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19  Chapter Two As Journalist with the Zik’s Press After the tour through the territory, Mr. Narnme stationed at Victoria and I at Kumba. From there I poured news to the West African Pilot, Lagos, and soon settled down as a regular Reporter/Correspondent for the Zik’s Press. The popularity under which I was basking as the hard hitting West African Pilot Reporter/Correspondent of Kumba was soon rudely disturbed when I dared beard a certain administrative lion in his den. I Face D.O. Newington In Kumba, I met D.O. William Francis Hayes Newington in charge of the Division. Reportedly an ex-Cambridge Rugby Blue, D.O. Newington was a bit of a terror in the place. Standing a good six feet plus off the ground with broad shoulders and arms hanging down almost to his knees, he was an embodiment of strength, almost surplus to the requirements of a civil administrator. He thus spent more than a fair share of his duties on tours, trekking across his Division and engaging in a variety of activities and encounters not generally expected of an administrative officer. He was reported to have performed a number of outstanding feats like wrestling with local police toughs during morning drill, swimming across the raging Mungo River in the height of the rainy season, plunging into the creeks to swim in chase of Ijaw tax evaders resisting arrest, capturing and overpowering several of these men from the Niger Delta, to whom water was more familiar than land. D.O. Newington had on one of his regular tours marched to the North West of the Division across the Rumpi heights into NgoloBatanga from where I spring, and ran into trouble with the local Village Heads. As was the custom, meetings were convened at the stopping points of the D.O.’s tour where the visitor addressed the people and listened to complaints. Some of the chiefs, more out of age and indolence than of spite, failed to attend the D.O.’s meetings and he took great offence at such conduct. He was understandably angry that after trekking for so many miles to meet these people, they could not walk the few miles from their villages to the place of his meeting. 20  He therefore took drastic action against such absentees from his meetings and had them charged under section 38(2) of the Native Authority Ordinance, Failing to attend a meeting convened by a “Competent Authority.” On this fateful tour in 1948, D.O. Newington had charged some twelve chiefs and convicted them to a fine of five pounds or two months imprisonment with hard labour, he acting as magistrate and complainant at the same time. When he later travelled to the Bakossi area soon after the earlier rampage in the North West, he brought in Chief R. N. Charley to Kumba prison also on a sentence of two months imprisonment for failing to attend his meeting at Nyasoso. Chief Charley lived at Tombel nine miles away and Newington’s policemen marched the chief all the way to his trial at Nyasoso. There, presiding as complainant and magistrate at the same time, he convicted Chief Charley to two months imprisonment, with hard labour, with no option of fine. As news spread that Chief Charley was being brought to prison in Kumba, there was a chill of horror across the entire population. Spearheaded by me, a committee of leading members of the Kumba community spontaneously went to work. The Chief Secretary Lagos, the Lieutenant Governor Enugu, the pro Lagos, the West African Pilot Lagos, the Resident Buea and the Judge High Court Calabar were immediately alerted on D.O. Newington’s atrocities in jailing Chief Charley and twelve other chiefs for merely not attending his meetings. Chief Charley, a former schoolteacher and former custom officer who was easily the most educated Natural Ruler in then British Cameroons was refused bail even though he had given notice of appeal. He was in prison for thirteen days when the results of our representation started pouring into Kumba. Several of the officials we had contacted queried D.O. Newington demanding explanation for his action and his office was soon flooded with such queries. The height of the queries came in when the Judge High Court Calabar ordered that Chief Charley be released from prison forthwith, since section 38(2) of the Native Authority Ordinance under which the D.O. had acted was then obsolete. On this...

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