By Charlie Ndi Chia
An entry in my father’s diary 70 years ago reads inter-alia:
“Son Charles Ndi – Born July 4th at 12 noon in 1956…
“Charles begins to talk on March 27th 1958…”
Under normal circumstances there would have been a feel-good expectancy in the air and a cheery atmosphere in the family as this day approaches. This won’t be the case and I can only trust that you’d understand. The good times are gone with the wind. But if nothing happens on July 4, (the earth date of yours truly beyond good wishes for having scored the biblical three scores and ten, it would have nothing to do with the best of intentions of the teeming number of my true friends and family. It would not be that we being modest or simply tired of celebrating. It would rather be that Cameroon and Cameroonians are, ironically, growing back to childhood. It would be that political ancestors, “endowed” with the proverbial last kicks of a dying horse are advertently ruling the roost; they are determined to keep the corpse walking with the rest of weary Cameroonians to the grave at any cost.
A day like my July 4, should serve the relieving purpose of momentarily lifting the spirit of a traumatized people and system. Hellas! I was born five years before Reunification happened on October 1, 1961 whereby the Southern Cameroons got into a political tango with La Republique du Cameroun to become the Federal Republic of Cameroon. In effect, I was born in an era that signposted the toddler steps of Cameroon’s independence project. Six years after my birth, a certain Paul Biya was named to be Charge de Mission at the Presidency of the Republic. He has ever since then stayed glued to the top-most echelons of power in Cameroon and where from all indications the only way he’ll drop from power would be the same way an overripe fruit falls from an orange tree.
As primary school pupils we hailed the “Hello Joes” and sang “God save the Queen.”
Time was, when our birthdays, Christmas and Independence Day were celebrated in sober reflections and funfair. If anybody who is old enough could cast his or her mind back to the 70 years under review and could recall the promise independence held for us as we held those plastic cups for free milk while green, red and yellow flags fluttered, one would see a nation that has been running on the spot. In my case, 70 years after I was born, and with the enormous resources God endowed us with, we are still puffing and huffing about basic things like water, power, good roads, health facilities, good learning environment and food.
Most Cameroonian kids of today are growing up, familiar only with the grab-and-grab-quickly syndrome, drug pushing and addiction and scamming on a mind-boggling scale. Something called “change” slipped into our political lexicon rather too loosely and early in the day. May 20 was “wheeled-in” a decade later in 1972, with its bayonet of controversies and headaches. May 20 left Cameroonians with grave national head-scratching. Plus, bigger change for the worse came after Ahidjo hand-picked Paul Biya as his successor at the Presidency and the latter proceeded to spew slogans, promises and vile propaganda. We were fed with slogans such as “Rigour and Moralization,” “Liberalization,” Decentralization and other slapstick comical shows. But it turned out that change only effectively manifested in those civil servants who ruined our nation; they got richer, more ostentatious, more audacious and more shameless.
Cameroon and her youths that we were at the time, enjoyed better standards of education before Biya came along in November, 1982. You could go to any general hospital and get cheap but quality treatment. When you opened a tap, water gushed out, not disgusting sludge or hot air. Ahidjo never sang Lom-Pangar, Menkim, Mmem’velle, Nightingale like a popinjay but lights never went off unless you threw a switch. Life was good and we were really looking forward to a better life than Biya was willing to give us. Still, we gave him our support. If only we knew that our new leaders would sooner become our nemesis and bandits stealing us blind, we would probably have said, “hey, wait a minute, Mr. Rigour and Moralization!”
It is common for those reaping from the prevailing rot to claim that we are too impatient with the government. They would remind us of how many years it took America to get to where they are today. Vintage argument for those eager to make excuses for avoidable irresponsibility and brigandage by any other name. The assumption always is that critics of the infamy in the land are comparing Cameroon with America and the rest of the developed world. Hell no! We are only comparing our lamentable circumstances with what we lived under Ahidjo. Seventy years? In a country where a dripping tap or blinking bulb is celebrated with wine and beer? Surely, mine is a wasted generation whereby one must virtually crawl on all fours while hailing a sit-tight fossil for something as basic supper or a dose of malaria treatment. At 70 years, I can only pray God Almighty for a peaceful retirement from the routine vicissitudes of life, not power, authority and dominion over others. What I really dream of and hope for at this new age is a leader capable of giving us something of an upgraded taste of the Cameroon of the sixties; an improvement to what Ahidjo handed over to Paul Biya on November 6, 1982.
Hey! Show me one Biya appointee today who has the moral stature, integrity, confidence, honesty, brilliance and patriotism of the Fonchas, Munas, Endeleys, Mbiles, Juas or Kales.
The point is that many Cameroonians who say our glory is in the past are not just being cynical. They have every reason to say so. Cameroon has been brought to its knees by Paul Biya. The problems we face today are not the type of post-independence problems we had. Our problem today is essentially that of complete collapse of leadership.
No matter what you may accuse our independent era politicians of, you cannot fault them on the grounds of integrity. They had a difficult national question to wrestle with, but they had personal pride and conducted themselves as men of integrity. For all the crises that led to the uprising in the English speaking Regions of the country, you cannot say that part of it was Endeley of Foncha converting the people’s collective resources to their personal use or that Mbile as Secretary of State for Public Works changed the FCFA 2million allocations of his ministry to cash and headed to Switzerland to bank.
How shameful it would have been to any of these men that the hospitals in West Cameroon didn’t have syringes while they gallivanted abroad in Geneva and elsewhere ostensibly for medical check-up! Show me anybody who became rich merely on account of being the children of West Cameroon Ministers or being close to them!
Make no mistake about it. High ethical conduct cut across the civil service during Ahidjo’s reign. But go to the ministries today and you’ll observe conducts that you could never contemplate in West Cameroon and even under Ahidjo, let alone display.
We have come a long way to this cesspool where we no longer have any sense of smell. Today, thieves strut across the land with bells on, threatening decent citizens with “moulinex capabilities,” arrests and detentions. Oh yes, many of these people in high public offices are no better than common thieves. Worse still, they rationalize their misconduct or procure sycophants in media houses to rationalize it for them.
At 70, I can safely state that I have seen most of it. I can state without fear of contradiction that what Cameroon urgently needs today is not the present futile process of continuously patching a bad situation. We need a total rethink of the present arrangement precipitated by political Lilliputians and scammers desirous of little satraps and private haciendas they could preside over.
Anybody who elects not to know that time is running out on us, if we must make it as a nation, is living in a fool’s paradise. The prevailing concept of what politics is all about can only continue to ridicule us in the eyes of the world.
The present pretense must stop. Men and women of character and stature, especially those in the three scores and ten league like myself must now stand up to these clowns and rescue this nation. Let us stop pretending. We do not have many democrats or leaders of character up there…Most of who we have are rascals who have discovered that we, the people of Cameroon are careless about our common wealth and therefore are helping themselves while we engage in irrelevant debates like who should be appointed vice president.
The debate now ought to be how we can retrieve our nation from the rascals that have overrun our nation. Let the next 70 years not catch us holding this same sterile debate. That will be tragic!
Life is…
During the 70 years of my life, they printed hundreds of thousands of photographs, uncountable speeches and promises, millions of handshakes and smiled like big girls for television cameras, but not enough outcome. They lied, cheated and stole more money than they invested on community projects.
The shit has hit the fan, and we all know it!
