By Azore Opio
They make smart money with a simple system - go on mission. They have forced ordinary Cameroonians into actual financial quandary.
The more they go out on fake missions as the head of state's mountebanks, the further they send the masses into a dismal spiral.They peddle quack rhetoric playing like a stuck record, trying to appeal to an audience long bored stiff with empty promises. They actually peddle crap for cash. They turn the mission trips on and off like a tap.
One of the major threats to, if not a drain, on the public treasury, is posed by the uncontrollable purchase and use of so-called state vehicles. It speeds the descent into the grand corruption and wastage that characterise the nation.
Often brightly painted, glittering motorised convoys with shrilling sirens are as much a feature of Cameroon's highways as the grandiloquence and grandeur of its ruling elite. So much of the national economy and the natural resources are lost to thieving top government officials and to the fleets of limousines.
The highest problem the Cameroon government faces is that it cannot police its own employees and appointees.Once Pierre Minlo Medjo, then Delegate General for National Security, issued a communiqué, prohibiting policemen from drinking in uniform. In defiance, the police force dressed up in full garb complete with side arms and stormed the bars. It is still standard practice to date.
Recently, Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni issued a similar warning against the misuse of state vehicles, reiterating what his predecessor Peter Mafanyi Musonge had started. That warning seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. State vehicles can still be seen loaded with plantains, yams, firewood, goats and sheep and all the like; fuelled, driven, maintained and misused all on tax payers' sweat, so to speak.
The Minister of State Property and Land Tenure, Pascal Anong Adibime,
recently called on the forces of law and order to impound state
vehicles that government officials are abusing.
The Minister was addressing the issue of the misuse of state property
raised by CPDM MP, Hon. Roger Nkodo Ndang, who had pointed out that
misuse of state property continues to impoverish the state while
individuals enrich themselves.
Anong Adibime had thus; ordered gendarmes to be more vigilant to a new phenomenon where people buy cars from the state but leave the CA registration to deceive the public. This also deprives the state of much-needed tax.
Other examples of wasteful usage of public money is President Paul Biya's long years in power that have encouraged high levels of corruption and cronyism; his bloated administration of more than 60 duplicated ministries; "lucrative" government and military positions generally held by his Bulu-Beti ethnic group; paying civil service salaries to ghost workers and either ineffective, marginally adequate projects or those operating under a flawed purpose or design.
Trauma
Cameroon's spirit is still haunted by the trauma of corruption and wastage. They seem to thrive in the social marrow and the psyche. Last year, news headlines screamed a certain cock and bull story about repatriated smuggled Cameroonian gorillas from South Africa. Much of the public thought it was just monkey business. So, why should one believe that the latest excursion by MINEF to Buea to launch the planting of 75,000 ornamental trees was the last one?
One must admit a minister like Elvis Ngolle Ngolle has done a good job in trying to reduce reckless exploitation of Cameroon's forests, perhaps reducing corruption in his ministry. We are glad he is talking development and conservation. But recently, he zoomed into Buea at the head of a long motorcade of not less than two dozen 4-WDs, each probably costing a minimum of FCFA 50 million, to be modest.
That convoy can neither be considered economical nor developmental. It is a reckless drain on the resources of the ministry. Why not embark on a rigorous and more sustainable afforestation policy with citizen participation and tree nurturing, other than revelling in puffed joy for going on missions, which are otherwise a nigh-hysterically blissful explosion of high cockalorum?
In an era in which forests, especially tropical rain forests are fast disappearing, it is ridiculous to be driving around in pollutive motorcades with fuel-guzzling monsters for transport.
Japan is probably one of the most heavily forested countries in the world, ranking with Finland (more than 70 percent) and Sweden over 60 percent). But Japan adopted an afforestation policy of tree nurturing with the creation of the National Arbor Day in 1950.
The festival, which focuses on replanting barren land helped stimulate Japan's greening movement, which boasts more than 300,000 hectares planted with trees each year for a total of more than 10 million hectares.
Trying to beautify a rotten nation is like white-washing a tomb. The rural areas denuded by people in need of wood for fuel, farming space and reckless logging need forest re-growth much more than urban areas.
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