Administration, SDF clash over Mayor’s corpse

The Donga-Mantung administration in the Northwest Region, recently clashed with the Nkambe SDF District executive, over the burial of the former Deputy Mayor for Nkambe, Francis Nfor Baleri, who was also SDF District Legal Adviser.

According to the burial programme of the former Deputy Mayor who served from 2007 to 2013, his corpse was expected to be laid at the Nkambe grandstand for the public to pay their last respects. In view of this, the SDF party hierarchy took upon themselves to give the grandstand a facelift while waiting for the arrival of the corpse from Bamenda.

The Post learnt that the SDO received a call from a CPDM bigwig in Yaounde asking why he should allow an SDF militant to be laid at the grandstand, worst of all, “with national colours”.

The SDO is said to have convened an emergency security meeting with his immediate collaborators on the issue. Although some of them, reportedly did not see reason for intervention, it was agreed that, that part of the programme be obstructed. The SDO then led a delegation with some elements of the gendarmerie to the grandstand where SDF District authorities were putting final touches to the decoration.

Upon arrival at the grandstand, the SDO ordered the decoration to stop, saying there was no authorisation for such a public manifestation and that the colours of the national flag in which the grandstand was being decorated to be taken away since it was not a state-burial. The SDF District Chairman, Wilfred Shey Mbeh, and his closed collaborators, stood their grounds that an authorisation letter was with Hon. Cyprain Awudu Mbaya who was accompanying the corpse.

They also argued that late Francis Nfor Baleri, besides being the Deputy Mayor from 2007 tom2013, had served the nation in Nkambe since 1970 as a Cameroonian civil servant and, thus, deserved the honours.

The argument almost degenerated to a quarrel and it was then agreed that the corpse would be laid in-state at the grandstand but without the national colours. When the corpse was finally conveyed to the Nkambe grandstand, the professional mourners ferried in from Yaounde thrilled hundreds of mourners who had gathered to pay last respects to the deceased Nfor Baleri alias ‘Nyanga-Boy’.

After eulogies, followed by viewing of the corpse, the remains were taken to the Nkambe District Hospital Mortuary. The following day, a convoy of over 30 cars led the mortal remains of Baleri to his Mbar native village in Nkambe Central Subdivision.

In a sermon, the Rev. Pastor of the Nkambe Town Baptist Church, where late Baleri worshipped, said the latter was a committed Christian and one who had lived by Christian examples worth emulating. He warned those present to be very careful not to fall prey to what he described as “religious armed-robbery”.

He said that it is only through Jesus Christ that one can go to heaven and that, anyone who does not believe in Christ was a “religious armed robber”. The Nkambe SDF District Chair, Wilfred Shey Mbeh, said Baleri was an asset to the party.

“He was a legal adviser who did just his job; he was too simple and soft-spoken,” Mbeh said.

According to the former Mayor of Nkambe, Jones Mangoh Tanko, late Baleri was an astute collaborator who influenced a lot of things during his service to the council and the party. He said Baleri’s death has created a vacuum that would hardly be filled.

Hon. Cyprain Awudu Mbaya, MP for Ndu/Nkambe Constituency and Questor in the National Assembly, said he had known the deceased from childhood and learnt much from him, especially honesty.

Mangoh described Baleri as a diligent and dynamic politician, a great democrat, substantiating the point with the fact that his second wife was the President of the Women’s wing of the CPDM party in Nkambe and his first wife, like him, was an SDF militant, but they lived so well at home.

Quoting from the Bible, Mangoh consoled family members, the SDF party and the villagers, not cry because God knows already who would replace him. He said late Baleri had worked so hard as was depicted by the mammoth crowd that turned-out for the funeral.

BIODATA Francis Nfor Baleri alias Nyanga-Boy was born in 1947 in Bonchup Mba.

He attended C.B.M Wat; Native Authority School Ndop and then, Longla Comprehensive College Bamenda. He was employed by the Local Government Wat Council under the KNDP and later in1969 by the Nkambe Council.

Appointed a Market Master in Ntumbaw and Ndu and later a Court Clerk in 1970 under the Nkambe Council, he later worked in the same capacity at the Nkambe Appeal Court.

He was later transfered to the Nkambe Magistrates Court as a Clerk. He was subsequently posted to the Legal Department Nkambe by the Minister of Justice in which capacity he retired in 2003.

He was described as one who served all governments that have existed in Cameroon: Southern Cameroons, West Cameroon, the United Republic of Cameroon and the Republic of Cameroon; he had been a militant of the KNDP, CNU, CPDM and died a staunch SDF militant.