Limbe population pays last respect to fallen soldiers

As the nation mourns and honours its most recent dead in the war on Boko Haram, this seaside town, far from the battle front, is possibly shedding more tears than any other town in the country.

Inside two of the caskets that received military honours today in a ceremony for fallen soldiers at the military headquarters in Yaounde are the bodies of two residents of the city: Lieutenant Colonel Beltus Honore Kwene Ekwele and Captain Pipwoh Yari Emmanuel. They were both officers of the Rapid Reaction Force (BIR).

This is not only because they might well have still been on duty at the BIR base in Limbe at the time they died. Though deployed to the battlefront, their families were still resident in Limbe at the time they met their doom.

Capt. Yari fell on the battlefront while leading an operation against Boko Haram at Goshe inside Nigeria on February 11.

Lt. Col. Kwene, the most ranking officer to perish in the war, was fatally wounded in a landmine explosion on February 14 after safely delivering freed Nigerian hostages across the border.

Their families, neighbours and friends here are in grief. And this is not the first time.

When about same time last year, Captain Elvis Matute Mbene perished in a landmine explosion at Limani, in the Far North, his wife, parents, neighbours and childhood friends in Limbe were emotionally shattered.

A son of the soil whose father is a quarter head in Limbe, Mbene’s funeral nearly emptied Limbe to Bonjongo (formerly under Limbe administratively) where he was laid to rest.

Though the bodies of Kwene, 39, and Yari, 31, will not be seen by the Limbe population, memorials were held in their honour earlier this week.

A night service took place at Kwene’s Limbe Camp New Layout residence on March 7 in the presence of his widow Vania, a Guidance Counsellor at GBHS Limbe.

The memorial for Yari, a Limbe socialite well known to nightclub goers, was a popular night show at the Limbe Community Field on March 9, announced days earlier in a banner at Half Mile, downtown. He will be buried in Baba One, Ngoketunjia, in the North West.

Kwene, father of six, a Francophone Bakossi with an Anglophone Bakossi mother, will be buried in his village, Moumekeng (Bello Market), near Manjo in Moungo Division, Littoral Region.

Scores of soldiers have fallen in the three-year battle, most of them rank and file, but Limbe’s losses matter more in their quality. Three of the five fallen officers were resident in Limbe. They were the most ranking officers to have perished in the war. Two lieutenants who died earlier, and resident elsewhere, were juniors.