Obituary: NCC President is Dead!

Yaounde, Cameroon—Monsignor Joseph Befe Ateba, Bishop of Kribi, and chairman (president) of the National Communication Council (NCC); Cameroon’s media watchdog, is dead.

Mgr Joseph Befe Ateba

The clergy man died yesterday in South Africa, family sources say.

Sosthen Fouda, Befe’s nephew announced the death on his facebook wall this morning.

In the post, Fouda described the Bishop as “a man who knew every day of his life how to use his own knowledge to better convey to others, a deeply humanistic funny man who put his qualities at the service of men”.

The news was later confirmed by the apostolic nuncio to Cameroon and the Equatorial Guinea, Pierro Piopo who explained that Bishop Befe has been ill and was receiving treatment in a hospital in South Africa.

Befe Ateba was appointed to head Cameroon’s media regulatory body on July 7, 2011 by President Paul Biya following the demise of the first Chairman of the organ, Felix Sabal Lecco.

The media expert was not only a journalist for the Roman Catholic owned national newspaper “L’effort camerounais,” but he also worked as a press agent for the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM/SCEAM), and as the president of the Media Commission of the Episcopal Conference of Cameroon.

He was the second Catholic bishop in a month to be appointed to an official office by President Biya. The first was Bishop Dieudonné Watio, Bishop of Bafoussam, who at the beginning of same month was appointed to Cameroon’s Electoral Commission (ELECAM).

Journalists in Cameroon have described his demise as shocking.

The NCC president was lastly seen in public during the conference of Presidents of Francophone media regulators from Central and West Africa that took place in Yaounde from May 12 to 13 under the theme “the harmonization of complaint handling procedures and regulation of Central African Media Regulators”

Bishop Joseph Befe Ateba was born on April 25, 1962. He is a professional journalist who graduated from the Yaounde Advanced School of Mass Communication (ASMAC) in 1994 after having been ordained priest on June 20, 1987.

The Communication Council is a consultative body placed under the authority of the Prime Minister, Head of Government, with the mission to assist the authorities in the elaboration, implementation and follow up of the national policy on communication.

By Ndi Eugene Ndi in Yaounde