End time signals

The New Deal regime collapsing?
Cameroon appears to be heading towards imminent collapse, as growing insecurity has combined with lethargic leadership to create an atmosphere of general malaise and perilous uncertainty.
By Ayukogem Steven Ojong in Yaounde
All is certainly not well with Cameroon. At a time when other African countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Ghana, Botswana, Rwanda, etc. are making generally acclaimed efforts to move forward and possibly emerge in the shortest time possible, the ‘Giant of Central Africa’ is helplessly at a standstill, if not moving backwards. Today, virtually all the sectors of national life are proving to be problematic owing, in great part, to rampant corruption, impunity and a general sense of lethargy both within government and opposition circles. As someone put it, “It is as if God has written Cameroon in His black book.”

Threatened state coffers
    A major problem the country is currently battling with is that of dwindling state coffers. The government can barely bankroll even the most pressing projects. Though workers’ salaries are paid regularly there is an endless cry by public sector workers for a revalorization of their take home pay, which they say can barely take them home. Contractors and service providers are also grumbling that payment of their bills is either delayed or they are not being paid at all. Evil and morally depraved barons of the regime have, over the years, pilfered the nation’s wealth with impunity, reducing a naturally rich Cameroon to a very poor, beggarly country. Tax collectors, Customs officials and treasury personnel have continued to siphon public money into their private pockets with impunity. Collection of bribes by even the lowest state agent is the order of the day. True, a number of the high-profile culprits have been apprehended and jailed; but not much has been done to retrieve the stolen money, which runs in trillions of FCFA.
    Such money, if recovered, could be used for various developmental projects begging for execution. But because it continues to stay in the foreign accounts of the jailed robbers, the government is obliged in most cases to borrow from foreign donors to realize some of its very pressing projects, that is, for the few that are presently being realized.


Inherent corruption, embezzlement
    Today, there is institutionalized corruption and embezzlement in the country; and this, to a very large extent, is not because Cameroonians are inherently bad, but rather on account of the abject poverty in which they continue to wallow. It is worth noting that the financial situation of Cameroonians is so pathetic that most of them who are in positions of authority are not scared even by the spate of arrests and imprisonment of high-profile corrupt or allegedly corrupt officials. Office holders still continue to put their hands deep into the public purse as though nothing is happening. The whistle-blower website Weaki-leaks revealed how a former minister of Justice told a sitting US Ambassador in Yaounde that the government was confused and embarrassed because the series of arrests and imprisonments have not scared holders of public offices from stealing huge sums of public money that they are supposed to manage.                                                       
   
Inertia, failing institutions, general malaise
A major reason why topnotch officials continue to bleed the state of astronomical sums of money is because some of them are left in the same managerial positions for too long. Yet this does not ring a bell in the mind of the man who hires and fires them.
       In his state-of-the-nation address at the end of 2013, President Paul Biya lambasted his ministers for inertia. Intriguingly and paradoxically, the president has not seen the urgent need to redeploy the government ever since, so as to bring on board more conscientious and action-oriented people as ministers. The question to be asked is, is it by paying lip service to the worrying situation of inertia that the vice will be kicked out of the system?
    Rather than inspire confidence, state institutions are failing. And there is a discernible malaise in the entire governance machinery of the country. Election results have almost always been contested by the wider public who believe that they are tailored to favour the ruling CPDM party. Not even the results of the recent census were trusted.  
                                        
Preferential treatment
Generally, the government is slow and even hesitant to make decisions that would promote the well-being of the majority of Cameroonians. While “princely treatment” is given to a select few, the greater majority of Cameroonians continue to wallow in an orgy of poverty and want.
    Take, for instance, the isolated case of allowances paid to bureau members of the National Assembly. Some of them allocate as much as 80 million FCFA to themselves as car allowance, apart from the huge monthly salaries as well as many other financial and other advantages which they enjoy! Whereas the majority of Cameroonians live below the poverty line (i.e. not earning up to 500 FCFA a day) and the greater number of civil servants who toil and moil on a daily basis are left to languish in misery with ‘catechists’ salaries.

Paltry, ineffective opposition
    The fact that there is no likelihood of power alternation in the near future has left Cameroonians confused and fearing for the future of their country. President Biya has ruled the country for 32 years and there are no indications he would quit power anytime soon.
    In other countries, when there is such loss of confidence in the ruling class and the state machinery – so to speak – the people turn to the opposition for ‘rescue’. In Cameroon, however, such is not the case. This is because “what we have here is a paltry opposition; paltry because a paucity of ideas within their ranks”. In fact, much of what is left of the opposition in Cameroon is a set of dishonest, greedy and self-centred dinosaurs who view President Biya more as a mentor to be emulated than an opponent to be discarded. Personal enrichment and self-aggrandizement are their watchwords; meeting the aspirations of the masses is regrettably out of their agenda. The erstwhile National Scribe of the so called leading opposition party in the country, the SDF, Prof. Tazoacha Asonganyi, once described the party’s leader John Fru Ndi, as president Biya’s best student of politics.

Ever-growing insecurity
    To add insult to injury, insecurity in and around the national territory is ever-growing. The menacing presence of the Nigerian Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram, along the northern frontiers with Nigeria augurs ill for both Cameroonians and foreigners not only in the Far North region where the group have repeatedly taken people hostage, but everywhere within the national triangle.
    Only several years ago a group of armed men took the populations of Douala hostage for hours and broke into and emptied the BICEC bank at Bonaberi before fleeing to safety by boat. Today we are told that some of the robbers who were later chased and arrested on the high seas by our security forces were recently sentenced to death by the courts.
    Even before the Douala incident, the same scenario occurred in Limbe in the SW region where gunmen entered into the sea-side town by sea, at about 2.00 a.m. in the morning and held the entire population of the town hostage for over two hours, breaking and looting at least five banks along one street before disappearing into the vast waters of the sea.
    In Limbe just like in Douala the armed robbers met no resistance or intervention from local security operatives, and this, despite the many gendarmerie, police and army bases in and around the two strategic cities. Many Cameroonians are wondering if the country’s lone petroleum refinery in Limbe could not be attacked and ransacked in like manner someday.
    All these factors only combine to give credence to the generally held opinion that Cameroon is now like an object loosely perched on a precipice. Our editor-at-large, Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai once described Cameroon as “a disaster waiting to happen”.
    British Historian Jack Watson, in his book “Twentieth Century World Affairs”, said of the fourth French Republic that “France under Leon Blum was weak, hesitant, indecisive and heading towards imminent collapse”. Jack Watson’s description of France resonates succinctly with the prevailing situation of Cameroon today, where uncertainty has continued to loom large over the territory and the country’s integrity and survival is now only at the mercy of God.