Assassination of Martinez Zogo in Cameroon: media confusion and virtual silence of the authorities

In Cameroon, journalist Martinez Zogo was found dead in January 2023. © AFPTV

Text by: Valentin Zinga Follow

6 min

Three months after the murder of journalist Martinez Zogo, the "affair" still keeps all its secrets. The government and judiciary have opted for the trade union minimum in their communication strategy, leaving the field to rumours, manipulation and disinformation.

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Those who had hoped for total transparency from the authorities in the "Martinez Zogo affair" are at their expense. At the beginning of February 2023, against all odds, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Minister of State, Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, signed a communiqué, in the face of an opinion shocked by the discovery, on January 22, in a suburb of Yaoundé, of the mutilated body, bearing signs of serious abuse, and in a state of decomposition, of Arsène Salomon Mbani Zogo, alias Martinez Zogo, missing five days earlier.

President Biya's close collaborator then announced the arrest of the few people suspected of being involved in the "assassination" of the journalist, as well as the establishment of a "joint police-gendarmerie commission", on the instruction of the head of state, to shed light on this "case". Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh also said that other arrests would follow.

We then learned through social networks, and then the traditional media, the arrest of the divisional commissioner Maxime Eko Eko, boss of the Directorate General of External Research (DGRE), Lieutenant-Colonel Justin Danwe, director of operations at the DGRE, and businessman Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, CEO of the "Groupe L'Anecdote" of which the television channel Vision 4 is the flagship, among others.

► Read also: Assassination of Martinez Zogo in Cameroon: three months after the shock wave, where is the investigation?

Rumors

Since then, radio silence among the authorities, except for a few rare statements from the Minister of Communication to challenge certain assertions and recall that the government is following this issue with interest. Even the highly publicized denunciation of the supposed existence of a parallel procedure to the "joint police-gendarmerie commission", formulated by Amougou Belinga's lawyers, had not provoked any particular reaction from the Cameroonian authorities.

At the same time, social networks have not stopped relaying all kinds of "information". Radio and television stations broadcast the most contradictory positions, including those of the lawyers of Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, Justin Danwe and the family of Martinez Zogo.

Recent illustration: the battle of interpretation of the texts of laws by the lawyers on the possibility of a provisional release of the businessman which opposed his camp to that of the family of the deceased host of the popular program "Embouteillage".

While waiting for the court to rule on this point on April 27, academics are drawing "provisional lessons" from this case. "The Martinez Zogo case has highlighted the entanglements between the media, judicial and political systems," says Thomas Atenga, professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Douala. Each of the actors pursuing the same goal: to have the opinion on his side. The Ministry of Communication has gone from pedaling to backpedaling, but always in a defensive posture and justifying the importance that the State attaches to the media world. In two communiqués, the Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic ordered the investigation as if to indicate the highest interest that the top of the State gave to this case, accentuating the suspicions of wanting to tip justice in one direction.

As for the services of lawyers and the media, the academic explains that "the parties' lawyers have played on the inexperience of the national media system in terms of judicial chronicles. Finally, the "Martinez Zogo affair" came to highlight the new moral economy of Cameroonian journalism, including the (un)formalized arrangements with the political, judicial, and money worlds that ultimately determine the processes and modes of production, consumption and regulation of info-communication content in such cases. It is indicative of the interlocking between the media, justice and politics in Cameroon. The principle of neutrality has been abused by the media, the judiciary, the public authorities and public opinion."

« Secrecy of the investigation »

In this context, where rumours flourish and where the risks of manipulation and disinformation are real, many citizens hoped that the government commissioner – the equivalent of the public prosecutor in civil justice – would help to enlighten minds on this case. But since their incarceration in Yaoundé's main prison in early March, following the indictment of Amougou Belinga for "complicity in torture by aid", and that of Maxime Eko Eko and Justin Danwe for "negligence and non-compliance with instructions" and "kidnapping and torture", no official information has been given by the government commissioner.

► Read also: Guest Africa – Zogo case in Cameroon: "We can fear that we do not have the whole truth," says Me Claude Assira

Specialists evoke the principle of "secrecy of investigations" and "secrecy of investigations" before the closure of the investigation to explain this silence. However, admits a lawyer at the Cameroon Bar, "there is a derogation from this principle. The government commissioner does have the right to communicate on a case pending before the investigating judge, as is currently the case in the context of the "Martinez Zogo case". He can do this either by way of a press release or by means of an interview. But it is only a right and it is the government commissioner who decides whether to exercise it or not." And the same source adds: "If he does not communicate, it is probably because he does not find the opportunity to communicate. He may want to avoid that his communication is relayed by the networks with the risk of disturbing the understanding of the file.

In general, Thomas Atenga's regrets are then all the more audible: "Beyond the secrecy of the investigation, it has clearly appeared that the police and gendarmerie, unaccustomed to communicating in the direction of public opinion in this type of case, have not integrated the need to do so in an attempt to cut short manipulations and other misinformation. The "Martinez Zogo case" is an invitation to the authorities to strengthen the training of clothed bodies on how to work with the press.

Meanwhile, the pressure on the government to shed light on the assassination of Martinez Zogo does not seem to have completely abated. Would the late host of the program "Embouteillage" on Amplitude FM have been the victim of the insistent denunciations of the management, by members of the government, of various budget chapters, of which the businessman Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga would have been a privileged beneficiary? This is one of the questions surrounding this "file" which we hope that the Cameroonian justice will manage to untangle the skein.

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Read on on the same topics:

• Cameroon
• Criminality
• Media
• Freedom of the press
• Society