Biya, Ngute didn’t know minister Laurent Esso had travelled to India for treatment   ⁰

Not many people within the ruling CPDM party are aware that even the most powerful men and women in Cameroon are still human beings with bodies and families who sometimes need to take time off, whether for medical reasons, personal matters, or just to recharge. But the Cameroonian people who rely on them still need to know where they are.

That’s the issue at hand with Justice Minister Laurent Esso who recently disappeared from the nation’s capital Yaoundé. Mr Esso reportedly left Yaoundé for Paris and later moved to India and was placed in intensive care. But the Cameroonian people were not informed until Cameroon Intelligence Report published an update on the minister— and, even more surprisingly, neither was Mr Esso’s ultimate boss, President Paul Biya.

That is shockingly disturbing mindful of Laurent Esso’s job as Minister for Justice and Keeper of the Seals, one whose command of the Cameroonian judiciary is second only to the president.

The Minister for Justice plays a crucial role in the chain of command in Cameroon. He controls solid aspects and areas of national security on a 24/7 basis. That’s an important function in a country. Laurent Esso is an important personality in a way that even some of the other cabinet ministers are not.

Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute has still not commented on the where about of his Justice Minister who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer in India. There are rumours that Biya is planning to get rid of him amid continuing demands for him to be interrogated on the journalist Martinez Zogo affair.

The Biya administration is already stretched trying to manage the crisis in Southern Cameroons, the reemergence of Boko Haram in the Far North and is facing a tough reelection battle in October.  Laurent Esso’s absence from the country is apparently a national security own-goal that has come at a worse time for Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate.

Esso has been Minister for Justice for more than three decades without a distinguished judicial career.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai