"The Civil Cabinet of the Presidency of the Republic announces with regrets the death today at 01:30pm of Mr. Martin Belinga Eboutou," Samuel Mvondo Ayolo, Minister, Director of the Civil Cabinet said in a statement dated Wednesday May 8, 2019.

News of the death of the former Minister, Director of the Civil Cabinet of the Presidency of the Republic first circulated from mouth to ear and later as rumour on social media.

Though the Presidency of the Republic did not say where Belinga Eboutou died,  news has it that he breath his last at a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland where he was being treated of an illness.

The former seminarian, trained in the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Paris, Belinga Eboutou bagged a degree in canon law, a doctorate in law and a diploma from the diplomatic section of ENA in Paris. The career diplomat served in many Cameroonian embassies abroad including in Brazzaville and Paris before returning to Yaounde, where he became the director of state protocol in 1989.

Particularly close to Paul Biya, whose religious fervour he shared, he was then appointed pioneer director of the civil cabinet in 1996, before representing Cameroon at the United Nations in New York from 1997. He was appointed to head the Civil Cabinet in 2010 where he served until March 2, 2018 when he was replaced by Samuel Mvondo Ayolo.