After 2 October 2015 cabinet reshuffle:

Witch Doctors having a field day as lobbying intensifies for vacant top jobs

Aspirants to positions which some recently appointed ministers are still occupying are doing their all to step into the latter’s shoes. After the appointment of regional governors on Friday the top jobs at CSPH, Customs Directorate, North West Administrative Court, Bertoua City Council etc are still vacant.

By Douglas A. Achingale in Yaounde

After President Paul Biya broke his four-year silence with a cabinet shake-up on 2 October 2015, speculations are rife that a new government reshuffle will not be long to come. Even if it delays, pundits surmise, it will take far less than four years. Aspirants to ministerial positions are thus doing all in their power to convince the President overtly or covertly to include them in the very next governmental team. But while this group is working for the long term, others there are who are eyeing other (more?) juicy positions in the short term.

                These positions are those of Director General of Customs, Director General of the Hydrocarbons Prices Stabilisation Fund (CSPH), Bertoua City Council and President of the North West Administrative Court. The personalities currently occupying these posts were appointed ministers in the 2 October cabinet reshuffle. Since the cumulating of functions is prohibited in the public sector in Cameroon, it is evident that these people will soon be relieved of their old functions.

                The Median has learned, reliably, that many of those who are dreaming to step into the shoes of the above-mentioned personalities have not gone to sleep since the cabinet shake-up was made. In different ways – malefic like felicitous – they are trying to impress on President Biya how much contribution they can make towards emergence by 2035 if they were to be propelled to any of the said positions.

                These dreamers know the coterie of bigwigs that the President is wont to consult before making important decisions such as the appointment of senior state functionaries. The influence peddling that is now going on amongst them, we were told, has reached alarming proportions.

                The Median was informed that one such coterie member who works at the Presidency of the Republic very recently turned away a senior customs inspector who had never been used to him but who kept coming to his house to beg for recognition after the cabinet reshuffle. The former is eyeing the position of Director General of Customs. On the day he was sent away, our sources revealed, he came with two huge goats and an astronomical amount of money contained in a briefcase which he had intended to bribe his host with.

                “These are some of the things we are able to see. There are many other things that may be happening in the background; in the dark so to speak. Don’t be surprised that aspirants to these positions are consulting and even hiring sorcerers to intercede for them in the spiritual realm,” our informant said.

                “But they are wasting their time,” he went on. “Biya no doubt consults some of his close aides before such appointments are done, but he always has the final say. If he takes no interest in you, he can never appoint you, no matter your physical or spiritual machinations. The President is anything but malleable.”