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A State of the Art
By Ntemfac Aloysius Nkong Ofege
Read Full text in www.postwatchmagazine.con and www.mblog.com
This week, June 17th 2004, the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, revives Cameroon’s old pile: Corruption. A BBC report on Network Africa and African Perspective features the following: a primary school teacher who tells the world that in Cameroon parents come forward with bribe money to get their progenies the best seat in the classrooms; a medical doctor who says doctors expect patients to put an extra on the usual consultation fee of 600FCFA to get served. The MD adds that nurses expect patients to give bribes before they get drugs administered and those who fail to comply might as well die. This doctor says that patients without money and needing surgery have had to elope from hospitals and die in the neighbourhoods because they cannot afford the bribe that would catch the doctor’s attention. The BBC report also features an executive who tells the world that he has to bribe to get any document from the administration, bribe to get a contract, bribe to clear his goods from customs, bribe to get his taxes lowered and bribe to pay the said taxes. A taximan, Shey Amos, in Douala, says that the police at roadblocks collect vast tolls from the cabbies even when their particulars are OK. Finally, a civil servant tells the BBC that the courts in Cameroon jail people who steal 2000FCFA) while those “who swallow an elephant“ go free.
Postwatch Fact File wades into the vile muck of corruption in Cameroon: It is a case of abject wickedness in very high places….
On May 28th 1998, one year after the glitzy win by country Cameroon of the now-annual World Most Corrupt Nation competition as organized by the German non-governmental, Transparency International, a Mr. Peter Mafany Musonge, Prime Minister of the winning team came forward to commence an anti corruption drive. The attempt, itself, “as instructed” by Team Captain, Paul Biya, turned out to be just another illustration of how endemic corruption is in Cameroon.
Mr. Musonge caused several local newspapers to publish a public service announcement, which was itself, a vista of corruption.
“Free Public Service is not for Bargaining” the English translation of the text from the Prime Minister’s Office read. This was not the quintessence of the gross incompetence so rife in Cameroon’s administration. This was corruption in reality. Yet, another corrupt Francophone official had taken his cut…from the budget and then caused this vista of the approximate; this aggravation to be published.
And true to type, the local newspapers (The Herald of May 20th 1998) took their pieces of silver from the Prime Minister’s office and printed this so-called advertorial without comment. Cameroonian newspapers tend to be part of the corruption bandwagon.
Corruption in Cameroon is a living thing, a monstrous slimy hydra: vicious in outreach, cancerous in spread and disgusting in reach. Corruption runs in the system; it is the life wire of Cameroon and Cameroonians. Here is a country where governance can easily be defined as: “by the corrupt, of the corrupt, and for the corrupt.”
Take the examples:
1. In Cameroon parents take the children by the hand and the go forward to bribe headmasters, principals, and other school administrators to get the children admitted;
2. Cameroonian parents are not beyond buying leaked examination (GCE, BAC, FSLC, etc.) questions for their children when they are not offering bribes to teachers, principals, lecturers and professors to make their progenies pass class and public examinations;
3. Teachers, from primary schools to the universities, exchange marks for sex. Female students in secondary, high schools and the universities know it for a fact that their progress might never depend on hard work and merit but in their capacity to engage in darkroom carnal affairs with teachers;
4. Cameroon’s ruling party, the CPDM, is not beyond giving voting cards to primary school children and ferrying them from one polling station to the next to vote several times and thus rig elections;
5. Cameroonian doctors, nurses, and midwives are not beyond demanding and receiving bribes from patients before consultation and treatment. Patients who cannot offer bribes might as well die. In fact, the practice in government hospitals is horrendous. Patients have been known to abscond from hospital beds simply because they do not have the wherewithal to pay nurses to listen to them or because they do not have the wherewithal to bribe the doctors to schedule a major or minor surgery. Such patients have died in the neighbouhoods;
6. Public service examinations are never for the meritorious. The official rate for bribes into professional schools in Cameroon is known:
- CUSS (Medical School) 1.000.000FCFA;
- ESSTIC (ASMAC School of Journalism) 500.000FCFA;
- Ecole Normale Sup (Higher Teachers Training School) - 500.000;
- Ecoles Normales Annexe (Teachers Training Lower Cycle) – 300.000FCFA;
- Polytech (School of Engineering) – 1.000.000FCFA;
- EMIA ( Military Academy) - 1.000.000 or some months of scholarship);
- Others – 200.000 – 500.000FCFA depending on the cycle. These amounts are paid by those who are not from the Chosen Tribe while those from the right tribe sail in like water under the river;
7. Examination leakages are rampant in Cameroon. “L’eau a coulé” is a popular phrase to describe the intensity of examination leakages in the country;
8. A scandal is brewing at the University of Yaounde I, Faculty of Letters, Department of English and Linguistics over marks. Cameroon Tribune No 8120/4405 of 18th June 2004 reports that some Graduate Assistants have been selling pass marks for as little as 2000FCFA. Students of the department complain that 8 of them do group assignments but while the boys get only 10/20, the girls get 14/20. Marks must have been exchanged for sex;
9. A vast chunk of certificates and other documents held by Cameroonians are fake. “Dockey” is a popular speak to describe fraudulent certificate concocted in the neighbourhoods by expert forgers who can even sign Mr. Biya’s signature with great ease. Forgers in Bamenda’s Old Town precinct (just opposite the Public Security Constabulary) and in Kumba are so expert that they can produce any document on earth;
10. Journalists take bribes “gombo” to praise state officials, cover up their crimes, and denounce their enemies. Pro-government journalists take bribes to praise the regime while pro-opposition journalists take bribes to denounce the regime. Tribalism and nepotism are subsidiary motivations in journalism;
11. Fake pastors, without a calling and without an anointing, open churches (businesses) to preach fake sermons and collect tithes;
12. Top clergy members of the Catholic Church have children in the neighbourhoods; when they are not heavily involved in carnal affairs;
13. In the courts, justice is bought and sold, when it is not delayed and thus denied. Cameroon’s Supreme Court cautions electoral fraud. In the lower courts those who can pay their way can get away with murder while every day poor devils and paupers and convicted and jailed. The daily routine in Cameroon’s courts is most pathetic. The courts are full to busting with poor pitiful demons while rich criminals stroll about to commit more atrocities;
14. Service in government offices is never free. Civil servants take bribes and they expect bribes for every service. Users know that they have to give bribes to get any service;
15. Promotion and appointments in the Civil Service and in the private sector are never just like that. The upward mobility of the female servants of the state is often conditioned by their capacity to lie on their backs while the upward mobility of the malefolk is either conditioned by their tribe, their capacity to be a heel-clicking servant of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, Party or by their capacity to ferry goats, chicken, etc. to the bossman;
16. Civil servants are not beyond gaining promotion by producing forged certificates;
17. Bribery and corruption, homosexuality, torture and the persistent harassment of the weak by the strong are the hallmarks of Cameroon’s prisons. Stories emanating from the New Bell Prison, the Nkondengui Prison, the Mfou prison, the Bamenda Central prison and all the police and gendarmerie detention centres, are not only chilly but they reflect a terrifying and horrendous vista of man’s inhumanity to man;
18. Cameroon’s administration is not simply archaic as president Biya would want the world to believe. The Civil Service is fraud, bribery, and corruption impersonated. Administrators sell public land to the highest bidder for a small fee; the Senior Divisional Officers and the Divisional Officers are under the obligation to rig elections with promotion coming to the administrator who producers the highest score for the president and the ruling party (See Governor George Achu Morfaw’s 1992 Resignation Letter);
19. Money owed contractors by Cameroon’s Ministry of Finance for jobs that they did not execute is paid several times over. The smart contractors bribe the operators of the computers at the Ministry of Finance to get paid. Then they turn round and bribe the operators again to say that they have never been paid and the vicious cycle continues ad infinitum ad nauseam;
20. The supply of most basic goods (when contractors bother to supply them at all) to Cameroon’s administration is over-invoiced. Cases about where a bottle of Fanta delivered to an official party is billed at 1000FCFA whereas the bottle only costs 200FCFA at the nearest street corner;
21. Police, gendarmes and various mixed brigades pretend that they are checking car documents and controlling traffic at most street corners and on the expressway whereas they are busy taking bribes;
22. Recruitment tests into the police, gendarmerie and army are highly tribalised and infested with bribery and corruption;
23. In the army, the “baleines ” (the whales), generals and colonels with several stomachs in one and several chins winkling in grease, live in insolent opulence by hijacking army supplies and at the expense of the lean and hungry foot soldiers;
24. Investigations by the police and gendarmes of every complaint by the citizenry are avenues to graft and steal; innocent victims could end up in jail if they do not have money to bribe the investigators;
25. Lawyers complain that giving exorbitant bribes to magistrates, court administrators and clerks eat handsomely into their fees; the lawyers are even threatening court and strike actions;
26. In sports, the referees are all corrupt; team presidents, managers, and players are not beyond trading off matches to opponents. Olympic Mvolye, a team created by Biya guru, Omgba Damase, hold the national record for corruption. This team blitzed its way into Division One through fraud. Every end of the First Division season match-fixing is de rigueur;
27. Cameroon’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications hold the record for the sheer number of fake contracts granted in record time. Between February 1, 1999 and March 9, 1999 the then Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Mounchipou Seidou, awarded 10.982.148.485 FCFA to some 468 companies – ten billion FCFA of fake contracts in five weeks. Mr Mounchipou awarded the contracts rapidly to take his cut and get out before the next cabinet shake-up
28. Cameroon’s Ministry of Territorial Administration holds the record for election fraud. MINATD rigs elections on behalf of the incumbent. MINAT, which decides whose name gets on the voters register, who gets a voting card, who gets to actually vote and where; who counts and tallies the vote and who gets what score. Usually election results are prepared by MINAT two years before elections. Only in Cameroon and only under Mr. Biya would a sitting president get up on the morning of general elections to tell the world that the process cannot go forward. Then, while denouncing those who denounce such gross incompetence as “enemies of the nation,” the president and his acolytes would then proceed to rig the same elections with great releash.
29. Under Mr Biya authority, therefore, expert graft, skilled election fraud, artful pilfering of state resources, abject looting, generalised embezzlement, savage over billing, vast exploitation of the poor by the rich and powerful, endemic tax evasion, clean white collar theft, vicious customs, police and gendarmerie fraud, massive examination leakages, etc., have obtained with terrifying alacrity. For 22 years, corruption has glided along like a sublime symphony with an ask-for-proof conductor- in-chief in full action: looking the other way that is;
30. Members of Mr. Biya’s party demand and receive bribes, they blackmail, they petition, they threaten, they issue veiled threats, they visit the soothsayers, they loot, they embezzled, they ransack, they grab, they exploit, they pilfer, they shake down banks, they bring in muscle and they play mbaglum dance tunes on the cash registers. If truth be told year in and year out the Biya regime does everything by the book to guarantee that Cameroon gets voted the most corrupt in the world;
31. Justice is bought and sold, positions bought and sold, influence bought and sold, sex and cults used as weapons of power and influence. Free masons and other demoniac sects lord it over the commonwealth and kleptocrats, budget raiders and vote siphoners as well as homosexuals abound in high places;
32. Tribalism, nepotism, state-sponsored terrorism (Titus Edzoa), indiscipline and more skewed practices than twenty full editions of this magazine can capture are the hallmark of this regime. The sheer number of Cameroonian children who have fled from this horrendous situation under Mr. Biya and are in “voluntary exile” in the Diaspora is incredible;
33. Government overtly steals from the populace through fake taxes like the Audio-visual tax (paid by taxicabs and other vehicles which cannot watch television); the Credit Foncier tax is another fraud. And now a new 13.200FCFA racket on institutions that have the misfortune of using electricity from AES-SONEL;
34. Police and gendarmes steal from road users in public and in broad daylight, government allows the water and electricity corporation to steal from the populace through fake hikes in billings. AES-SONEL and SNEC meter readers are on the take. And so on and so on. It could be argued with sound evidentials that should Mr. Biya glean another seven years mandate regime couriers might just take a well-deserved rest simply because then there will be little or nothing left to steal.
Founded on the BIG LIE, Corruption and Mass Graves in Mbalmayo
Ahidjo resigned on November 5th 1982 and Mr. Biya moved in on November 6th. The Biya regime in Cameroon was never destined to survive let alone go on for 22 years. Simply because it was founded on a lie. The then French President Francois Mitterrand who had a score to settle with Ahmadou Ahidjo over the death by firing squad of Ernest Ouandie, Wambo Le Courant and the rest of the Cameroonian Socialists somehow conned Ahidjo to resign because of “health reasons”.
Ahidjo, however, kept his hold as Chairman of the Cameroon National Union, CNU, Party.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ahidjo did not appoint Bello Bouba Maigari the Prime Minister and Number Two man when he resigned. Bello was kept aside as the joker. Maikano Abdoulayi was Ahidjo’s choice for Prime Minister. Sometime between the night of November 6th 1982 and November 7th Biya changed the cabinet behind Ahidjo’s back and made Bello Prime Minister thereby shattering Ahidjo’s plans. In fact, Bello Bouba’s 1984 exile to Nigeria after the 1983 crisis was with the blessing of Paul Biya. That is why the “sneaky” Bello Bouba, would never push any conflict with Mr. Biya to its logical conclusion. In fact, Bello, aka the Beautiful Bride of Cameroonian Politics, would gladly bend over for Mr. Biya: when Biya says: “jump!” Bello asks “how high?”
Ahidjo’s gameplan was simple. Bello Bouba Maigari and the control of the CNU were key players in that scheme. Knowing Biya’s tendency to be a “wimp and a gossip” (faible et foubre) Ahidjo reasoned that, should things go wrong, he could ease Biya out in the congress of the CNU scheduled for Bamenda in 1985 and get Bello Bouba in.
Unfortunately, for Ahidjo, the man to whom he confided his schemes, François Sengat Kuo (now late), leaked it out to Biya. The Biya clan; made up of the likes of Semengue, Rene Meka, Benäe Mpeke, and Ebogo Titus, had another problem. The Republican Guard that protected Mr. Biya was made up of northerners in the main; army recruits with a strong loyalty to Ahidjo. Biya’s people and Mr. Biya himself never felt secure with Ahidjo’s goons hanging around. It was thus an imperative in those early days to tactfully dismantle the Republican Guard and wrest the CNU from Ahidjo. The how was the problem.
The BIG LIE about April 6th 1984 coup was that it was a plot by Ahidjo through Ibrahima and Salatou to eliminate Biya. In fact, April 6th 1894, like the recent rumours about Mr. Biya's death, was nothing but a Machiavellian plot by the Biya regime to dismantle the Republican Guard and wrest the control of the CNU from Ahidjo. The “moutons” in the Republican Guard fell into the trap by being “encouraged” to execute the so-called 1984 Coup without knowing that a “taupe”, Captain Alakai was informing the Biya regime about their progress at every turn. When the elements of the Republican Guard fell into the trap, they were massively rounded up, decently and summarily executed, and unceremoniously buried in mass graves along the Mbalmayo road. Changing the Republican Guard to the Presidential Guard after that and recruiting Beti boys to replace the stupid northerners was easy. The northern merchants, whose brothers and sons were buried in Mbalmayo, swear by Allah and their machetes that there will be a return match. Some day.
Wresting the CNU from Ahidjo after April 6th 1984 was also easy. Using their control of state radio and their savvy in manipulation, Mr. Biya and his cronies shouted: “bicephalism” and plots that never existed. Public opinion was thus manipulated to believe the BIG LIE - that Ahidjo wanted to come back to power. With Ahidjo now exorcised, changing the name of the CNU to the CPDM was easy.
However, a third wave crept into the power play between Mr. Biya and Mr. Ahidjo. Enter Captain Guerandi Mbara, who alongside some other captains, understood that the problem in Cameroon was the corrupt neo-colonial state and tried to hijack the groundswell of frustration in the Republican Guard. Guerandi arranged with his men to get rid of Biya and Ahidjo as the incarnators of the corrupt neo-colonial state. Ahidjo had no clue about these happenings. That is why he declared on April 7th that “Si ce sont mes partisans ils auront le dessus.” (If they are my militants, they will win). On April 8th 1984, Biya faulted Ahidjo for “taking sides with the coup plotters.”
Guerandi’s “boys” i.e. the ten other captains who were to be the 10 provincial governors after the coup had to come to state radio before the April 6, 1984 speech was delivered. They never made it because they found out that Alakai had betrayed them and that the Koutaba and Ebolowa army units had not taken sides with them. Those captains are still in Cameroon’s army today – waiting for another day.
Between 1982-1983 corruption and stealing from the state in Cameroon shifted into overdrive simply because top- functionaries of the system thought that Biya would not last. Grandees of the system simply thought it was in order to steal very fast before the deluge. In fact, Biya collaborators like Bwele Guillaume, one-time Minister of Information and Culture, could never bring themselves to call Mr. Biya “president”. Bwele simply referred to Biya as “le nouveau-là”.
Under Mr. Biya, therefore the state of Cameroon has been the ultimate resource, the unbounded Prometheus, the final Milking Cow, and the great elephant lying upon its side after being hunted down by Mr. Biya. Tribesmen have surrounded the great beast with gusto to reap where they never sowed. It had truly been as if Biya grandees have been all out to accumulate what the grandees of the Ahidjo regime accumulated in 25 years .
Corruption also shifted into overdrive because Biya came to power in 1982. with a form of voodoo economics. Mr. Biya and his clan reasoned that it was imperative to wrest the control of the economy from the hands of the Bamilekes by creating a Beti class of businessmen. Consequently, tribesmen with very hazy notions of business were given little bits of paper by the late Jeanne Irene Biya to collect huge sums from the SCB Bank under Messi-Messi. The money disappeared into red wine, big cars and swanky parties. The foresighted Bamilekes saw their savings in the banks disappearing rapidly into the deep pockets of the Betis and further compounded the situation by rapidly withdrawing their moneys from the banks. The money was now saved in the parallel “tontines” or njangi networks. Between 1982-1990, and until the creation of the CCEI-Afriland Bank and now the CBC Bank both owned by Bamilekes, it was estimated that more money circulated in the tontines than in the banks.
At about the same time a vicious cleanup campaign was being orchestrated in SCB and the other banks by the Biya regime. Revenues from petroleum that Ahidjo had saved in the commercial banks disappeared to lucrative off shore points like the Cayman Islands to make profits for regime hands. Other regime hands used fake land certificates to collect huge sums from the same SCB. In less than no time, SCB went under with 150 Billion FCFA bad debts. See Postwatch Fact File for the list of those owing SCB
A prime “client” of the defunct SCB was a certain Paul Biya who, through wife Jeanne Irene Biya, received 3.2 Billion FCFA to build an exotic country house in Mvomeka with a 500-metre landing strip and an attendant 9-hole golf course. Whether or not Mr. Biya has paid his loan, obtained under very unorthodox methods is a matter of conjecture but since Mr. Biya gave himself a loan of 3.2 Billion FCFA from SCB so too other regime hands got served by SCB and the other banks.
Regime hands are responsible for the following bad debts in the following now defunct banks:
1. SCB 150 Billion FCFA
2. Credit Agricole 51 Billion FCFA
3. Cameroon Bank 31 Billion FCFA
4. Meridien-BIAO 17 Billion FCFA
5. Banque Camerounaise de dèveloppement 22 Billion FCFA
6. Paribas Cameroun 8 Billion FCFA
Credit Agricole, the farmers’ bank, died because of the sheer number of dubious loans granted. In the Centre province alone, some 39 clients of this bank, whose accounts were already in the red, still managed to obtain loans of up to 5 Billion FCFA without documents. Andze Tsoungui, the Board Chairman of Credit Agricole, practically transformed the bank into his private family bank. Huge sums from the bank went to finance the son’s pharmacy business and other family holdings. Another minister, Tsanga Abanda, obtained a 300.000.000FCFA loan from Credit Agricole under dubious circumstances.
The Bamileke Economist, Celestin Monga, in a pre-1992 presidential election document suggests that Mr. Biyas legacy does not only involve the above failed banks. According to Monga, Mr. Biya is personally responsible for some 4000 Billion FCFA petroleum money squandered between 1982 and 1992 under the infamous “Compte Hors Budget”, a curious extra-budgetary account created by the late Ahmadou Ahidjo to stash in petroleum revenues. Small wonder, before he croaked, one time General Manager of SNH, Jean Asoumou Avebe, told the state-controlled media in Cameroon that the wherewithal of petroleum revenues between him and the president. Asoumou also declared that petroleum matters were too complicated for Cameroonians to understand.
Mr. Biya has never bothered about the constitutional provision for top civil servants to declare their assets before taking office. Small wonder the man has never reacted to a 1997 article published in the French journal “L’ Événement du Jeudi” that he, Paul Biya is worth 45.Billion FCA, money gleaned from the sales of petroleum. If the L’Événement du Jeudi Article is correct, Mr. Biya must be gleaning some 2 Billion FCFA a year.
Biya crony, Titus Edzoa, declares that Mr. Biya is very rich “He is richer than most Cameroonians imagine.”
Article 164 of Cameroon’s current constitution makes out that Mr. Biya will never be held accountable for his alleged fortune. That Article states that former presidents may not be held accountable for acts committed during their reign.
Between 1982-1983 some circa 242 Billion FCFA, farmers’ money, painstakingly saved at the national Produce Marketing Board (ONCPB) under Roger Melingui were swipe in one of the most pervasive extravaganza this side of the great divide. It is now known that Mr. Biya personally gave instructions for the ONCPB Billions to be handed out to dubious institutions like CENEEMA, CAMAIR, FONADER, the Presidency, etc. In less than 15 months, the money was all gone and the economic crisis set in.
Cameroon under Mr. Biya has not only been twice classified Most Corrupt country in the World but Cameroon is also 51st out of 61sts in the Dialogue North South Index of Trustworthiness. South Africa is 10th, Ghana 34th. What this means concretely is that it is near impossible for foreign investors to get their money from Cameroon and Cameroonians.
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