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Cameroon: Release Me Or Be Exposed, Abah Abah Warns Biya
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The Post (Buea)
25 April 2008
Posted to the web 25 April 2008
Kini Nsom
The former Minister of Economy and Finance, Polycarpe Abah Abah, who is now languishing in pre-trial detention at the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaounde, has reportedly warned President Paul Biya to release him or face his wrath.
Abah Abah, who will stand trial for allegedly embezzling FCFA 20 billion of state funds, reportedly said he will set the country afire if the authorities proceed to prosecute him.
Security officials are said to have uncovered Abah Abah's message to President Biya when they seized his laptop, his telephone and other communication gadgets from him at the prison.
All electronic equipment was also seized from the former Minister of Public Health, Urbain Olanguena Awono. Following the transfer of the two suspects from the Judicial Police headquarters at Elig-Essono to Kondengui Prison, the Attorney General at the Centre Provincial Court of Appeal ordered that security measures be tightened in that prison.
It was during the execution of this order that security operatives seized communication gadgets from the two detainees.
The Post learned that the authorities are taking Abah Abah's threat seriously, given the fact that there are some soldiers who are said to be sympathizing with him. When information was making rounds that Abah Abah would be arrested, press reports quoted him as saying, in his village meeting, that he has enough money to sponsor terrorism in Cameroon for 10 years if he was arrested.
There are also allegations that the "G11" group whose hopes to take over power in 2011 were dashed following the amendment of the 1996 Constitution that Biya promulgated into law recently, could be mobilising to unseat the CPDM regime through a military coup. Many people believe that Abah Abah's threats could be as empty as the one the former Public Health Minister and erstwhile Biya's personal doctor, Prof. Titus Edzoa, made when he was arrested in 1997 on charges of embezzlement.
Even though he was accused of embezzling billions of public funds, Edzoa held that his real crime was that he declared his intention to run for the 1997 presidential elections.
Edzoa's threats came to nothing, even when he was taken down the stinking confines of the Kondengui prison.
Some observers hold that the arrest of Olanguena and Abah Abah was not predicated on the embezzlement of public funds, but on the fact that they belong to the "G11" group.
Government sources cite Olanguena and Abah Abah as two of the four ministers who approached French authorities last year and asked for help to take over from Biya in 2011.
But Prime Minister, Ephraim Inoni, dismissed this view as the figment of the imagination of idlers. In an interview with the BBC last week, he said he did not even know what "G11" is all about. He said some of those people whom Biya called "apprentice sorcerers" could really be found in his own camp.
Inoni said the arrest is void of any political victimisation, arguing that before the arrest of two former ministers recently, many other government officials had been arrested on charges of corruption. He cited Mounchipou Seidou and Pierre-Desire Engo among others.
Meanwhile, the Legal Department in Yaounde is said to be gathering more evidence against Abah Abah and Olanguena so that their trial could begin at the Mfoundi High Court.
So far, evidence gathered against Abah Abah concerns huge sums of money from Value Added Tax, VAT, which he allegedly mismanaged when he was the Director of Taxation.
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Judicial officials are said to be still far from unravelling his file on the financial rackets he ran as Minister of the Economy and Finance.
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