Ayah Paul Abine:How in death just like in breathe
By Nchendzengang Tatah
The St. Anthony’s Parish Buea church house was full to capacity with mourners at the requiem mass for HRH. Hon. Justice. Barrister Ayah Paul Abine, February 14, 2025. Amongst the many who turned out, most observers only noted a handful of Popular Action Party (PAP) members who could be identified in party materials. PAP was the brainchild of Ayah Paul after leaving the ranks of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM).
Justice Ayah Paul was deputy Attorney General at the Supreme Court in Yaounde by his retirement in 2017. The queue of judges or state protocol of high ranking was not sighted in the farewell. The lawyers made the greater part of those who could be professionally identified. Barister Ayah Paul had only been sworn into the Bar Council in 2019.
Quiet in his own casket before the lord’s table, Ayah Paul Abine was eulogised as “the incorruptible judge”. He was remembered for making a duty to stand on justice for all. As a family man, he was reconciled as the strict dad whose virtues inspired by the Catholic faith were not easily shaken.
This was what remained of that boy, born in Ngali-Akwaya 1950, who almost neared the corridors of Cameroon’s Supreme Magistracy. Ayah had contested the Presidential elections of 2011 to be pronounced fifth.
Hon. Aya Paul had dismembered himself from the ruling CPDM to create the Popular Action Party (PAP). He was a two term serving member of Parliament, and was known for disassociating himself while in the Glass House to party stands which he felt were out of place.
” I may have been less upset if I knew not the law: which knowledge has brought me obsession of doing right- seeing right thing done.Today, I feel really so truly alone,” he had written. This was after an over two decade journey as politician, sandwiched a rich career in Magistracy beginning 1978. Justice Ayah served the judiciary for 25 years away interruptions. He was arrested 2017 in active service for 9 months owing to charges related to an escalated socio-political conflict in the North West and South West. That same period, he was forcefully retired. He goes to the grave without receiving a penny of his pension.
Mwalimu McMua says, “they killed him and made him live.” The journalist and social critic, in his tribute to Justice Ayah Paul wrote, “… the highest ranking Anglophone judge who had served the Republic, he was killed through the refusal to pay his savings through the form of pension, his bank accounts were blocked and, despite his incessant cry out, he was left with nothing to hang on.”
Ayah’s remains will be laid to rest with his forefathers in Akwaya, Manyu Division of the South West. Ending his kingship as paramount ruler of Akwaya by election in 2010.
