2 brothers buried alive while mining gold in Santa

Two brothers, one Edwin Che and Cletus Akuma, lost their lives digging a mysterious gold mine in a farm land at Ngong, Santa in Mezam division, Thursday July 2.

According to eye witness accounts, Che, a self-proclaimed prophet and telecommunication engineer by profession, had said he received a divine revelation to the effect that there was gold in his father’s farm land.

Prophet Edwin Che, as he was commonly called, acting on the God sent revelation had invited his brother, Cletus Akuma, from Limbe, and convinced him that the money he was struggling to get in Limbe had been made available in Santa by God.

When Akuma arrived from Limbe, last week, both of them hired some local youths in Santa to begin digging a portion of their father’s farm land at Njong where the hidden treasure was supposed to be.

According to Larry Uchenna of Santa Radio Meteo, when the prophet felt the diggers were getting close to the core of the gold, he (Che) paid off the hired youths and chose to continue the digging with his brother.

We gathered that the Prophet and his brother, all wearing oxygen masks, just when they descended into the mine to begin extracting the gold, the walls caved and buried both of them alive.

The Bamenda army rescue unit rushed to the scene to recuperate the corpses but was unable. However, Nguele Nguele Felix, Senior Divisional Officer for Mezam hired a bulldozer to dig to the bottom of the ‘mine’ to retrieve the corpses.

Prophet Edwin’s wife, who also goes by the title of Prophetess Tumazang, said her husband had confided in her they were going to build their house with gold extracted from the mine revealed to him in the father’s farm. “Since it was a divine message, I could not disobey by stopping my husband,” she said.

The Director of MIDENO, John B. Ndeh, Njong-Santa elite who visited the scene, said landslides are common everywhere and the incident that happened at Njong-Santa was not very different. He observed, however, that; “If these men had succeeded to get the gold, it would have changed the lives of Santa people.”

Addressing the press after the incident last Friday, the SDO for Mezam disclosed that Prophet Edwin had actually obtained an exploration authorization from the Mezam Divisional Delegation of Mines, Industries and Technological Development for the experiment. He, however, pointed out that the authorisation given them only allowed them the right to search and not to dig.