Why Government Should Not Collect Taxes In Kumbo

Fr. Peter A.  Foleng & Livinus Tal Bam

Due to the appalling state of the  main streets in Kumbo Town, every visitor almost always asks whether the people still pay taxes to the government. As the Bamenda Ring Road passes in the centre of Kumbo, narrowly missing a concrete electricity pole, the municipal roads branch off from it at various points. Once in the famous Kumbo Squares, the road to heaven begins beautified by undulating tracks, patches of tar and poorly paved gutters

Those who dress neatly must avoid Kumbo township roads in all seasons

Moving from the Squares to Bamkika'ai, the newly created second motor park or to Tobin, the administrative headquarters or to Mbve'e, the economic capital of Kumbo or to Shisong, hosting the Catholic Mission complex is a nightmare.

What Wrong Have Kumbo People Done?

Last October, the Mayor of Kumbo Urban Council, Donatus Fonyuy Njong, used his meagre resources to grade the streets with gravel and continued to water it in a bid to keep them useable throughout the dry season. These efforts have been dashed to pieces, as the streets look like nothing has been done on them for the last five years.

Apart from the increasing number of vehicles in Kumbo Town, there are also motorbike taxis (bendskins).

In a chat with the Mayor he simply said the government is behaving as if it is not seeing it, adding that 'no one cares'.

He, however, rejoiced that a friendly municipality in Italy, Citadel San Donato in Milan, has agreed to assist in the tarring of the street up to Shisong.

The majority of taxi drivers in the town regret that they spend the day working for the mechanics because they must repair their vehicles every other day. Sometimes, they have to use alternative and longer routes just to avoid the bad streets. These alternative roads themselves are not the best.

Zachary Mbu'ye, a taxi driver in Kumbo for five years, says the shock absorbers and tyres of their cars are destroyed rapidly and they have to replace them regularly. This takes much money. Yet, they are not allowed to charge a higher fare.

A bendskin owner expressed his own disappointment.

"We spend almost every single franc we realise every day on repairs caused by the bad roads. Given that the dust is too much, one has can only imagine the paths to follow. We get into wrong tracks and often hit stones and sometimes puncture the tyres. In the past some parts of the machines that fell out could be picked and fitted back, but this is rare today. Once a part drops off, it is lost forever in the pool of dust. We also run the risk of throwing our passengers to the ground."

The inhabitants of Kumbo Town inhale dust for almost seven months of the year - October to April. One would also notice the effects during Church services as the majority of the people cannot stop coughing and sneezing. Women and their hairdos, and school goers have their own stories to tell.

For most students, they often fall in the dust; dirty their school uniforms and their books. Some lose their pens, pencils and other school items in the thick dust.

It is ridiculous to see a police officer standing inside the dust looking like an exhumed corpse, checking windscreen licences. If the government cannot take up its responsibilities towards the people, it should not claim any rights from the same people.

If social justice requires people to fulfil their civic duties, like paying taxes, distributive justice imposes on the government the obligation to distribute in proportion the resources of the nation to the needs, capabilities and merits of the people. This includes roads, and especially in Kumbo

Comments

[Ben]

Yes, the Government should stop colecting taxes from my boys if they can't help them in anyway.

[julius]

How can we expect a government run by thieves for thieves to care about the basic needs of ordinary Cameroonians? The corrupt enthno-fascist cabal in Yaounde only cares about one tning- stealing enough money to last several lifetimes. The absence of good roads in Kumbo is a direct consequence of the mismanagement and thievry carried out by Ondo Ndong formerly of FEICOM and currently at Kodengui. Hope he rots in there and also in hell if that is not hell enough.

[Vally]

Julius/Ben,

These are some of the reasons we all jioned the sdf,to push away the bastard of yaounde who cares less of the whole country but themslves.I can not but praise the hard work done so far in this struggle by the people in Kumbo,their loyalty to the course is relentess.What are they receiving from all this?the sdf chairman now enriching his family and self with the yaounde junta.

This is why this Fru Ndi saga is so painful, Fru Ndi has tactically abandoned the struggle, and is only concentrating to his brothers and kin from Meta.(Mbah ndam,Tebo,kwende etc etc.We need to kick this man out of the sdf.

Vally
England.

[Che Sunday (Dr.)]

All of a sudden, the people of Kumbo are seeing what they should have seen years ago. A tax revolt looks ideal. Pay your taxes, but don't remit them to Yaounde. Repair your roads with the proceeds. Paul's gendarmes will go away the moment their pay packages are no longer coming in. The whole nation should stop paying taxes and see if the entire population can be jailed.

[Ben]

Vally,
The issue at hand is not about SDF, but is the organized stealing by the regime we have today. If Ni John is an accomplice to this organized stealing, then he is to blame. Taking taxes from people for works which are never accomplished, for empty promises is identical to stealing from them their identity. If they can't identify with what they pay taxes for then they can't identify with themselves. I thing we, of Kumbo origin, have been silent for sometime and now is the time to stand and claim our god-given rights One of them being the appropriation of taxes. Any Cameroonian who supports Biya, or so called Popo, is just being "sincerely and consciously ignorant." Nothing in this world is more dangerous than that

[Vally]

Ben,

But if we organised ourslves to get this wicket regime from yaounde out so our plight could be dealt with, and the leader of our struggle decides to abandoned us, what do you expect?The sdf we all joined was to help get our taxes for roads and other development.The people of kumbo have been doing just more than to see this through,what is happenibg now?those we all fought for, within the sdf,our thinking of themselves and their various villages only.

The cpdm junta will say let the people of Nso suffer after all they belong to the opposition.Yes,that's what we want, but we should hold to account those we have entrusted our destiny.

It is very very painful that those we trusted are now thinking and doing otherwise.

Vally
England

[SJ]

What happens in Kumbo replicates itself all over the Southern Cameroons.

What is painful is that it did not use to be this way. In the days of the self-rule, Native Authorities (NAs) at local level collected taxes, remitted part of it to the National Government in Buea and used the rest for local management and development. There were NA Schools, Clinics and Sanitation workers who kept the localities going.

In typical colonial fashion, Paris and Yaounde have instituted policies and parachuted armed thugs to enforce these policies whose primary aim is to plunder the resources of the Southern Cameroons and dehumanize her inhabitants; the consequences in terms of morbidity and mortality rates in the Southern Cameroons today compared to the days of self-rule are obvious. The data we will not be fully appreciated until after Liberation Day, but anectodal evidence abounds already:

1. Mr. John Fru Ndi, in a speech at St. Thomas University in Minnesotta some years ago, stated clearly that it is a policy of the genocidal regime in Yaounde to transfer HIV+ gendarmes to the Southern Cameroons to spread the virus.

2. An American-based Southern Cameroonian physician recently returning from Kumba were he grew up was stunned to discover the very high incidence of asthma prevalent amongst kids in there, thus corraborating assertions about the higher relative morbidity made in the ACHPR report filed by the advocates of the Southern Cameroons in the "Banjul Case." The state of poor roads in Kumbo, like in Kumba invariably is a contributing factor.

3. Just as the General Hopsital and the colonial enforcer or Prefet residence built by the Germans in Victoria, have been allowed to fall into disrepair and decay, while SONARA revenues goes to Douala and bank accounts and stock markets in Paris, London, New York and Brussels; just like the disenfrachisement in employment of resident Southern Cameroonians reported at Ayaba Hotel, Atlantic Beach Hotel, SONARA etc. and articulated here, all over the land is a systematic unwrapping of genocidal tactics.

4. It is reported that, about once a week, a helicopter (because of the the state of disrepair of the roads) swoops down to Ekok and collects monies extorted by colonial customs officials where trade between Nigeria and the Southern Cameroons still manage to thrive. No one in Ekok, or Manyu or the Southern Cameroons knows what becomes of those monies.

5. So as far a Kumbo goes (and this reminds me of an article published on this site wherein the parachuted colonial enforcer, one Zangbwalla gave an ultimatum to the Kumbo Council to remit her taxes to the government tresury!), Southern Cameroonians must see these as a global systematic mechanism to disenfranchise and humiliate an entire people and we must adopt global perspectives in analysing the evil schemes of the petainiste (right down to their national mottoo) ethno-fascist French junta in Yaounde.

[Ben]

Sj/Vally,

I like the way you guys are looking at the issue: not stupidly angry about it but consciously and constructive thinking of what we can do . It is a known known and true that our destiny now lies in our hands and we must not passively sit and inhale the dust from this Biya regime. Those we trusted by entrusting our future in them have done little or nothing. I feel I have done nothing and that I have the capability of doing something, and so is any young man who inhaled teargas in 1990, but what that is that I am destined to do , I am yet to discover. But we( southern Cameroonians) must marshal our collective intelligence, our talents and our left resources to combating these ills inflicted on us by the Biya regime. But we must forget about our differences first. Let there be no south westerner or north westerner, Banso or Bakweri or Noni or what ever. We are all in the same plight. One doesn’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure this out. One of the things this regime has done is to make sure that we see differences amongst ourselves. Unless we are united, we can not fight a common. Unity is the basis of our success and with that we keep ploughing ahead with the hope that one day we will rise up and claim what rightfully belongs to us. Not only corn fufu, Achu, Meondo, Ekwang etc, but a whole lot of other things we will claim.
Ben Benoi Bernimo

[Ndiks]

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