Detained SCNC leader going blind in detention

Oben Maxwell Eyong, Southern Cameroons National Council Yaounde Coordinator who has been in detention for over 36 months without trial is battling with blindness owing to medical neglect by Cameroon gov’t authorities, sources who visited him told The Cameroon Journal.

The SCNC activist, arrested on the eve of President Biya’s visit to Buea for Cameroon’s reunification celebration in 2013, has developed severe eye problems to the extent he’s only seeing right now with the use of contact lenses. Without lenses The Cameroon Journal gathered, he can’t even identify people and objects before him, Leke Theodore, SCNC Second vice National Chairman said.

“Oben is looking very frail, haggard, weak and already showing signs of a man who has given up hopes of surviving the harsh detention conditions,” Leke said, adding that Oben is detained under very deplorable conditions. He said so far, only him (Leke) and another SCNC activist, one Mathias Arrey Bissong, have been assisting Oben.

Leke indicated that they have been giving Oben food as well as money and have taken up Oben’s case with human rights groups and other international organizations. However, he faulted SCNC leadership for abandoning Oben to himself in jail.

Prison authorities declined requests to comment on Oben’s health situation.

It should be noted that Oben, whose trial is yet to formally begin despite spending over three years in prison already, was thrown back to jail after a Buea Magistrate Court judge cancelled a bail she had earlier granted.

Despite spirited arguments by Oben’s lawyers that he be bailed, Justice Beatrice Nambangi maintained that his case was too sensitive and could not be treated with levity.

Oben is being accused of insurrection after he was arrested at Mile 17 Motor Park in Buea, alongside a co-accused with whom they were debating the subject of secession. The co-accused’s whereabouts isn’t known and he has never appeared in court since they were arrested.

Oben’s lawyer suspects that the ‘missing’ co-accused may have been a regime envoy planted to provoke Oben into the debate that led to his arrest so as to give reasons for the police to arrest him.