Pioneer SCNC leader, Barrister Sam Ekontang Elad laid to rest in native village

The body of Barrister Sam Ekontang Elad has been laid to rest at his hometown of Wotolo, Bonduma, in Cameroon’s Buea South West region.

The legendary legal advocate was laid to rest on August 26, 2023.

The iconic lawyer started off as the head of the Separatist movement in Anglophone Cameroon, leading the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC).

Sam Ekontang Elad, who was born in 1941, passed away on May 29, 2023, after a brief illness in the Buea regional hospital.

His funeral services began on Saturday after his body had been kept in a mortuary.

Barrister Elad, a man who dedicated most of his life to protecting the rights of the helpless, was farewelled by his peers, friends, and sympathisers.

Who was Barrister Elad?

The departed Sam Ekontang Elad had a background in law.

He became well-known in Buea for his role in planning the All Anglophone Conference, AAC 1 and 2, which paved the way for a secessionist movement in Cameroon’s English-speaking North West and South West regions.

The AAC 1 and 2 laid forth a separatist agenda that was to be implemented in a peaceful manner.

Before 2016, when teachers and attorneys voiced worries about the English language, the majority of Anglophones supported the proposal.

There is now a full-scale, bloody armed struggle over this topic.

Ekontang Elad, who passed away in 2023 but was a prominent figure in the independence struggle, remarked, “I praise the young people who are fighting,” in an interview with The Post newspaper on the eve of AAC’s 30th-anniversary celebration in April.

I want to be quite clear on something: They told me it would be tough to secure a vote for full independence from the member nations. He went to the United Nations with the likes of Late ST Muna and Late JN Foncha to advocate for independence support, but “in the corridors of the UN they said to us that if people took up arms, the UN might step in,” he stated.