremonies at the mortuary, the crowds comprising mostly of youths imposed that Ateba Eyene’s body should be carried around the city of Yaounde for all his thousands of admirers and sympathizers to catch a glimpse of his casket and also pay their last respects to the fallen hero. The irate youths dictated the direction that the convoy had to follow and also the pace of its movement.

                They ordered for the convoy to stop at particular roundabouts in town. There, they would chant songs in praise of Charles Ateba Eyene; they would weep and wail, in a manner that visibly provoked the authorities.

                At the Warda round-about in down town, the defiant crowds forced the security forces to allow the funeral convoy to drive towards the 20 May boulevard. They said Ateba Eyene must be taken to the city centre and declared a national hero. After a long period of resistance the police forces finally gave in. the endless convoy thus drove in triumph, towards the 20 May grandstand. The crowds chanted in triumph: “Ateba, Ateba, our president, Ateba always alive” was the song of the day.

                It should be mentioned that according to the official program, Ateba Eyene’s body was supposed to leave the mortuary at 10am and arrive at his residence in Nfou at 12am.

                But even though the corpse actually left at 10am as planned, it only arrived the 20 May boulevard at 4.30pm. And so the program had to be changed. Atebe Eyene could not be taken to his residence any more. The corpse was driven from the May 20 boulevard straight to the Marie-Gocker Parish at Elig-Essono in Yaounde. And that was where it spent the night before it was carried on Friday morning to Ateba Eyene’s village near Kribi in the South region for burial on Saturday.