Talking to The Post, Mayor Fongu said at about 11.00pm that fateful day, about eight persons stormed his residence at Foncha Street and spent about one hour chiselling the main doors.

The Mayor is quoted as saying that he got in touch with security forces who unfortunately got there late. He says he initially mistook the intruders for armed men fighting for the independence of a country they call Ambazonia until they said they were thieves.

Hear him: “I started calling forces of law and order, but they arrived 10 minutes late, when the bandits had left. When they entered my sitting room, and since they were not masked, I took them for Amba Boys, and they instead gave me two slaps and started brutalising me and my son.

“They told me outright that they were thieves and we should give all the money in our keeping. We obeyed. When they took my phone and they saw a call coming from the military; that is when they bloodied my eyes with the booth of the gun. You can see this right eye with blood, after being discharged from hospital,” Mayor Fongu narrated to The Post.

The bandits proceeded to a private hospital at Foncha Street, opposite St. John Catholic Church, where money, phones and other valuables, were seized from patients.

According to a medical doctor of that health facility, their private security operatives alerted policemen who arrived at the scene on time as the bandits took off and their gang leader was killed on the spot.

Two others escaped with severe injuries. Bamenda is unsafe. Homes, business places, churches are broken into on a daily basis, The Post writes.

Security forces have been battling armed men loyal to the fight for the independence of the putative state of Ambazonia, a geographical allusion to Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions.