Pirates attack Bakassi, kills inspector, abducts commissioner

Pirates reportedly attacked a police boat at sea in the Bakassi Peninsula on Friday, February 13; during this attack, they killed a Police Inspector and kidnapped a Police Commissioner.

The police boat, which was on routine patrol in the area, reportedly came face-to-face with a speed boat with pirates on board in the early hours of Friday.

Police Inspector, Ernest Bayugah Bayugah, has been named as the police officer who was shot at sea somewhere around the Barracks in the Bakassi area by the pirates. His remains has been sent to the Regional Hospital Mortuary in Limbe, awaiting burial.

The Post gathered that Bayugah’s boss and Chief of Frontier Police Post, Commissioner Enobi Ngwesse, who was with him in their own boat, is feared to have been kidnapped by the pirates.

As at Friday evening, Ngwesse was nowhere to be found. Observers say the Chief of the Frontier Police post probably jumped into the sea when the pirates opened fire but had not been seen since then. Speculations are rife that he might have been abducted.

However, sources in the Barracks area in Bakassi, which is a small fishing community around Kombo Itinde, said Bayugah’s body was later recovered and moved to the Ekondo Titi Beach front.

However, the SDO of Ndian, Chamberlain Ntou’ou Ndong, later instructed, according to orders from his hierarchy, that Bayugah’s remains be transported to the Limbe mortuary for preservation as investigations continue. His remains finally got to Limbe at about 10:00 pm.

Given the heightened focus on the war against Boko Haram in the North, pirates, who had gone silent for quite some months now, seem to have taken advantage of the apparent lull in security vigilance to attack Bakassi again.

Pirate attacks in the Bakassi Peninsular have been a recurrent happening within the past years since the signing of the Green Tree Accord and the final handing over of the Peninsula to Cameroon.

The gravest loss in the area was registered on June 9, 2008, when the then DO of Kombo Abedimo and five security officers were shot dead at sea by pirates.

Cameroon has lost several other servicemen, among them soldiers, civilians and property to these pirates who are highly suspected to be residing within the creeks across or along the Cameroon-Nigerian border.