Security Checks Prompt Rush For ID Cards

Christopher JATOR/Cameroon-Tribune

Other measures like closing bars by 8 pm, avoiding gatherings and roaming at night, are observed.

Long queues of people at Police Stations in Douala are unusual. Instead, such queues are often noticed during Public Service competitive entrance examinations, job recruitments or the free issuance of National Identity Cards in preparation for elections. But the situation in Douala is different this time around.

People queue up in front of police stations as early as 6 am to acquire National Identity Cards. Though not free this time, there is high enthusiasm for it. The surge in insecurity, provoked by the Boko Haram sect, has instilled civic consciousness in Cameroonians who until now were without National Identity Cards. As a result, Police Stations remain open until 6 pm as crowds wait to have the cards issued to them.

Just a few days after security forces launched a series of sporadic and spontaneous raids on neighbourhoods, several Douala residents responded either by collecting their identification cards once abandoned at police stations, or getting new ones if they never had them at all. Many of them acknowledge that they were prompted by security operations to fish out suspects from their midst in rushing for the cards.

From the look of things, even though over 11,000 National Identity Cards are still pending collection across police stations in Douala, as many as this number of people have been without cards in the city. A police source said the cards pending collection were those that were issued for free to facilitate registration for the 2013 Parliamentary and Senate elections. Large crowds similar to those noticed at Police Stations ahead of the elections when the cards were issued free are now being witnessed in Police Stations in Bonaberi, Bonanjo, Akwa, New Bell, etc, even though they are paying for them.

Vicky Ornelle Tchapa, who lives in Bonaberi, said she has been to the Special Branch Police Station N°2 in Bonaberi and N°4 in Logbaba to get her ID card, but has been unable because of the large crowds she met. She said she needs to be patient and vigilant as she can be picked up at any time for not having the card. Like her, many people in metropolitan Douala have taken measures such as acquiring National ID cards, closing bars by 8 pm, avoiding social gatherings at certain hours of the day and roaming at night.