Home coming of John Epee Mandengue and how he won contracts for Broking Services International

Mandengue’s return to Cameroon was done with a lot of precautions, for like any other English-speaking Cameroonian, who had left the unified Cameroons for reasons earlier explained; he had strong mistrust for anything French-speaking. He opened his Broking Service subsidiary in Cameroon, but decided to locate the headquarters of Cameroonian business in Victoria (Limbe) and his core business remained in Lagos, Nigeria. The first and legal wife of John Epee Mandengue refused to follow him, when he decided to relocate to Cameroon. But while in Cameroon, Mandengue forgot to heed to the warning of his wife, who had forewarned him to steer clear from Cameroonian or Nigerian politics. While she never wanted to travel to Cameroon with her husband, she had nonetheless informed him that, he was in Cameroon only for business and not for politics.

But John Epee Mandengue ignored the warnings of his wife and above all, forgot that in the Yoruba tradition, where in women wield a lot of power, their premonitions are always very good and also important to respect their advice and words of caution. For whenever venture a woman cast her doubts on, in most cases, it is almost always certain that, it will fail. Women seem to have been gifted by God with a unique quality of clairvoyance. For example, it is claimed that, late Abiola’s wife, late Kudirate, had discouraged her husband from taking part into politics. And it was Abiola’s involvement into politics the primary cause of his premature death and sadly, also that of his wife. While John Epee Mandengue was in Cameroon, he never obeyed the warnings of his wife, he jump straight into politics. He opened as already mentioned a subsidiary of Broking Services International in Cameroon but was headquartered in Victoria and had an agency in Douala, the commercial capital of Cameroon. With the aid of his cousin Peter Mafany Musonge, who was the former Managing Director of Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) and also former Prime minister, Broking Services International won contracts to insure staff of (CDC), the second employer in Cameroon after the state. CDC employs at least 13 thousand workers. And still with the influence of Peter Mafany Musonge, Broking Services International won contracts to insure a section of staff and materials of the National Electricity Corporation, known in its French acronym as SONEL . At that time, the Managing Director of the state own utility was late Niat Njifenji Marcel.