The authorities decided to clear the place for a parade along May 20 Boulevard to the Mfandena District, on the side of the OmniSports Stadium. As recalled from the eviction operations in the quarters of Nkolbisson Tsinga (behind Combattant), Ntaba Nlongkak, Briqueterie, Emana and very recently at Messa, place Lissouck (February 2010), these operations are always painful for the victims. However, the Cameroonian political decision makers pretend not to notice. The proof is this nth administrative decision that undoubtedly brings about these demolitions with all their corollaries such as homelessness, unemployment and more-serious injury and death (e.g., the death of an indigenous octogenarian of Ntaba Nlongkak in 2008). In spite of the complaints, the protests and the pressures aiming at the State to find another place for the parade on an unoccupied site and at the edge of the capital city, work nonetheless started on 23 February 2010 with the presence of heavy equipment of the contracting company charged to carry out work. According to the Cameroonian daily newspaper Le Jour (N° 635, 24 February 2010, stakes are planted on the axis Texaco-Oilibya and according to a construction company employee named John, “We are in the process of adding 12 meters of road in order to widen it on both sides.” Our visit to the site enabled us to observe that even the prolongation of the station Oilibya (Omnisport-Cemetery) is concerned with work. At least 200 people are likely to be affected by this operation. To this number, one will have to add tens of families who started to leave the district already, once the Municipality of Yaoundé launched its operation a few days ago. The majority of the victims are hawkers and vendors, merchants, hairdressers, store owners, the beauty school and training salons, administrative workers, families with children still going to the school, young people and even elderly people. These demolition operations are the consequence of the decision by the authorities to prepare parade grounds for commemoration of Cameroon’s fiftieth anniversary of independence. The Yaoundé Municipality, the responsible institution, is marking crosses on the dwellings to be destroyed. On 7 March 2010, the populations of the Ngousso Texaco-Omnisport-Cemetery road arteries started to move their personal effects, others tore the siding off their dwellings. Indeed on 2 March, the agents of the Yaoundé Municipality came to affix crosses on constructions to be destroyed, giving the tenants an 8-day deadline. That followed a meeting of the authorities in which they determined to make the Mfandena quarter the site for the festivities marking the fiftieth anniversary of independence.

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