Support for Ambassador Fossung’s funeral Biya, please play the 'big boy'!.

He had since substantiated such an identity with the creation of the National Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration Committee, NDDR, opening what his supporters continue to say is a path for those who took up arms against the State, to surrender and find a way back into society.

Yet, this week, a letter, attributed to the wife of Henry Fossung, onetime career diplomat who died in the United States, Judith Edna Babila Fossung, addressed to the Minister, Director of the Civil Cabinet of the Presidency, Samuel Mvonda Ayolo, praying for certain assuaging actions, has been hitting the polity.

Within the country’s diplomatic architecture, political corridors and among Anglophones, Babila Fossung’s appeal for State authorisation for Ambassador Fossung’s corpse to be repatriated and request to support his funeral, with expenses put at 48.6 million FCFA, have remained topical.

The issue has even split public opinion, especially given that Ambassador Fossung, at sometime served as leader of the now proscribed Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC.

It was a nonviolent group that advocated independence for the former Southern Cameroons, comprising today’s North West and South West Regions.

Observers say the requests from the deceased’s wife is a window for  Biya, widely heralded as a “beggar of peace” and father of the nation, to rise above pettiness and play the 'big boy.'

Those expecting a positive reply to Babila’s letter are recalling that if the Head of State could pardon those who had been suspected of being ringleaders of the April 6, 1984 failed coup, forgiving the trespasses of the late Fossung, shouldn't be much of a thing to do.

As the Statesman under whose guidance Cameroonians are, irrespective of political opinion, they say, the President could grant the appeals to strengthen reconciliation and honour the decades which Fossung served the country as a career diplomat.

They are arguing that, Biya could set himself apart and higher in wisdom and leadership to show the country’s Diaspora, whether hostile to or supportive of his regime, that there is no place like home.

Give Fossung last chance like coup plotters

Those looking up to see the State not only authorise the return of  Fossung’s remains but also government’s support for his funeral, are projecting the magnanimity that Biya showed suspects and plotters of the 1984 failed coup, who were also after the President's life.

To those holding such a narrative, Biya guided Cameroon through that difficult season, stabilising things in the late 90s because he opted to pardon especially Northerners who were implicated in what some said was an attack on the Head of State’s life.

In this guise, they are cataloguing names such as; Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Dakolle Daissala, Ibrahim Ourmarou, and Marcel Niat Njifenji, who we thrown into jail but later released and eventually got reintegrated into the society through pardon. 

Added to the list is Bello Bouba Maigari, who returned from Nigeria, where he had escaped to, thanks to Biya’s fatherly and forgiving nature. He was not only reintegrated into national life but was appointed to several key ministerial positions by the same Biya, whose position and head Bello Bouba and Co. had set out for on April 6, 1984.

Analysts say that most of these persons became members of government and key actors in the nation’s political life after being linked with the coup, thanks to Presidential pardon, pundits say, means Ambassador Fossung could also be pardoned for his SCNC activism and allowed to get a befitting burial.

They are recalling that when the National Assembly adopted the amnesty bill in early 1991, Biya did not waste time in enacting it into law the next day. The Law No. 91/002 on April 22, 1991, had granted pardon for all political offenses and sentences. 

Those revisiting it to make a case for the  State to not only authorise the repatriation of Fossung’s remains, are recalling that, it opened the prison gates for hundreds of persons detained or jailed in line with the April 6, 1984 coup to walk free into society and are living their lives till date.

Giving a dog a bad name to hang it?

While Fossung was a known voice and face within the SCNC movement, he had largely gone silent since leaving Cameroon in the early 2000s. 

Since news of his demise on March 31 this year and the surfacing of the appeal to government; attributed to his wife, several toxic narratives have emerged.

Many have either deliberately linked his person and name to the Anglophone crisis, which sparked in the last quarter of 2016 and metamorphosed into an armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions in 2017.

Others are still battling to link the late diplomat to some of the atrocities that have been recorded across the two Regions over nine years on. 

Those who have been following developments across the two Regions and in the diaspora, are insistent that Fossung was of the SCNC generation and not those who hatched and nurtured the armed conflict. 

They are arguing that till his demise, his voice had become virtually nonexistent on Anglophone issues or the armed conflict in the two Regions. 

Those linking him with the armed conflict, observers are stating, are simply trying to give him a bad name to cause authorities to turn a blind eye to the requests of his wife. 

Based on such arguments, the reasoning of some is that the Head of State, in his usual magnamity, would use his sense of good judgment perhaps, for the sake of the fatherland Fossung served faithfully retirement, to support his family give him a befitting farewell in the land of his ancestors.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3801 of Friday May 29, 2026