Cameroon Buried 79 People in a Train Wreck and Still Has No Justice

Seventy-nine people boarded a train in Cameroon and never got off alive. Ten years later, their families are still knocking on doors that stay shut.

We should be furious about this, and not only because of the wreckage. A decade is long enough for a government to investigate, name the guilty, pay the bereaved, and rebuild trust in the systems it runs. Cameroon has had ten years. What it has delivered is silence, and silence is a choice.

The disaster struck near Eseka, on the route between the economic capital Douala and the political capital Yaoundé, in October 2016. Mothers, fathers, students, and traders who had boarded for an ordinary journey were thrown from carriages and crushed. Hundreds more were injured. Families in Douala and Yaoundé spent that night searching hospitals and morgues for people who would not come home. Some of them are still searching, in a different way, through paperwork, petitions, and letters that go unanswered.

Think about what that means in human terms. A father who boarded to make it to a job interview is now a name on a list that the state has never fully explained. A child who lost a parent has grown up in the decade since, asking questions that nobody with power has bothered to answer. When a railway kills 79 people and the official response becomes a long quiet, the message to every ordinary Cameroonian is clear: your life is cheap, and your grief is inconvenient.

Here is what the public record tells us, and what it should have forced into the open long ago. Cameroon's rail network was operated under a concession arrangement in which a private operator carried the commercial and operational burden, and that arrangement involved significant foreign capital. Those are not hidden details. Yet the central question, who was responsible for maintenance, safety standards, and inspection on that line, has never received the public, transparent answer that 79 deaths demand. Whether the failure was in track condition, rolling stock, operator negligence, or regulatory neglect, the people entitled to know have been left guessing. That is not a technical problem. It is a governance failure.

Some will say we are being harsh. A train accident is a tragedy, they will say, not a crime. Perhaps. But tragedy becomes injustice the moment the state refuses to investigate it, refuses to publish findings, and refuses to hold anyone accountable. A derailment can happen to any country. What happens afterward is a test of whether the country deserves the trust of its people.

We have to be honest about the pattern here, because it is not unique to Cameroon. Across our continent, public infrastructure fails, and the response follows a familiar script: a brief announcement, a promise of an inquiry, then years of quiet. Roads collapse, buildings fall, ferries sink, and the bodies are counted once, buried quickly, and forgotten by the officials who had the power to prevent them. Each time, the cost is borne by the poor, because the rich travel by car, by plane, or in private arrangements. The people who ride the cheap train are the people who are expendable. That is the real scandal of Eseka, and it is one we should refuse to accept.

Our continent is not short of success stories that prove another way is possible. Botswana built one of Africa's most stable economies by insisting on transparent institutions, consistent rule of law, and a professional civil service that answers to the public rather than to a single ruling family. Mauritius climbed from poverty to high income by protecting property rights, competing on merit, and keeping its courts independent enough to rule against the powerful. Senegal showed in its recent democratic transitions that citizens who organize, vote, and insist on accountability can change the direction of a country without bloodshed. These are not foreign models. They are African achievements, built by Africans who understood that the state exists to serve the governed.

So what should Cameroon do? The answer is not complicated, only uncomfortable for those who benefit from delay. First, the government should release a full, independent investigation into the Eseka derailment, with findings published in plain language and in full, including the roles of operators, regulators, and maintenance contractors. Second, every family of the 79 dead and every seriously injured survivor should receive prompt, fair compensation, paid without forcing them to beg for it through ten years of bureaucracy. Third, any individual or company found to be criminally negligent must face the courts, regardless of political connections or foreign backing. Fourth, Cameroon needs a railway safety regulator that is genuinely independent of the operators it oversees, with the budget, inspectors, and legal authority to shut down unsafe lines.

Regional and continental institutions have a role too. The African Union talks constantly about good governance and the rights of citizens, and it should prove it by pressing member states to publish their accident investigations and compensate victims. Civil society groups, including victims' associations, legal aid organizations, and investigative journalists, must be protected and given access to records rather than harassed for asking questions. Private investors in African infrastructure should be required to publish safety audits as a condition of their concessions, because capital that profits from our roads and rails must answer to the people who use them.

And citizens have power that no government can ignore. Demand the report. Demand the names. Demand the payments. Show up at public hearings, file requests for records, support the families who are still fighting, and vote for leaders who treat safety as a duty rather than a line item. A nation's institutions are only as strong as the people willing to hold them to account.

The Ivorian music restorer in this week's reporting is trying to rescue 20th-century African vinyl from decay, saving the sounds of our grandparents before time erases them. São Tomé's volcanic soil is producing vanilla that the world prizes. These stories remind us what Africa has always had: extraordinary creativity, rich land, and resilient people. What we lack is governments that treat those people's lives as precious enough to protect and to mourn properly.

Seventy-nine people died on a train in Cameroon. Ten years later, their names still deserve an answer. Ask your leaders for it, loudly and without pause, until the answer comes.

Based on reporting by FRANCE24