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Corrupt Practices In High Places
The turnover of every Biya government is about 6 months. What this means concretely is that persons appointed ministers are given a very short time and the license to steal before they are kicked out again. Now there have been over 600 ministers, junior ministers, and persons with rank of minister since Mr. Biya came into power in 1982. This has been very bad news for Cameroon’s public treasury. Name one Biya minister who has not been involved in one racked or another? Small wonder a little upstart Henri Eyebe Ayissi became Minister of Housing and Town planning when he had a rickety and wobbly “504”. He left several months later with 19 cars and a host of land titles.
Recently sacked Transport Minister, John B. Ndeh, is yet to clarify his role in a racket that demanded that all vehicles in Cameroon change number plates for over 10.000FCFA apiece and this with a company legalized by the Ministry of Transport. This racked as well as another racket to get all taximen in Cameroon to obtain badges authorized by the Ministry of Transport brought in a tidy pile in thousands of millions. JB and Nsahlai before him must have taken their cuts.
A local newspaper “L’Expression” published a 16-page special edition on how a Biya-hand, Tchouta Moussa, ravaged the Cameroon Ports Authority through fake contracts, fictitious deals, etc. A cartoon in “L’Expression” teased that instead of sanctioning Tchouta Moussa Mbatkam for swiping vast sums from the Ports Authority Mr. Biya, who was abroad at the time of the publication called up Tchouta Moussa and said: “Tchouta, où est ma part?”
Pa Simon Achidi Achu, as Mr. Biya’s campaign Manager, was in charge of the cashbox during the 1997 election campaign. It is alleged that Pa Simon helped himself outrageously. Also, how water destined for the 150-milllion FCFA SANTA water project found itself instead at Achidi Achu’s farm remains one of those mysteries. Small wonder, rival Fru Ndi told a rally in Santa that the folks of the town did not have decent drinking water while Achidi Achu’s cows took showers and slept under electric lights.
Ahead of the 1997 presidential elections, Kontchou Kouomegni tried to table a fake bill of 1.1 Billion FCFA as the cost of printing Mr. Biya’s election portrait with SOPECAM. L’Expression newspaper” claims that when Kontchou failed to get the 1.1 Billion FCFA he pilfered campaign money destined for SOPECAM.
The same Kontchou Kouomegni has never fully accounted for the vast sums collected during the 1994 “Coup de Coeur” operation to raise funds for the Indomitable Lions. In fact, the money never got to the Indomitable Lions in the USA. Kontchou who claims that he even came back with some of the money only found time to suspend two CRTV Journalists, Daniel Anicet Noah and Therese Belobo, who opened the microphones of CRTV for gadfly Joseph Antoine Bell to insult Kontchou.
In fact, the level of corruption in Cameroon is most visible whenever Team Cameroon has to represent the country at international competitions like the World Cup and the African Nations Cup. Money destined to the team is always swindled and the players have to go on strike before their dues are paid. Ahead of the Korea-Japan World Cup, the players held a flight down at the Paris Airport and refused to train until their dues were paid. Small wonder Team Cameroon arrived late for the World Cup and failed going beyond the first round.
Le Messager No 685 reports that the then Minister of Youth and Sports, Joseph Owona diverted some 600 Million FCFA; money destined for the Indomitable lions to buy bicycles and pay mission money for the 19 unauthorized members of his delegation. The then president of FECAFOOT, Mr. Vincent Onana even wrote to the Prime Minister to denounce Owona.
According to a 1987 edition of Jeune Afrique Economie, Tsanga Abanda, onetime Biya Minister of Commerce, and Industrial Development, stole whole shiploads of cocoa , which he traded off to the French concern SUCRES ET DENREES, and the America PHILIP AND BROTHERS. With the proceeds, Tsanga Abanda erected for himself a vast emporium in the valley below Cameroon’s presidency. Mr. Biya can see Tsanga Abanda’s ill-gotten house every time he looks from his bedroom window.
Regime eminence grise, Ombga Damase alone knows how much he garnered to replenish Cameroon’s armory, reportedly depleted after the April 6th 1984 Coup attempt.
Corruption may have developed into the monster that it is simply because nobody had been sanctioned. In 1987, following the jailing of Beti grandee, Nkolo Fanga, of Posts and Telecommunications for swiping public Funds, Mr. Biya declared: “Où sont les prèuves?” when he was asked by state-television if he was aware that there were many more Nkolo Fangas in the system. Whereas IGERA, the State Inspectorate in charge of Administrative Reforms, in charge of state auditing and control, has always tabled tons and tons of documents to the presidency and specifically for the “Haute attention du Chef de l’État” about high corruption and misdemeanor in high places within the Civil Service. Mr. Biya has never been known to act on the IGERA reports.
Between 1991-1992, the then Biya Minister of Public Service, Garga Haman-Adji, who went all-out on a hunt for the “baleines” – the whales or those responsible for eight-digit graft in the civil service, resigned when he was not making any headway in cleaning up the system. “He wanted me to do what I did not want,” a beleaguered Mr. Biya shamelessly told the nation ahead of the 1992 presidential elections and following Mr. Garga Haman-Adji’s resignation.
However, in 1997 Mr. Biya spontaneously directed that his one-time friend, collaborator, and personal physician, Titus Edzoa be thrown in jail for allegedly swiping the derisive 350.000.000FCFA . A closer examination of the Titus Edzoa case shows that Mr. Edzoa was not hemmed by the steam-roller triggered by the then Secretary General in the presidency, Amadou Ali because of the 350.000.000FCFA but rather because he had the cheek to resign from Mr. Biya’s government and the even greater cheek to present himself as a presidential candidate for the 1997 elections. Several attempts by Edzoa’s tribesmen to seek Mr. Biya’s pardon notably through Biya son, Frank Biya, have failed woefully.
The Lake Nyos Extravaganza
The 1986 Lake Nyos gas disaster and its management is just one vista of the endemic corruption in the Cameroon system peopled as it is with “croque-morts” and grave robbers. When Lake Nyos happened the world reacted spontaneously. It is estimated that beyond the circa 100 Billion FCFA that the government of Cameroon received from all over the world in cash, about that same amount worth of tents, blankets, landrovers, food, etc. came in from all over the world for the victims. The money and gifts were speedily stolen. Army generals are today parading some of the land rovers, tents, and blankets that they stole from the Lake Nyos. Money pledged to the survivors for their tents, houses and fees has since been stolen. Mr. Biya never thought it worthwhile to use part of the circa 100 Billion that he received to build a monument for the Lake Nyos victims. Neither did the president consider it worthwhile to tar the less than 75 kms road to Wum in the Nyos precinct. Today the survivors of the lake Nyos explosion are living in abject poverty and misery.
Fai Yengo Francis, the current governor of the Centre province, who was the Senior Divisional Officer for Wum at the time must have broken into a cold sweat when an edition of a radio Bamenda programme “Crossfire” to come tell the world what he did with the aid given to the Mbororo survivors of Lake Nyos.
Onetime Jean-Marcel Mengueme, the then Minister of Territorial Administration, who was fired because of the gross mismanagement of the Lake Nyos funds, came out of his abode and shot a live bullet into the air when some “hooligans” stood outside his house at night and bawled “Mengueme, Lake Nyos! Mengueme, Lake Nyos!” Never mind that those “hooligans” were a certain Charly Ndi-Chia and his crony Ntemfac Ofege, both of them journalists.
Mr. Biya has also not reacted to a Denis Sassou Nguessou interview published in a San Francisco newspaper suggesting that the Lake Nyos gas explosion was an Israeli thermonuclear device. Mr. Sassou Nguessou said in that interview that he was approached by the Israeli to test the device in his country and he said no. Mr. Biya apparently accepted the indecent proposition.
The arrival in Cameroon of the then Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, with a fully-equipped hospital plane, on a so-called State visit less than 48Hours after the Lake Nyos explosion, is very suspicious.
Actually, the Israelis remain Mr. Biya’s guardian angels. They not only train and equip his close guards (the presidential guard) but they also monitor events in Cameroon from their Mont Febe hideout and other locations in Yaounde.
Biya: Governing by Election Fraud
Political Science has a name for a governing system wherein elections are held under conditions that guarantee the victory of the governing clique. It is called a dictablanda. Mr. Biya’s “democratie avancée” is a pure dictablanda.
Political science also has a name for a governing system wherein specific political groups are excluded from participating in the governing process and wherein even those elected are deprived of the capacity to effectively govern. It is called a democradura.
The governing system in Cameroon is a combination of both a dictablanda and a democradura. The maddening effect of having both a democradura and a dictablanda is that both monsters are often mutually interactive living in perfect harmony and drawing life essence from each other.
The US State Department, the National Democratic Institute, and other world institutions know it as a fact: Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Paul Biya in Cameroon survive through election fraud and coups. In fact, politicians and states who have no idea on election rigging should consult Mr. Biya’s election rigging manual.
Herewith a non-exhaustive list of how Mr. Biya, through his Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, MINATD, rigs elections in Cameroon:
i. MINATD prevents Cameroonians from registering and voting;
ii. MINATD changes the entire Electoral Register at any moment;
iii. MINATD refuses to register voters even those with National Identity Cards;
iv. MINATD refuses to distribute voting cards immediately after registration;
v. MINATD refuses to sensitize the nation by radio, television and the newspapers on the voting process as demanded by law;
vi. MINATD refuses to publish voters register per polling stations ahead of every election;
vii. MINATD refuses to make voters register available to all candidates and parties ahead of every elections;
viii. MINATD refuses to state the number and exact location of every polling station as demanded by law and instead locates polling stations in the home, palaces and bedrooms of regime hands;
ix. MINATD creates ghost polling stations;
x. MINATD stuff ballot boxes destined for the villages;
xi. MINATD refuses to publish signed score sheets of all elections to all candidates as demanded by law;
xii. MINATD refuses to publish the official results of all elections as demanded by law and by a sense of good governance;
xiii. MINATD refuses to train monitors and guarantee the safety of election monitors in “hostile” territory;
xiv. MINATD refuses to ban private tribal militia and tribal private armies before, during and after all elections;
xv. MINATD through its Senior Divisional Officials and Divisional Officers produce fake results; results manufactured months and years before every elections;
xvi. MINATD simply declares fake results and results that have no bearing with the actual elections in question.
Cameroon’s newspapers have since published this not-so-funny joke about Mr. Biya and the 1992 presidential elections. The papers report that sometime after the “seriously-flawed” 1992 elections the then Minister of Territorial Administration, Mr. Gilbert Andze Tsoungui called Mr. Biya to say: “ .M. Le Président, c’est grave.” (It is bad, Mr. President..)
Mr. Biya’s retort was: “Je ne veux rien savoir, je veux gagner les élections” (I don’t want to know, I want to win the elections).
The tabloids report that the US Embassy in Yaounde had copies of this conversation. The tabloids also claim that some embassies in Yaounde knew that Mr. Biya lost the 1992 elections by monitoring the MINATD and its “Radio de commandément” as the administrators called in the results to the Vote Counting Commission in Yaounde. From the figures, it turned out that Mr. Biya lost the 1992 elections.
Some weeks after the 1997 elections, another tabloid, Mutations, reported that Mr. Biya flew into a blue fink at the then Minister of Territorial Administration, Andze Tsoungui, for making score sheets available to the Opposition National Union for Democracy and Progress party which challenged him at the time.
Yet, another tabloid, Générations, had the late Vianney Ombe Ndzana reporting a conversation between Mr. Biya and his family wherein Mr. Biya said after the 1997 elections that “J’ai autorisé la fraude mais pas jusqu’ à ce niveau” (I authorized fraud but not to that extent). Mr. Biya cannot claim that he knows nothing about election fraud in Cameroon. Everything is done by his permissive will.
Corrupt practices at election time in Cameroon are, naturally, not limited to vote heisting. Election time is when regime hands crisscross the country with bags of rice, oil, stockfish, and hard cash to but the conscience of the electorate. Workers and other natives are ferried to their home constituencies in busloads to vote.
A Failed and Corrupt State
If truth be told, many were the Cameroonians who actually ran into beer parlours, sha houses and palm wine joints last June 4-6 2004 to make merry when the rumours started that Mr. Paul Biya, hitherto president of Cameroon was dead. The fiesta was never triggered by a sudden vicious streak within a people; Cameroonians had not just gone mad. The fact about the matter is that of Cameroon’s 16.000.000 people, there must be at least 15.000.000 who today want Mr. Biya dead. The endemic corruption now instituted as a governing system in Cameroon by Mr. Paul Biya is just one of the reasons why Cameroonians in their vast majority would want Mr. Biya taken out. Even those who benefit from the system and who know the facts are disgusted with Mr. Biya’s Cameroon. And Cameroonians know it that the ballot box will never change the system because Mr. Biya will rig elections repeatedly. And an epistemological logic claims that Cameroonians cannot change the system because of their seeming dastardly cowardice.
Cameroon under Mr. Paul Biya is not just a failed state. It is a corrupt state founded on fraud and corruption. Corruption is the life wire of the system. Cameroonians know it for a fact that the 1998 and 2000 Most Corrupt Country trophies awarded this country were quite in order. Nothing has changed. In fact, corruption is still in high gear.
As Mr. Biya presides.
____________________
. See “Une Armée Sans Defense” by Guerandi Mbara
Ibid
See National Assembly Motion of Preliminary Objection Ref 054 of 27/06/1999 to Speaker Cavaye Yegui Djribril from the Opposition SDF party. Ironically the SDF Group Leader who presented this Motion was also the beneficiary of a fake contract through his Moyo or in-law…See Number 60.Poly-Services, which gleaned 28.000.000FCFA.
When Ouandie and his group were arrested, Mr. Mitterrand sent a lawyer to defend them. Ahidjo put the lawyer back in a plane and posted his back to France. Mitterrand vowed to settle scores.
See “Une Armée sans Defense” by Guerandi Mbara.
Joseph Goebbels BIG LIE THEORY IN PERSUASIVE AND MANIPULATIVE COMMUNICATION states that when told often enough the lie becomes the truth.
See April 6, 1994 Speech by Coup Plotters
Mr. Biya’s is a Bulu from Cameroon’s South province but the Beti remain an umbrella tribe involving the Ewondos, the Bulu, the Fangs, the Ntumus, the Etons, and many other smaller groups.
Now exiled SCB General Manager, Messi-Messi told Jeune Afrique Economie in 1987 that Mrs. Jeanne Irene Biya simply summoned him to the presidency to say ‘the president wants a loan”. The next day the first installment of the 3.2 Billion FCFA was shipped from SCB to the Presidency in huge canteens.
See L’Evenement du Jeudi of 22 May 1997 “Le Hit Parade des fortunes cachées”
Mr. Biya's reaction to the Classification is a quiet: “C’est excessif.”
See L’Expression No 153: “Voici comment Tchouta Moussa ruine L’ONPC.”
See La Lettre du MINCOM NO. MINCOM/SG/DAG of 17th Septembre 1997 as published by L’Expression No 179 of IST Octobre 1997
See Jean Vincent Tchinehom: “Le Cameroun 51/6”1 Le Messager No 685.
Stephen Smith also makes the charge against Tsanga Abanda in “Ces Messieurs d’Afrique”.
See Postwatch No 002. The Titus Edzoa Files
See Postwatch No 000 of 10, November 1997.
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