The deceased is said to have been playing under the rain with his younger brother at Ikundi Street, behind the former Buea Council office in Buea Town around 8:00 a.m. when his flip-flops fell into one of the over flooded gutters on account of the torrential rains.

As he jumped in to retrieve his flip-flops, he is said to have been swept by the water currents and got his neck trapped underneath the gutter. As he gasped for air, his younger brother raised an alarm for help. Before neighbours could succeed to rescue the teenager, he was already singing in the heavenly choir.

An ambulance that rushed to the scene of the unfortunate incident transported the mortal remains of the schoolboy to the mortuary of the Buea Regional Hospital Annex.

Upon receiving the sad news, Hon. Malomba Esembe, Member of Parliament for Buea Urban Constituency extended his condolences to the grieving family.

“My heart aches at the news of the drowning of a young citizen of Buea following the heavy downpour this morning. My prayers are with the family,” the lawmaker said in a Facebook post.

Cameroon-Info.Net recalls that on Tuesday, March 24, 2020, heavy rains flooded gutters in Buea leading to untold damage of property, walkways and crops. Some neighbourhoods were greatly affected owing to the fact that urban planning norms have for the most part not been respected in the construction of homes.

Following a 15-day ultimatum from South West Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai for the situation to be redressed, David Mafani Namange, Mayor of Buea, Thursday, March 26, swung into action by launching a campaign to demolish irregularly constructed buildings – especially those blocking public roads and drainage systems.

Namange, who is less than two months into his five-year mandate, has vowed to put a stop to infrastructural projects that do not respect town planning regulations, especially given that his predecessors appeared to have fought against the malpractice with little success. 

After their assessment visit to the flooded areas last Wednesday, South West Governor Bernard Okalai Bilai and Mayor Namange resolved to immediately check irregular construction in Buea, to pre-empt any such disaster in the future.

As Mayor Namange swung into action, with workers of the council’s Technical Service, breaking here and there, it dawned on the Buea public that the mayor’s actions would speak louder than his words, in the execution of his development blueprint for the “Town of Legendary Hospitality.”

For a start, the mayor’s demolition exercise took him to Great Soppo Market (opposite OIC Buea), Clerks Quarters, CAMSIC entrance and GRA, where some irregularly constructed structures broken down, watched by onlookers with mixed feelings. 

At Soppo Market, the mayor regretted that “toilets have been turned into shops and passages occupied and reduced to less than half-meter wide.”

Mayor Namange condemned the haphazard building in Clerks Quarter, a government residential area, without regards to town planning regulations.

“How can people be building and blocking other houses behind without leaving [breathing space] or giving them access to sunlight?” he wondered.

The mayor regretted that some of the defaulters had earlier been warned, but they instead tried, to no avail, to induce council authorities into bribe-taking.

“When they came we told them to go and do just the right thing, which they did not .Now we have helped them do the right thing,” Namange told reporters. Can you imagine that towards CAMSIC, near GHS Buea people are building on the road and blocking a water way that was constructed more than 25 years ago?”

“Those who think they will bring urban disorder in Buea,I want to let them know that it is over,” the mayor told reporters.

 “I was born in Buea, educated in Buea,I have worked in Buea,I live in Buea and now Mayor of Buea.“Nothing will stop me from doing what is right and lawful to make Buea a beautiful town. Anybody who thinks he will flaunt building regulations is going to face us in the next five years.”

The mayor said those affected by his first demolition exercise are people who had been given prior notice to regularize their situation but they did not heed the advice.

Today’s drowning of a teenager in a flooded gutter in Buea Town may speed up the Mayor’s town planning sanitisation campaign.