Inhabitants, security agents attest to some level of awareness from socially degrading attitudes.
The celebration of the New Year Day has effaced the long established notion that Douala is a city with myriad of insecurities. Looking at the event at the early start of this year, one would note a remarkable improvement in the awareness and behaviour of the people.
Socially degrading attitudes like engaging in heavy drinking and reckless motorcade riding, mostly by commercial riders, were hardly spotted in the city during the crossover to 2015. The interest in the activity of the motorcade is not just the noisy parading but the deadly accidents that have resulted in most of such occasions in the past. However, a scanty convoy by some bike riders drove past New-Bell via Ngangue to Bonapriso as it clocked midnight, as well as at Ndokotti.
At Nkololoun, in the course of this move of gaiety, two bikes in a convoy with several others, crushed each other, veering from the middle of the road and landing one into a gutter and the other running into a third bike. Two of the riders were grievously maimed and rushed to the emergency ward of the Laquintinie Hospital.
Two security officers of a private security company on routine check in a pickup veered off Njoya Street and drove headlong into a home in New-Bell. Bricks landed on the two occupants who were savouring the dawn of year 2015, wounding them. They were immediately taken to the New Bell District Hospital where they were attended to.
Public security agents across Gendarmerie Brigades and Police Stations in Nkololoun, Akwa, New Bell, Bonanjo assess that fewer incidents have been recorded as compared to the previous year. “We haven’t noticed any case of road accident in the city since December 25; no stabbing nor fighting as it has often been in the past years,” says a Gendarme officer at the ‘Brigade d’Aéroport’.
To Tarla Derrick, a long time inhabitant in New Bell, a neighbourhood considered most insecure by some people, there has not been trouble. “It proves people are getting civilised and have learnt to spend wisely and behave cautiously.”
