2, June 2016

Kenya: Police violence sparks global outcry ⁰

A leading rights group has condemned the use of excessive force by Kenya’s police, who violently dispersed opposition protesters in four major towns, including Nairobi, Monday. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) said it was “particularly dismayed by the gory More

2, June 2016

The 2014 Synod of Bishops: The Anatomy of a crisis ⁰

The October 2014 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops dedicated to the theme of the Pastoral Care of the Family in the context of the New Evangelization was truly extraordinary, and in many ways! For the records, it set out to present the beauty of the Christian family amidst present-day threats to family life across the globe, but more acute in the Western world. It almost ended up saying too little, too late, about what this Christian family means and how we as a Church could support those families that are heroically living out the Christian model of family life. Catholicism suddenly found itself in an unanticipated doctrinal storm: was the Catholic Church, the only surviving institution that had rejected the ethos of the sexual revolution unleashed in Europe in the 1960s, finally conceding that the post-modern Freudians were right, after all, and the Barque of Peter wrong?

To think about this whole cloudy October of 2014 is quite frankly, irritating. How did Peter’s barque found itself in a situation in which the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, et cetera, quickly intercepted their programs to read a new headline: Catholic Church Changes Teachings on Gays and Divorce? I disagree with those who want to blame the secular media. We gave them the headlines! I think the media was far serious about what they wanted to report to the world as coming from the Synod. Watching Cardinal Erdo and his team present the mid-term report and listening to the questions posed by the journalists present left any objective onlooker with the feeling that the media men and women sitting in that Vatican Press Office genuinely wanted to know whether Rome meant what the words in the Synod document meant!

To compound matters, the Vatican had imposed a blackout on the individual interventions of the bishops at the Synod. That left the media with only the filtering lens of Fr. Lombardi and Cardinal Erdo’s Secretariat. The media was therefore under-starved by the Synodal process. Come to think of the fact that these are men and women paying hotel bills to live in Rome! They wanted information to convince their editors that they deserved their paychecks for being in Rome for two weeks. Consequently, the so-called mid-term report – Relatio post Disceptationem, was the first real, substantial encounter that the media had with the Synod world. Who will blame them for the excitement that finally, Catholicism had caved-in into the dreams of the hostile secularists and often times, atheistic media halls? Who will blame the media for celebrating the triumph of the Eiffel ToweroverNotre Dame? Their moment had come, but only for a while! I pray and hope so!

How did we get to this position? It all started February 20^th2014, when, at the behest of Pope Francis, Cardinal Kasper delivered a lengthy two-hour lecture to the Consistory of the College of Cardinals on the question of the pastoral care of the family. The most outstanding novelty of the lecture was Kasper’s proposal that couples that are divorced and civilly remarried could, after a period of penitence, be allowed to receive the Eucharist without an ecclesiastical annulment. From the post-consistory news bits, it would seem Kasper’s proposal was not warmly received by many of the Cardinals present. It is on record that Kasper got angry by the many Cardinals who spoke after his presentation, raising objections to such a proposal that clearly had no foundation in Tradition and Scripture. However, Pope Francis publicly praised Kasper, calling the lecture a “profound” theology, a theology done on one’s knees, a theology done with the feeling of the Church – sentire cum ecclesia!

Thereafter, Kasper seemed to have been let loose! It would seem his moment had arrived! He had not only delivered a lifetime lecture to the most elitist club of Roman Catholicism, but had won the public approval and endorsement of the Pope! What more could be desired? The press crowned him “the Pope’s Theologian.” Not even the profound theological objections raised by his brother Cardinals amounted to anything to Kasper. Kasper went on to produce his address to the Cardinals in a book entitled The Gospel of the Family.In fact, when he came to Boston College for one of his post-consistory numerous global lectures and interviews, he made a side-comment to a professor of Boston College that those Cardinals who objected to his proposal did not understood him, implying their arguments were of a straw-man nature! His brother Cardinals showed Kasper that they understood his arguments, and that he was wrong!

Shortly before the Synod, three publications emerged, all championed by members of the College of Cardinals: The Hope of the Family by Gerhard Cardinal MULLER, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; The Gospel of the Family– as if to challenge Kasper’s book with the same title,led by George Cardinal Pell, Secretary of the Secretariat of the Economy of the Vatican; and the most expansive, Remaining in the Truth of Christ, by Walter Cardinal BRANDMULLER, Raymond Cardinal BURKE, Carlo Cardinal CAFFARRA, Velasio Cardinal DE PAOLIS, and others. (I will encourage the bishops of the Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province to subsidize these three books for all major seminarians and priests of our province). In a word, these books bring alive the rich patrimony on marriage that Catholicism could offer the world. One gets the feeling that the Catholic teaching on marriage is our “best-kept secret”!

The current debates on marriage seem to fall within the milieu of moral theology. A closer examination from these books reveals a broad Catholic base:dogmatic theology considers marriage from the point of view of sacramentality and attendant qualities: indissolubility, monogamy, fruitfulness and education of children in the faith; moral theology is about the anthropology of human sexuality and parenthood; canon law views marriage from legitimacy and its pathologies; the role of pastoral theology is to promote the plan of marriage and how to live out this vision in a pluralistic and complex world; finally, spiritual theology is about the Christian life of witnessing, marriage as the domestic church, lived out in prayer, worship, sin and grace, falling and rising in our marital commitment, et cetera.

With such a rich patrimony, the mid-term report could not have been more shocking, even to the secular media world. As the head of the Polish Bishop’s Conference, ArchbishopStanislaw Gądecki told Vatican Radio on October 13^th 2014, the Relatio Post Disceptationem was a marked departure from our patrimony, especially the magisterium of St. John Paul II! To Cardinal Burke, the Relatio had little or no foundation in Scripture and Tradition.

I have already written about how this infamous Relatio came to be and its eventual demolition in the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Needless repeating myself here. The Final Report– RelatioSynodi, was a marked improvement of the mid-term report, in the minds of many, thanks to bishops standing up for orthodoxy. Where do we go from here? How do we prepare for the 2015 Ordinary Synod? What lessons have we learnt as Church worth keeping in mind as we prepare for 2015? Two suggestions from a simple and young mind:

Firstly, bishops, priests and the laity should foster a rediscovery of the Catholic teaching of the grammar of sexuality that is built into our experience and understanding of creation. The problematic paragraphs of the mid-term report showed that Catholicism was throwing away its understanding of the sexual language of Creation Theology, an understanding that is accessible to both faith and reason: What does creation, male and female, teach Catholicism and the world about the sexual act? What does the female and male anatomy teach Catholicism and the world about the sexual act? Does reason have a place in the sexual act, or is the sexual act an exclusive domain of feelings and emotions? If we follow emotions alone, where do we draw the line? What happens when a mother says, as we heard recently in the news in the US, that she and her daughter have sexual feelings for each other and have decided to “marry”? More pointedly, and this is what Catholic bishops must ask themselves in all honesty: does God have a place in the sexual act? Can God still speak to humans, created male and female, about sex? Should revelation as contained in Scripture be allowed into the sexual act? In the final analysis, the crisis about sexuality is a crisis about God. Is sex an area that is exclusively human, or can God say a word? Should God be allowed to?

Put differently, the greatest omission of the 2014 Extraordinary Synod was the total snubbing of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body! Bishops should encourage formative seminars on the Theology of the Body. May be the bishops themselves need lessons on the Theology of the Body, urgent ones, to spare Catholicism the kind of embarrassment we faced from the mid-term report, which was a work that came from a meeting of bishops! Sexuality and Creation are the big themes for 2015. A friend of mine chided me for still believing in bishops to hand on the orthodox faith! Do we have any other option? I am sure, hope and pray, that Athanasius, Cyprian, Augustine, Ignatius, Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, Borromeo, will still inspire their successors in 2015!

Secondly, why should Catholicism care about marriage and the family? How can we rediscover and represent our Catholic goods of marriage in 2015: the good of exclusive, reciprocal fidelity (bonumfidei); the good of fruitfulness and education of children (bonumprolis); and the good of the indissolubility symbolized in the indissoluble bond between Christ and his Church (bonumsacramenti), are Catholic goods worth rediscovering and presenting to the world, come October 2015. What does allowing Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried without an annulment say about the Catholic teaching of the reception of Eucharist by those in objective state of grave sin, which adultery clearly is? What is the difference between simultaneous polygamy, a man having many wives at once, and subsequent polygamy, a man or woman divorcing and remarrying, first marriage, second marriage, and even third, without an annulment? If the latter could be allowed to receive the Eucharist, why not the former?

The drama continues!

2, June 2016

The Triumph of Orthodoxy 2014 Synod of Bishops on Family ⁰

Church Historians and Vatican watchers are telling us that a confrontation like that had never been seen before, perhaps not even at the Second Vatican Council. Soon after nine on Thursday, October 16, 2014, the General Secretary to the Synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, took to the floor and announced that the relationes of the circuliminores would not be made public, a reverse course from what had always happened in the past and that was affirmed in the previous days.

In other words, only the Relatio post disceptationem, which Cardinal Peter Erdo signed and which Archbishop Bruno Forte wrote, would have been fed to the press. Cardinal George Pell rose up strongly against Cardinal Baldisseri’s novelty. After him, a long line of Fathers, from the Archbishop of Brussels, Abp. Léonard, to that of Durban, Cardinal Napier, asked that the matter be at least put to a vote. Even the Secretary of State took the floor. At the end, as Cardinal ChristophSchönborn said at a press conference some hours later that, “the decision to render public the relationes of the circuli was taken by a large majority.” The texts are clear, and go in an opposite direction as the one upheld by Cardinal Walter Kasper.The Major Archbishop of Kiev, SviatoslavShevchuk, spoke directly of the need of “sending a clear message to the faithful and to the Pope” on the fact that “the family is the stable, faithful, and sacramental union between a man and a woman.”

The most controversial and delicate points, from the question of the approaching of remarried divorcees to the Eucharist, to the overture to homosexual unions, were dismantled almost unanimously because many Synod Father said very little had been said of same sex unions – not more than three interventions in the assembly -yet Monday’s Relatio spoke about it ad abundantiam.

A clear consequence of Cardinal Baldisseri’s miss-steps and Kasper’s anti-African interview to Edward Pentin, led to the addition of one African, Cardinal Napier, and also an Australian, Abp. Dennis Hart of Melbourne, to the original six-man papal drafting committee. Cardinal Kasper has since denied the interview he gave to Edward Pentin, who responded by pasting the recorded interview online. Cardinal Kasper has now been publicly revealed, thanks to the Pentin interview and his denial as a man filled with incomprehensible anti-Christian racial superiority. On a trip to US that took him to Boston College and Fordham University, New York and other cities, Kasper even made sarcastic side comments about the liturgical reforms of Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI. His criticisms did not stop there. The eventual target was Humanae Vitae of Blessed Paul VI, a magisterial document that has turned out to be very prophetic in many ways.

Take number 17 for example: “Let men and women first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. (Humane Vitae, 17).

Why Cardinal Kasper cannot see that changing Church discipline cannot ignore a change in Church doctrine remains a puzzle. If the second marriage is not “in the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:39), then the words of Christ to the Samaritan woman is applicable: “You are right in saying ‘I have no husband, for you have five husbands, and he whom you now have in not your husband; this you said truly” (John 4:17-18). In this case, not only will the Church be ignoring the clear and stern admonition of Our Lord on divorce and remarriage as constituting adultery (Mathew 19:9; Mark 10:10-12); but the will be guilty of facilitating the situation described by St. Paul: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27). Cardinal George Pell said it all: “On the question of divorce and remarriage, I am sticking with Jesus!” Kasper has to be reminded that the solution to the empty pews in the German Church is not a dilution of Christ’s teaching! The Lutherans already did that and the pews became emptier. The Church of England did that and more Muslims go to the Mosques on Fridays than Anglicans go to the Church on Sundays in England! A crisis of faith is met by a robust re-proposal of the joy of the gospel, to cite Pope Francis.

At a time when the world is confused about the very meaning of marriage and the family, Catholicism owes the future of civilization the duty of offering to the world, once more, the beauty of marriage, “in the Lord,” – a union of one man and one woman, exclusive and open to the gift of life, forever – symbolizing the “forever” love of Christ for the Church (Ephesians 5:32-33). This is not the time for heterodoxy hidden under a false sense of “mercy” to dominate a synod of bishops. Catholicism cannot afford to speak from both sides of the mouth on the issue of marriage and the family. Fortunately, we have a rich magisterium to draw from: CastiConnubi, Gaudium et Spes, Humanae Vitae, FamiliarisConsortio, Evangelium Vitae, Deus Caritas Est, Evangelii Gaudium, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and above all, the Sacred Scriptures, not leaving out the teaching of Fathers of the Church.

We thank God that the 2014 sausage-making Synod is over. We thank God for the bishops who stood for the faith of our fathers and mothers. Now is the time to journey deeply into the timeless teachings of our Holy Mother, the Church. Now is the time for Kasper to retire to a monastery and pray for the Church! Benedict XVI showed a beautiful and wonderful example of the apostolate of prayer worth emulating, when he abdicated the throne of Peter to take up the new position “at the foot of the cross” – in his own words, to pray for the Church!

2, June 2016

Ambassador Mendouga: Call no man happy until he is safely in his grave ⁰

Jerome Mendouga, who boasted of his close kinship with Paul Biya could never have believed that he will end a 30 year diplomatic career in Jail, under Biya’s regime. Mendouga who has real estate property in Bangui and many other African capitals where he has served, at attempted to seek asylum in the United States and Canada to no avail.

Ironically, he spent 15 years in Washington D.C misrepresenting to the US government that in Cameroon the rule of law prevails, and that claims by asylees that they are being locked up in Kondengui are false. He had his mea culpa when he went to Yaounde, only to end up in Kondengui. When the “Washington Dipomat” (magazine) interviewed him a few years ago, he was so distraught and ashamed. He claimed that if anyone told him that he will end his thirty year service to his country in jail, he could never have believed.

Mendouga’s death in the ignominy of Kondengui, is a testament to the perfidy of the Biya dictatorship, which devours friend and foe alike. Now that Gervais Mendo Ze is in Kondengui, it would be sweet Karma if he too kicked the bucket inside his kinsman’s dungeon. In Mendo Ze’s case they will need a really big coffin.

2, June 2016

Cameroonians brace for impact, terrified by the uncertainties of a micro-managed succession ⁰

“Brace for impact!” Only few survivors of plane crashes live to tell the story of the sheer horror of those ominous words … heard through the Aircraft’s public address system, in the harrowing seconds, before the plane goes down.Yet, this is the same feeling most Cameroonians are now having, because of the sheer uncertainty of 82-year old Biya, whose succession has become another French-micro-managed scandal, like Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso. Cameroonians generals and some well-placed members of Biya’s presidential guard have shipped their families abroad and are maintaining open-ended visas, to enable them leave on short notice.

Biya who has ruled the country from a Swiss hotel, like the absentee-landlord of a criminal enterprise, is now faced with in- fighting between his most trusted accomplices. Martin Belinga Eboutou, Rene Sadi, Alain Edgar Mebe- Ngo’o and other members of his close concentric circle of flunkies, are divided on how the succession process should occur. Of course, each group is supported by its own lobby at the Elysee in Paris.

Those who argue the Biya has signed a concealed order to be release in the event of his sudden death, claim that his chose of Rene Sadi as his successor is informed by his Baboute ethnicity- a small Muslim ethic group in the Mbam and Kim division, that will allow Biya to thwart the power ambitions of the Fulani royalty of the North, who claim the leadership in Cameroon as their birth right … on the threat of civil war.

The recent French rescue of Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compoare, and his exile in Yamoussoukro – Ivory Coast, is a recent indicator of the long arm of the French in its nominally independent former colonies, which are still treated as the oversees extension of the French empire. The ultra-militarization of the country has left Cameroonians terrified and cowered by the vicissitudes of daily survival, and the need to leach on the boss who may be linked to the winning lobby.

Cameroonians abroad are busy burnishing their images with Washington and Paris, and presenting lofty résumés’ as to what leadership skills and erudition they possess. Due to the centralization of power in Yaoundé, the common folk in the villages are left out in this succession struggle.

Anglophones are again being naïve in thinking that the French will be out of their mind to accept one of them, as a leader in one of their strategic neo-colonies, which is the gateway to their Central African Empire. With leaders like Fru Ndi, who has accepted bribes to play by the rules of French domination, the present crop of appointees shine only through their cowering and cringing attitude to their Francophone boses like Fame Ndongo who claims that Biya is a “tin-god” with Philemon Yang, Achidi Achu, Nji Atanga, the late Agbor Tabi, Ngolle Ngolle, as his “creatures”

Anglophones, the orphaned people handed over to the British after the second world war, have been described by Pierre Mesmer (Former French Governor in Cameroon and French Prime Minister in the 60s) as a little gift of the Queen of England to General De Gaulle. Crafty aspirants to Anglophone leadership have been hitching their hopes on a lucky Francophone master who could be picked by France to rule Cameroon- their private hunting ground.

The real problem of Cameroon, that the French have refused to deal with, is again rearing its ugly head. Will Cameroon finally accept the democratic and demographic solution of one-man, one vote?. That is the question that is plaguing power brokers like Joseph Owona and Amadou Ali who see the youth bulge that constitutes the majority of the country now, as a Bamileke problem.

According to some conservative Cameroonian pundits, with approximately 250 distinct ethnic entities, the Bamilekes who live in feudal fiefdoms do not seem to stand a chance, by dint of their control of the economic, financial and demographics of Cameroon. That is why the French “pacifier” of the Bassa and Bamileke nationalist movement, referred to the “Bamilekes” as the prickly pebble in the shoe of French colonization in Cameroon.

2, June 2016

Paul Biya and2014: Another Catalogue of Failures and Development Bluffs ⁰

Some hours before 8:00 p.m. when Paul Biya had to address the nation, I bought a copy of Marafa Hamidou Yaya’s recent book “Le Choix de l’Action” [Choice of Action]. Since I was very interested in the elections he organized, I quickly thumbed through the book and fell on p. 57 where a telephone exchange he had with Paul Biya related to the election of Jean Jacques Ekindi in 2007 to the National Assembly from Wouri Centre constituency, is reported. It left me upset and disappointed that indeed, the people’s will has always been manipulated from the summit of the state by the same person who always refers to the people’s will when he is asked why he is still hanging on for 32 years.

It is in that state of despair that I sat checking his past New Year messages while waiting for the griots to draw the curtains. So by the time he started speaking, I had just read what he said on December 31, 2011: “we now have a roadmap, the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper which sets the objectives for this decade…”; we are entering our “first phase of a ‘long march’ towards being an emergent country…” like the “new Asian dragons some 30 years ago”; Cameroon would be a “vast construction site in 2012”; “in the past, government action suffered from lack of entrepreneurial approach and the administration from inactivity. We must overcome this inertia which has caused us so much harm”; “corruption is an insidious and dreadful enemy”; there will be a “new impetus” …

On December 31, 2012 he promised victory over the energy “battle,” linking of regional capitals with tarred roads, the “agrarian revolution,” that “in a couple of months or a couple of years our country will be dotted with construction sites, dams, power plants, ports, factories and road,” etc. And the rhetorical questions of December 31, 2013: “Are we different from others that are succeeding in other places? What do we lack? What is the use of some follow-up commissions? Why does government action lack coherence and transparency? Why are there so many administrative bottlenecks…?”

Well, here we are at the end of 2014 or at the beginning of 2015. There is no way of having a structured examination of the message because it did not really have a structure. It is interesting how we believed these utterances even after some 30 unproductive years about vast construction sites, energy battles, road maps, agrarian revolutions, and … “emergence”! As expected, everything has become blurred just a few years after the “emergence” mantra entered our political discourse. That blurring has caused the tinkering of another buzz word: “contingency plan!”

When the regime engaged in a fast and loose game with its actions at the council of ministers’ meeting of December 9, 2014, there was no doubt that it was just a frantic effort to write the script of the end-of-year message. After all, a contingency plan was promised in the December 31, 2013 message, so with a few days left, something needed to be done! And so they engaged in another aimless search for “newness” by adding “contingency plan” to their evolving vocabulary of “development”: ambition, realization, emergence, and now …contingency plan! And who do we have to look over it? Not the government, not a group of hired multidisciplinary experts, but a group of ministers led by the prime minister! If such a small group of ministers can follow-up a “plan” that will get us out of the tunnel, why the large government the regime sustains?

Not to worry because the “plan” is just a plan. The regime is good at indulging in these types of games of misdiagnosis and partial diagnosis that give them outcomes beyond their comprehension, so they always package placebos and tote them around as cures! Nothing can be expected from a government run as several disjointed parts, manned by people who consider themselves “creations” of one man, whom they spend their time worshipping instead of working as a coordinated team to serve the interests of the nation. The regime is surely at its wits’ end!

Our abhorrence of repressive instruments, whether they are the 1962 anti-subversion ordinance or the 2014 anti-terrorism law is based on our distrust of a regime that abused the anti-subversive ordinance to create more problems for society. We remember Bebey Eyidi and others that were jailed as “subversives” for criticizing Ahidjo; we remember Yondo Black and others that were jailed by Biya as “subversives” just for thinking about multiparty politics. We remember how Ahidjo imposed his one-party regime and subverted the reunification agenda in a society cowed by the anti-subversion ordinance. Importantly, we remember how Law no 90/054 on the maintenance of law and order has been abused by administrative authorities to seriously reduce the societal space in which civil society and opposition political parties were supposed to carry out their activities.

The letter of the anti-terrorism law may not be to repress social liberties, but the above self-serving abuses inform us not to trust a regime that has orchestrated those abuses in the past. In an age when humans sentence themselves to death by acting like suicide bombers, the political and social consequences of the death sentence should always be well considered to avoidoutcomes like those that followed the execution in 1995 of leaders of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), including its founder Ken Saro-Wirwa, or the execution of Boko Haram founder Mohamed Yusuf in 2009, to name just those two cases. It is also appropriate to sound the warning again: in applying the anti-terrorism law, we should beware of McCarthyism!

On top of these worries, when an instrument meant for the protection of citizens and their properties is used to breach the rights of citizens to their individuality, the emergence of citizen responsibility is blocked. In the absence of such responsibility, there can be no solidarity. And in the absence of solidarity in society, no force can fight against the monster of modern terrorism. Citizen responsibility is like the responsibility of a family member for the behavior of other family members. From past experience, we fear that the spirit of the anti-terrorism law may endanger citizen responsibility because it seems to be more about the safety of the Biya regime which most Cameroonians no longer want, than about the security of the nation which all Cameroonians want and are anxious to support.

On December 31, 2013 Paul Biya said that the constitutional council would be put in place in “un délai raisonnable” [a reasonable time]. There must be some mystery about the Constitutional Council, not the simple putting together of people from different structures in the manner prescribed up to 19 years ago by the Constitution of January 18, 1996. If the regime agonizes over a simple matter like this, more difficult actions needed to unleash the nation’s potential in manufacturing, in services, and indeed in all sectors will take it a very long time – if ever! This toying with simple actions is indeed a metaphor for the laxity that we keep hearing about from its champion.

The problem of Cameroon today does not seem to be the lack of budgetary allocations because each year, annual budgets are under-spent, and much of the budgeted money is embezzled. The problem is therefore not about cutting costs and charging more taxes or spending scarce resources on the fight against terrorism. The problem is government systems and procedures that do not just work. The problem is the way we have done things during 30-some years which cannot produce different results. The problem is an environment bounded by repressive laws that inhibit the free flow of ideas, obstruct interactions between people with different perspectives, and lock up citizen potentials. The problem cannot really be said to be the absence of “peace” because we cannot convincingly say that our achievements during the last 30 year of “peace” – before Boko Haram et al. – can be described as “positive.”

The problem of our society is roads that are built without a maintenance infrastructure (periodic, routine or rehabilitation) so they become weak and dilapidated with age like we witness all over the country. The problem is that we are unable to appropriately streamline our investment projects along our two seasons of rain and sunshine. The problem is the absence of a transparent and efficient anti-corruption program which is not itself mired in corruption. The problem is that too many decisions in the country are in the hands of too few and too same people. The problem is that those at the summit of the state still have a one-party mindset, and treat those who criticize or differ with state authorities like enemies.
A government must have an overall strategy of service delivery to society. Government departments should be run by people who consider themselves business leaders, capable of continuous innovative and strategic thinking and action. Such strategies and innovations should be discussed, evaluated and fine-tuned in regular ministerial council meetings. Ministerial council meetings are not supposed to be a monologue. The president who constitutionally presides over the meetings should use the forum to draw from the collective expertise of each participant, not for staging the shows that give the impression of a haughty master in a kindergarten classroom.
It is amusing after reading the exchanges between Marafa Hamidou Yaya and Paul Biya as indicated above, to hear him say that our democracy is “working well!” There is obviously a serious disconnect between the people and the regime of Paul Biya. At the end of the day, development is a human product. However many “plans” or much money is thrown into the process, when the people are not in the right mood, only the same results of failure and end-of-year rhetorical questions will keep repeating themselves.

The fact that the outcomes of government actions do not produce desired services for so long a time is an indication that government is stuck in an unproductive routine. Perhaps the some university dons or other experts need to carry out some human-sciences-based analyses on both government and the society it serves to find insights that can be translated to productive initiatives, different from the decorative “plans” that always end up in failure and the enrichment of regime barons through corruption and embezzlement. But such insights may be beyond the comprehension of a gerontocracy. That is precisely why the need for change in Cameroon is so urgent.

Tazoacha Asonganyi

Yaounde.

2, June 2016

The Making of an SCNC Leader and Why It Should Change ⁰

You would be forgiven for understanding the Guardian Post editorial, under the penmanship of Ngah Chris, as an enthusiastic endorsement of Hon. Ayah as the next SCNC Chairman. Yet, the title (“How Justice Ayah Paul was Catapulted to the SCNC Chairmanship”) suggests that the election is a done deal. Welcome to making of an SCNC leader!

Upon further scrutiny, it seems a leader is yet to be elected or “selected” – the exact word used by the Guardian Post. The paper says “a reinvigorated and united SCNC executive is about to be elected”. It will be, we are told, at an upcoming “Elective General Assembly” where Hon. Ayah “will be selected [nice choice of verb] to replace the deceased Chief Ayamba”. The sales pitch for Hon. Ayah describes him as having an “unblemished profile and record… the right candidate” for the “uphill task” of “enormous complexities” at time of “sweeping allegations” of the Biya regime buying leaders over.

The editorial is partly aimed at discrediting everyone else who might threaten Hon. Ayah’s rise to the helm of the SCNC. Without verification, the paper accusations that Nfor Ngala Nfor has tried to “usurp leadership” whereas, as it claims, he is a “government agent”. The other potential troublemaker is Ambassador Fossung, who lives in exile in the USA. He is dismissively portrayed as claiming to be the “legitimate leader” but reduced to providing lame leadership via sharing tracts and videos online.

To its credit, the Guardian Post acknowledges that Hon. Ayah cannot seek to become president of “La Republique” while also fighting to restore the independence of Southern Cameroons. The paper does not go further to add that Hon. Ayah cannot fight a regime on whose Supreme Court bench he plans to take oath to defend. Reportedly “on good authority”, the paper announces Hon. Ayah’s upcoming resignation from PAP (the political party he founded) to satisfy “hawks within the SCNC” (also known as secessionists) who asked for and obtained no less of Prince Ndoki Mukete before that. Stepping down, says the Guardian Post will make Hon. Ayah “an unquestionable candidate for leadership” of the SCNC.

Democracy and Meritocracy Managed by Dictators

Even as they have clamored louder for democracy and meritocracy, Cameroonians – sadly of all political stripes – have grown increasingly complacent, comfortable – even resigned – to dictatorship dressed in this kind of rave review of politicians, steeped in intellectual dishonesty and the manipulation inherent in the spiritual vote cast by the Guardian Post in this editorial. Endorsing Hon. Ayah would make sense for a newspaper like this if at least two candidates were running for the position and the paper would endorse one, providing reasons to readers (also voters) why the paper has done so.

There are no known rival candidates in this case. In fact, we do not even know if Hon. Ayah is even running or is being manipulated into running. This is the old-time, one-party “Ahidjo versus Ahidjo” ballot! We get no explanation why Hon. Ayah may be better suited for attending to the Augean task of unifying fractious factions; of infusing new blood; of building a movement more capable to standing up to the expected attacks from the Biya regime.

We, as a people, will not get competent, qualified leaders of integrity until we set rigorous selection criteria and abide by them in electing – not selecting – our leaders. The process needs to become more transparent, inclusive, competitive and democratic. The health of our democracy is dependent on that. So far, though, from grassroots movements to the Top Job in the land, dictatorship is our DNA. Far too many dictators are in training at the helm of political parties and other grassroots movements like the SCNC for Cameroon to hope to enthrone democracy without a genuine reawakening.

Everyone mentioned for a position in Cameroon is almost always invariably praised as qualified for it. Yet, anyone old enough to breastfeed knows what qualifications would make a good SCNC leader, for example. The movement has a clearly defined goal. It suffers currently from a number of setbacks, not the least of which is lack of seriousness, professionalism and unity of purpose at the helm. These are problems that democracy and meritocracy can fix. However, our movements dodge democracy; shun meritocracy; continue to wallow in some Ahidjo-invented concept known as “regionalism”. Steadfast leaders will not emerge if past betrayals and the likelihood of recurrence are overlooked and if lack of support a movement and a people still qualifies the holder of the curriculum vitae to lead it.

Unlike Rome, not all roads lead to the achievement of the goals set for itself by the SCNC. As shaky leadership to, during and immediately after the Foumban Conference proved, it is easy for the regime in Yaounde and their French masters to take Anglophone leaders for a ride. Southern Cameroonians cannot afford such a misstep in the aftermath of the landmark Banjul Ruling and on the eve of the sun setting on President Biya’s current seven-year term. It may matter more now and in the near future who leads the SCNC than it has ever mattered at any time in our history. And, on that count, it is my opinion that Hon. Ayah is woefully unqualified to lead the SCNC.

Excuses, World Without End…

Apologists for Hon. Ayah, like the Guardian Post, have been scrambling to find excuses for his past and even future shortcomings, in the hope of remodeling him away from his CPDM past (and future?). They have tried to find the right words to shoehorn him into the position of SCNC Chair. Good luck with that!

The Guardian Post says of him that he was “a lone voice in the wilderness” during his two terms as Member of Parliament in Cameroon’s National Assembly. Not true! The SDF spoke louder, but never – even once – benefited from the support of his voice or vote.

The one time Hon. Ayah is credited with voting against the CPDM was when he was not there and never voted. Hon. Ayah was “no show” when parliament voted to give President Biya constitutional authority to lift presidential term limits and, not only to forgive all crimes committed by any president while in office but also to grant them immunity from prosecution once out of office. Hon. Ayah, quite honestly, cannot take credit for what he neither did nor for a vote he never cast. Significantly, he did not find it important enough to be in parliament to express his opposition at a time when hundreds of Cameroonians were being killed by security forces stamping out street protests against what MPs were approving.

Unlike Hon, Ayah, the SDF parliamentary group can take credit for walking out of parliament in protest. The five members of parliament who stayed through the deliberations and then voted against the amendment can take credit for what they did. But, Hon. Ayah…. Please!!! Hon. Ayah knows that by his absence he provided proxy to the CPDM to cast his vote alongside other dictatorship likeminded MPs of the party in power. That vote was in April 2008. Not once since then and in January 2011 when he resigned from the CPDM did he caucus with the SDF or vote along with them. Even as he complaint of “fearing for his life and of family safety” in early 2011, Hon. Ayah was acting emboldened – not frightened – going on to put up one of the most disgraceful showings on a presidential ballot ever!

A Lone Political Wolf

Remarkably, he continued to be Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly – not ever once stepping so much as out of line with the ruling CPDM. Tied to the hip with the CPDM, it is not forlorn to imagine that Hon. Ayah has never been his own man. It is CPDM appointments and decrees of its Leader-President Biya that made him magistrate plenipotentiary. For all the legal heavyweight paint him to be – and he may well be – his legal prowess did not associate with other legal luminaries like Prof. Carlson Anyangwe in defending the Southern Cameroons cause before a national court (such as Bamenda or Buea) or an international tribunal (such as Banjul). As the patient legal dog, Hon. Ayah ultimately got fed one of the fattest Supreme Court bones. We are told he could use that position to advance Southern Cameroons, but for that to be aligned with his past performance how about they allowed us to read just one landmark ruling he handed down as a magistrate of the bench. Just one!

The SCNC needs a leader who connects well with the grassroots. One forumist, Bens Awaah, offered advice where the Guardian Post editorial failed. “When the Southern Zone militants assemble to elect the next SCNC Chairman”, Ben Awaah wrote, “they should elect a young, energetic and visionary man or woman, whose sole interest is to take us to independence. He/she must be a people person, able to build bridges and to bring more people from the region to the cause. Northern Zone people and Mola Njoh Litumbe have always been there, working and waiting”.

Forget many aspects of those basic qualifications! Hon. Ayah’s past suggests that he is neither the leader the SCNC deserves nor the one it has been waiting for. His role as CPDM-appointed, regime-obedient Supreme Court Justice denies him the potential to grow into that role. He is seen as a “lone political wolf”; not without some justification. For example, he announced his bid for the presidency via email and followed it up with phone conversations to media editors, even as most aspirants spoke to monstrous crowds. A Cameroonian blogger once pondered thus about him: “maybe he needs to connect more with the grassroots. The same people who are the silent majority, invisible yet always present”.

While some of the wordings used by the blogger to describe Hon. Ayah cross sacred family lines, they are worth being shared three years after they were first posted. “What is most lacking for the Hon. Ayah Paul,” the blogger wrote “is traction. He says just the right things, has the right ideas, is married to a Francophone from Douala (no fear of secession), and has the academic and professional credentials relevant for the presidency of Cameroon”. The blogpost remains unchallenged to this date by Hon. Ayah.

The Market in Illusions

There is no shame in Cameroon these days of selling illusions to the highest bidder. The Guardian Post has one on sale. It argues that the tough issues opposing “La Republique” to Southern Cameroons can be thrashed out amicably “through internal dialogue without resort to international arbitration, the consequences of which is (sic) difficult to predict for now”. The Guardian Post is also an oracle teller, predicting – we have to presume – less consequences if internal dialogue was adopted! The last time we tried that via street protests in February 2008, a few hundred civilians were shot dead and thousands more, including the now late Lapiro de Mbanga, were thrown in jail. By comparison, the proceedings before the Court in Banjul had a casualty figure of exactly “zero mort”! So, too, did Bakassi!

The Guardian Post informs us that the Biya regime spent taxpayers’ money to sponsor “some blacklegs within the movement to The Gambia and Senegal to pose as leaders” during the Banjul Hearing. If that is true, could the Biya regime be up to the same bunch of tricks with Hon. Ayah?

Admitting – without confessing to the sheer violence that the regime visits on dissident movements – the Guardian Post offers the following advice: allow SCNC members to “hold their assembly without interruption by security forces so that in the end, Yaounde will be able to know who to dialogue with for the interest of ‘national unity and integrity'” Holy smoke! If dialogue is for the interest of “national unity and integrity”, how can that dialogue be at the service of the SCNC and its followers?

By Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap

2, June 2016

Africa and the Economy of Exclusion-Prespectives and New Horizons from The Joy of the Gospel of Pope Francis ⁰

The tragedy that has befallen the African continent for centuries directs attention to the asymmetry evident in Africa’s paradox of plenty – a continent abundant in valuable natural resources but lacking the wherewithal to turn these resources into wealth for the people. Virtually all the resources for the world’s technological development abound on the African continent. Africa harbors 42% of the world’s bauxite, 38% of the world’s uranium, 42% of its gold, 73% of its platinum, 88% of its diamond and 10% of its oil. If Africa is this resource rich, why is it so backward and economically poor?

As one of the privileged Africans who have had the benefit of education and close and sustained interaction with Europe and America, I lay the main blame on my own African people. First, the blame on my African ancestors who, for a little inducement of gunpowder, money, and materials, sold our young and vibrant Africans into slavery and colonialism, and now, for money, wealth, and power, continue to sell the conscience of the continent to the ideas, philosophies, and inducements of the West—to the extent that the whole of the African continent today owes the West and its finance capitalists. It has accumulated debts that are almost thrice the gross domestic wealth of the continent. Africa has reached the present lackluster morass because its leaders have always been blind followers of the West, which is why I have called Africa the “continent of followers.”

At the height of the international slave trade, African leaders readily embraced slavery as a vehicle to wealth and power. When colonialism replaced slavery, African leaders readily pawned their kingdoms, dukedoms, and empires to the colonizing powers. When colonialism became discredited and communism, socialism and capitalism became the dominant competing ideologies in the West, African leaders readily embraced one variant or the other of communism, socialism, or capitalism. Now that communism and socialism have been virtually exterminated by the West, especially by the U.S.A., and have been replaced by free trade, liberalization, deregulation, privatization, globalization, and other capitalist shibboleths, African leaders and governments have followed these as the main path to economic development, political resorgimento, and resurgence.When the West extended the carrot of loan capital to the African leaders and governments, they followed readily, and ended up in the web of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Paris Club, and the London Club of Creditors who now virtually run the African governments, with ready acquiescence by the African leaders. All these movements have left Africa poor and underdeveloped, with a culture of hopelessness, criminality and lack of any meaningful economic vision for the future. What has God to do with all this? A lot, and with good reason.

To begin with, the continent of Africa is notoriously religious. It is difficult or near impossible to find a self-declared atheist in Africa! There is no need to prove the existence of God to an African. The various African cultures are so loaded with religious imagery and language that faith in God is connatural with life. Furthermore, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, have experienced exponential growth in the African continent. At the start of the 20^th century, the number of Catholics in Africa numbered slightly over a million people. As the number of regular churchgoers drops in Europe and the United States, the number of faithful in Africa has risen dramatically, greater here thananywhere else in 50 years. In Africa, between 1978 and 2007, the number of Catholics grew from 55 million to 146 million, according to the Vatican. A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows the continent’s Catholic population at more than 175 million.It is projected that by 2030, there will be over 230 million Catholics in Africa, that is, over 21% of the global Catholic population.

If demography is destiny, then Catholicism stands a great chance to turn the economic tide for Africa, given its ubiquitous influence. A strong reason for Catholicism’s popularity has been its explicit support for the poor. The Catholic Church has tens of thousands of schoolsthat provideeducation and religious instruction. In several African nations, half of the population is Catholic and the church is perhaps the biggest non-government aid agency. Continent-wide, the church runs 55,000 schools and over 40 universities that provide degrees for hundreds of thousands of Africans who would have little chance at an education otherwise. With such an active presence in the public domain, can Catholicism translate charity into a political and economic advocacy for systemic change? Based on this conviction, the Joy of the Gospel of Pope Francis offers new hopes that Africa could not only escape this malaise of economic exclusion and isolation, but also transform itself into a continent of active market partners.

For a religious experience that began as a minority movement in a religiously complex Roman empire, singling out Christianity’s unique approach to the social question is no mean task. To think of the fact that Christians have always had this mind-set of resident aliens, being here and not here at the same time, further compounds the possible responses one might get. A Christian who is not otherworldly might be a contradiction in terms, since Jesus famously said that his kingdom was not of this world (Jn. 18:36). Down the ages, Christians have made heroic sacrifices influenced by this conception of the transitory nature of the Christian vocation, such as the embrace of religious martyrdom. After all, “we have no lasting city in this life, but we look for the one that is eternal” (Hb. 13:14).

Be that as it may, Christians do not live in a separate planet of their own. They share in the social and economic questions of the world in which they find themselves. The Christian involvement in the social question could be encapsulated in one text of Scripture: “For God so loved the world, that He sent his only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes in Him, might not perish, but might have everlasting life,” (Jn. 3:16). The Christian is involved in this world, not with a slavish attitude to the world, not by living a life that worships the worldly systems that could easily become totalitarian, as we have seen in Nazism, Communism, unbridled Capitalism, Apartheid, et cetera. The Christian is bothered by the social question because the Christian loves this world and knows that this world is so precious to God to have necessitated God sending God’s only Son to save the world from the path of self-destruction, at the root of which is human greed and the idolatry of the human ego. To love God as Christians is to love the world that God loves, and to share in God’s ongoing salvific work in the world.

In other words, the theological basis for Catholic Social Teaching is God’s revelation in Christ Jesus. The early Christians captured this all-encompassing experience with the brief faith profession, Jesus is Lord – Dominus Iesus, (2 Cor. 4:5). Catholic social teaching is therefore Christological and Ecclesiological: it is Christological because it is based on the conviction that God has offered a new pattern for right living, right social relationships in Jesus of Nazareth, who is Lord. It is Ecclesiological because it is convinced that to say Jesus is Lord is to say it with the community that says it, the Church. I cannot say Jesus is Lordin a kind of spiritual nirvana. It is always with the faith of others, past and present, a being with every tongue that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11). The Second Vatican Council, when talking about the Church’s relationship to the world, remarks that the Church is called to be a leaven and, as it were, the soul of human society in its renewal by Christ (Gaudium et Spes, 40).

This often demands an ambivalent attitude on the part of the Church, in the sense that social action is understood not just in the context of this-worldly amelioration, but in the context of salvation, of directing men and women to their ultimate end, in Christ and Our God. Paradoxically, the Christian lives out this commitment to social action with the ultimate certitude of being a resident alien, as described in the great 2^nd Century Letter to Diognetus. Christian social action is therefore inherently paradoxical. The inability to recognize this paradoxical element of Christian involvement has often led to charges of politicization being levied against the Church, by either the so-called political left or right, especially in the Western world. How did Catholicism construct a social doctrine on these Christological, Ecclesiological and Eschatological foundation, recently enriched by the Joy of the Gospel of Pope Francis?

To be Continued

2, June 2016

Laquintinie Hospital Saga: Where is our collective conscience ⁰

The Laquintinie Hospital incident has not only shocked the entire nation, it has indeed thrown up many questions about healthcare in a country where elections focus more on individuals rather than on issues and policies that can enable the country address those issues that have blighted the people’s lives. The pictures of a woman slaughtering her own sister within a certified medical facility just to save her sister’s twins is an indication that the country’s healthcare system is suffering from serious issues. This is a job that was supposed to have been done by health officials of that medical facility, but since money has replaced humanity in our own country, lots of people, including medical doctors, have simply walked away from the theory of being there for their fellow citizens for a philosophy wherein money is the be-all-and-end-all of life. There is nothing else that can really beat this gross display of inhumanity by Laquintinie hospital officials. And this case is simply the tip of the iceberg.

Many Cameroonians have lost their lives just because of inhumanity and carelessness in our hospitals. When you visit some of our hospitals, you end up shedding tears when you see how fellow citizens are treated. Not only are these hospitals not equipped, they have, at best, been reduced to consultation clinics and, at worst, funeral homes. Our hospitals are now places where people pay their transport fare to spend their last days. The type of things that happen in Cameroon’s hospitals could kill a patient even before they get to meet the medical doctors who themselves have become businesspeople. Nowhere else in the world, except in Cameroon, is someone charged for being on the premises of a medical facility. In most hospitals around the country, access– not to the medical officials – is paid. Laquintinie is very much notorious for that. This underscores the point that even emergencies are not considered as emergencies, if the patient or their loved ones accompanying them do not have money to pay for access. This even gets worse if you have to meet with the medical doctors themselves. If you do not have money to deposit, then yours is the kingdom of pain and death. Nobody will attend to you and many hardworking, but unfortunate Cameroonians, have lost their lives just because of this type of mentality that is very much countenanced by a government that is more elitist than populist.

Of course, the Laquintinie incident seems to be a wake-up call. Even members of the ruling party are calling for disciplinary measures against officials of the hospital. But it is not the hospital that is the problem. Laquintinie is just a symptom of a disease that has affected the entire nation. Moral decadence and inhumanity have become the cancers of our country. This is a country where crooks are hailed as strong men, thieves are revered and con-men have become models to our children. Punishing Laquintinie hospital officials will be a welcome measure, but such a measure will not address the issues facing the entire nation. You do not eradicate a disease by striking at the branches instead of the roots. Cameroon is gone down the drain. Morals have disappeared from the country. The community spirit and strong sense of citizenship that characterized the country in the 70s, 80s and, maybe, the 90s have simply migrated to other parts of the world. Go to most schools in the country, and you will be shocked beyond expression at the attitude of the teachers. If levels of healthcare and education have taken a nosedive in Cameroon, it is surely not in error or by accident. It is the way the government has run the system.

The notion of Garbage in, Garbage out (GIGO) also applies to human systems and not only to the computer. Take a look at the way teachers are recruited and you understand why standards of education have suffered over the last two decades. Most Cameroonian teachers are simply a bunch of people who are fleeing unemployment. They are not driven by the passion we saw in our teachers in the 60s and 70s. Teachers were the makers of men and they exuded knowledge wherever they were. Compare them to what we have today, and your mind will bleed for a country that is already on life support. For the medical field, the story is grimmer. Many of our medical doctors have simply transformed the Oath of Hippocrates into an Oath of Hypocrisy. For sure, these doctors were pushed into our faculties of medicine by some invisible hand and even when they cannot perform properly in school, they cannot be dismissed. That should explain why we have lots of butchers in our hospitals wielding long, sharp knives. They are always prepared to operate or to exaggerate the extent of the patient’s illness just to make a quick buck. Cameroon needs a new vision, a vision that will place the citizens of that country at the heart of every action.

One would think that after the colourful celebrations of the International Women’s Day in Cameroon, Cameroonian women will be treated like queens every day. But the nasty and unpardonable incident that took place at the Laquintinie Hospital in Douala underscores that the nation and its leaders are simply paying lip-service to the whole notion of women and their rights. Worse of all, is the public’s indifference; indifference that has pushed me into questioning the whole notion of a collective conscience in our country. While the hospital officials have gone mute since the incident took place, government officials, for their part, have been struggling to provide explanations, some of which have been at best annoying. How could a country endowed with some of the finest human resources on the continent be going through this for so many decades. Why should we be losing our women at a time when technology has simplified delivery across the world? And where is our collective conscience. Our silence in the face of this disaster is tantamount to acquiescence. While we may have been reduced to sorry spectators of events in our country, let’s not forget that our silence is being considered as approval of what is happening to some of us. If this can happen to Mr. A, then it will one day happen to Mr. B. This has nothing to do with tribe or region. Our leaders should be held accountable and this is one moment that can enable our leaders understand that we cannot always be taken for a ride. Silence cannot always be golden, not when human life is involved.

2, June 2016

Medical prescription for FECAFOOT Ulcer ⁰

Cameroon’s Minister for Sports and Physical Education, Pierre Ismael Bidoung Mkpatt, has insinuated that the Chamber of Conciliation and Arbitration of the National Olympic and Sports Committee is incompetent to determine the validity of elections at the Cameroon Football Federation, FECAFOOT. The Minister’s stand on the overdue electoral bickering at FECAFOOT was made known yesterday in Yaounde and broadcast nation-wide following fears that the perennial contesting faction of the federation led by former Vice President, John Begheni Nde was bracing up to take over management of FECAFOOT affairs less than 72 hours after the Chamber of Conciliation and Arbitration of the National Olympic and Sports Committee had ruled that the recent elections that brought current President Tombi Aroko Sidiki to power was null and void. Can we therefore say the curtains have ultimately been drawn on the longstanding melodrama at FECAFOOT? We of Cameroon Concord News Group say NO! Needless taking you back to how we got to where we are now.

Rather, let us take the cue from when Tombi Aroko was sworn in as FECAFOOT boss. As celebrations went underway at the FECAFOOT headquarters in the Tsinga neighbourhood in Yaounde, the brain trust of the distraught faction was meticulously putting together files to challenge the decision to uphold the validity of the elections. One file bungled, while the other one convinced the Conciliation and Arbitration Committee of the National Olympic and Sports Committee to nullify the deliberations of the last FECAFOOT General Assembly, by implication, declaring the elections null and void.

FECAFOOT had 21 days to appeal the decision. But three days into the appeal opening, Minister Bidoung Mkpatt, the same one who had been sacked from Government in 2004 in the heat of the stand off between FIFA and FECAFOOT over the Indomitable Lions single outfit, undertook to hoodwink a carefully chosen group of officials to come up with what is currently tearing apart the football family in the country. Can someone explain to us why Abdourhaman Amadou and Co. who seem to be a particularly clever lot could not be cowed into submission by a conglomerate of learned men of the law? Without being a football astrologer, Cameroon Intelligence Report can safely conclude that Abdourhaman and Co. are already whistling foul and are certainly taking the matter to the Court of Arbitration of Sport in Lausanne who, before any other thing else, will raise an objection as to what we will be reminded of as being government intervention in football management in Cameroon.

For a man whom President Biya, against all odds, decided to offer some political rehabilitation, it is regrettable that Minister Bidoung Mkpatt should consciously create more problems for an octogenarian leader suffering from insomnia. Which way out? It is a matter of common sense that in such a long drawn out problem, a lot has been wasted and destroyed in material, financial, ego-tripping considerations. For one thing, the Government will not allow itself to be dragged endlessly in the mud with impunity.

The incumbent is certainly unwilling to let go the golden fleece after coming so close yet so far. And Sheik Abdourhaman Amadou who has demonstrated with outstanding finesse how well to read and interpret mere texts will for nothing at all slant from being The Cameroonian of the Year to a toddler. However, the complicated polynomial which otherwise should necessitate mastery of the Binomial theorem takes just knowledge of a simple linear equation to resolve: Summon Tombi and Abdourhamann to an eyeball-to-eyeball closed door discussion and ask them to grant a press conference after the secret meeting during which they will announce the joint decision and subsequently jointly supervise its implementation. This is our medical prescription to cure the cancerous ulcer lethally gnawing away at the FECAFOOT substrate.