Alleged Jesus apparition pulls Yaounde crowds

The duplex in the Minkan neighbourhood now receives over 2,000 people a day.

The Holy Week that ended yesterday, April 20 with Easter Sunday, saw the establishment of an epicentre of faith in the Minkan neighbourhood in Yaounde on the Nsimalen International Airport road, as over 2,000 people continue arriving daily at a modern duplex where many believe they can still see an apparition of the face of Jesus Christ on a wall.

On Thursday, April 17, at 4 pm, crowds of people could be seen queued in front of the gate of the residence where the alleged apparition occurred. While several police men and women controlled the entrance, hundreds of people were in the courtyard in several lines waiting for their turn to see the image.

In groups of 20, they entered the parlour where two adolescents – Fabrice Ondja and Ndoudou Ottou – explained calmly, using pictures of the apparition projected on a flat screen TV and pointing to the fence wall across an open window where, they said, the image of Jesus could still be seen. Enchanted, some visitors placed candles, prayer intentions, flowers and offerings on the tiled floor below the window.

In turns, both adolescents recounted that on Tuesday April 15 at 5:20 pm, the lady of the house, one Amougie Lucie, entered the ninth day of her 15-day fasting period, in which she prayed to see an apparition of Jesus. While praying in her sitting room, she saw a beam of light cross the parlour, go through the window and settle on the wall to later become the Saint Face of Jesus Christ. “I was in the room upstairs when she called for me and asked me what I could see on the wall. I saw the image of Jesus Christ and told her so,’ Amougou Lucie’s nephew, Jean Joel Mbida, testified to Cameroon Tribune.

The news of the said apparition spread like wildfire in the neighbourhood and beyond with people streaming in that same night and getting pictures using their cameras and mobile phones. “Usually, as a protestant, I do not believe in things like this but this time around I am certain of whose image I saw. It was Jesus Christ’s,” said a neighbour, Didine, who added that several members of the Catholic clergy have visited the home and organised mass services.

Coordinating a specially-deployed police team in and around the premises, the Deputy Central Police Commander at the Ekounou Central Police Station, Senior Superintendent Donald Ekwoge Edong, told CT that they have taken firm security measures to ensure the protection of the family and its property while ensuring smooth access to visitors. Down the road, motorbike riders and some water vendors were seen making brisk business from the steady in and outflow of visitors.