YAOUNDE, Jan 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A popular Cameroon radio journalist who had been missing following what a media rights group called an abduction has been found dead, his employer and police said.
Martinez Zogo was managing director of Yaounde-based private radio station Amplitude FM and the star host of a popular daily programme, Embouteillage (Gridlock).
On the air, the 51-year-old regularly tackled cases of corruption, not hesitating to question important personalities by name. He had been missing since Tuesday.
“I went to Ebogo (15 kilometres north of Yaounde) early this morning where I saw and recognised the body of Martinez Zogo. The prosecutor’s deputy was present and his wife was there to identify him,” Amplitude FM radio editor-in-chief Charly Tchouemou said.
A large crowd gathered as Zogo’s body was taken to the morgue of Yaounde central hospital for an autopsy, a member of the victim’s family said.
Social media has been awash with posts following his disappearance with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemning “the brutal abduction of a journalist”.
According to RSF, Zogo’s badly damaged car was found outside a police station in a suburb of the Cameroonian capital Yaounde on Tuesday.
“There are many grey areas regarding the circumstances of his brutal abduction,” Sadibou Marong, head of the sub-Saharan Africa office of RSF, said.
“The authorities must launch a rigorous, thorough and independent investigation to establish the full chain of responsibility and the circumstances that led to this sad event,” Marong said.
Cameroon’s national journalists’ union condemned a “heinous assassination” and urged media workers to wear black on Jan 25 as a sign of mourning.
The International Press Institute, a Vienna-based press freedom organisation, urged Cameroonian authorities to “promptly investigate the horrific murder and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice”.
The political opposition was also indignant, with Social Democratic Front (SDF) deputy Jean-Michel Nintcheu denouncing a “crime which cannot go unpunished”.
On Sunday, several Cameroonian television channels dedicated their programmes to Zogo’s death. — NNN-AGENCIES
