By Tata Mbunwe
Akolle Epie Anthony, former worker of the University of Buea, has regained freedom after spending five years behind bars on charges of secession.
The former Head of ICTs at UB’s Faculty of Health Sciences was freed on Sunday, March 5, from the Buea Central Prison, 65 months after he was arrested.
He was much elated when he reunited with his family and his lawyer, Barrister Lohtabu Evans.
“After almost six years of eating the bland and flavourless institutional food served to inmates… I think I’ll be fine, to as soon as I figure out where to begin all over again, with the sprawling, boundless world now spread before me,” Epie Anthony said in a statement released by his lawyer.
“My sincerest thanks to my Christian brethren, my family, my lawyers, especially mates, colleagues, friends and sympathisers scattered all over planet earth – who prayed for me with tears,and kept me morally, financially, mentally, psychologically,” he further said.
Barrister Lohtabu said Epie Anthony was arrested from his Bonduma neighborhood in Buea on October 1, 2017 and taken, alongside dozens of others, to the State Secretariat of Defence for the Gendarmerie (SED) in Yaounde.
Six months later, he was transferred to the Buea Military Court where he was sentenced to five years in prison for secession.
Barrister Lohtabu adds that no “hard evidence” was found against him, yet he was sentenced.
Prison deprived him of the one thing he valued the most – freedom.
“After over five years of being told when to get up, when to go to bed, when to bathe, when and what to eat, when to be locked up… I’m not sure I can remember how to handle being in charge of my own life. Losing some coordination, mental and psycho balance and suffering from post traumatic stress disorder can be really near-fatal. But after all I’ve survived, I am certain I could re-learn the art of living again…and of course, of Independence,” the former inmate added.
He is among hundreds of English-speaking Cameroonians who have been detained in connection with the secessionist conflict in the Northwest and Southwest.
Many of them have not even been charged, despite spending several years in detention, Amnesty International said in a recent release.
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