TRIBUTE BETRAYED: THE LAST INSULT TO DR. MOSOKE LUCAS LYONGA AND THE SHAMEFUL SIDELINING OF THE USDP

TRIBUTE BETRAYED: THE LAST INSULT TO DR. MOSOKE LUCAS LYONGA AND THE SHAMEFUL SIDELINING OF THE USDP*

By Prince M.N. Ekosso, President and Founder, United Socialist Democratic Party (USDP)

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. - 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

It is with a heavy heart and with righteous indignation that I take up my pen to speak on the passing and the funeral of a great son of Buea, a firebrand and an unapologetic believer in a new political order, Dr. Mosoke Lucas Lyonga, February 1974 - September 2026. Death is cruel, but what man does after death can be crueller.

Dr. Mosoke Lyonga was not just a member of the United Socialist Democratic Party. He was its vibrant soul in Buea, its vocal militant, its dreamer-in-chief for the Buea Municipality. For the upcoming 2027 twin elections, he had offered himself as the USDP's aspirant for Mayor of Buea, carrying a simple but revolutionary slogan that electrified millions both on social media and on the streets of Buea and beyond:

BUEA FOR A SMART CITY:

It was a vision of a modern, digital, clean, youth-driven Buea; a city of jobs, of order, of technology and of hope. That vision, that project, has been brutally cut short by his untimely death in September.

As a party, we mourned. As a family, the USDP stood firm. We mobilised to give our comrade a befitting farewell. The USDP provided more than twenty canopies and more than one thousand chairs for the funeral. We provided food and drinks. We came in our hundreds - disciplined, loyal, grieving militants who believed in the man because he believed in the party.

What we received in return was humiliation.

From the viewing of the corpse at his residence to the funeral ground, the United Socialist Democratic Party, the very political family that Dr. Lyonga militated for wholeheartedly, was despised and systematically sidelined in every activity. There was no reserved space for the hundreds of USDP militants who came to bury their own.

There was no space in the program for the USDP to give a eulogy.

About ten speakers mounted the rostrum to speak glowingly of his ambitious political life and career. They all borrowed, consciously or unconsciously, from his political slogan. Even the Full Gospel Mission Church that officiated the service encouraged the slogan. Yet the party that gave that slogan political life, structure and meaning was denied a minute to speak.

The funeral service was effectively hijacked.

The Full Gospel Mission Church allocated speaking time exclusively to the biological family and to the church. Every other socio-political and economic structure where Dr. Lyonga proudly identified himself while alive, including the USDP, his political home, was erased from the narrative.

This was done in the presence of the Divisional Officer of Buea, the Mayor of Buea, the Vice President of the Cameroon Bar Association, traditional rulers, Members of Parliament, other civil, political and religious administrators, University Dons, thousands of mourners from within and beyond Buea and abroad who came to mourn with the USDP, and a host of sympathisers who all watched this injustice unfold.

One could eavesdrop on conversations during and after the funeral and at the reception grounds.

The whisper was loud and consistent: that the sidelining of the USDP was well orchestrated by political administrators present and by members of the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM), including some family members who are militants of the ruling party, with a clear political calculation - to handicap the growing popularity of the USDP and erase our footprint ahead of the upcoming 2027 municipal and parliamentary elections. If this is the strategy, it is both petty and shameful, for you cannot bury an idea by burying a man in silence.

To those who orchestrated this, you have failed.

You may have denied the USDP a microphone at a funeral, but you cannot deny the USDP its place in the hearts of the people of Buea. The millions who followed Dr. Lyonga did so because of his courage to challenge the status quo on the platform of the USDP. His popularity was not in spite of the USDP; it was because of the USDP.

And so, where do we go from here?

First, we draw a lesson. The incident at this funeral exposes the intolerance and the fear that the ruling establishment has towards a credible alternative. It confirms that the USDP is no longer a party that can be ignored.

Second, we honour free will and family continuity. At the graveside, Mosoke Lyonga Junior, moved by emotion and admiration for his late father, voluntarily expressed the wish to continue his father's legacy as he understood it that is, to continue his father's political vision within the USDP where his father found purpose.

The USDP did not solicit this declaration. However, as a responsible political family that nurtured his father, we have taken note of his spontaneous pledge with deep respect. Should he decide to walk this path when he feels ready, the party is willing to accompany him with open arms, by granting him a free membership card, offering him mentorship within the party structure to better understand and carry forward his father's "Buea for a Smart City" project, and bearing his financial engagement until maturity. We will not push a young man into politics; we will simply stand by him as a family stands by its own.

Finally, Dr. Mosoke Lucas Lyonga may have fallen, but the Smart City project lives on.

His death is not the end of the USDP in Buea; it is the beginning of a new chapter of determination. We will go to the 2027 elections with his picture, his slogan and his spirit.

Rest well, Comrade Mayor. Your party, the USDP, may have been denied the chance to speak at your funeral, but history will give us the time to speak of you forever.