Communication Council suspends radio station

Issues controversial warnings

By Amindeh Blaise Atabong in Yaounde

The National Communication Council, NCC, has dropped its regulatory sledge hammer on a Yaounde-based radio station, putting it off the air for a month. Royal FM’s one-month broadcast suspension was accompanied by the suspension of four of the radio station’s journalists for three months each, on grounds of gross unprofessionalism.

The recent sanction was approved by the interim NCC president, Peter Essoka after deliberations which took place on August 14 in Yaounde during the council’s 7th ordinary session.

For the other NCC decisions, Sky One Radio was issued a stern warning relating to their disrespect for journalism ethics and deontology. Going by the decision, one of the radio station’s programme loosely translated as “Remaking reality in the upper chambers of listeners’ parliament”, was at the centre of the warning. In addition, a two-month suspension was meted out to a renowned Sky One Radio broadcaster, Lazare Zambo for failing to value social communication principles in the discharge of his functions. 

Again, several final warning notices were dished out to some media organs: Canal 2 International, Vision 4, Amplitude FM, Sweet FM, Radio des Artistes, and RadioTiemeni Siantou. The audio-visual and radio stations were faulted with persistent violation of Articles 24, 26, 27, 42, and 43 of the December 29, 2006 law relating to advertising of medical institutions, drugs, and their promoters in the media.

However, NCC has on several occasions issued warnings to stations like Canal 2 International with no definite action being taken with respect to advertising drugs.

A council member who opted not to be named told this reporter that the NCC has no legal standing to sanction media organs in relation to drug advertisement. According to the council member, it was needless for the council to have ridiculed itself by issuing another ‘useless’ warning to the stations.

Meanwhile, The Guardian Post gathered that after the sanction, some NCC council members have embarked on a mission to Bafoussam and Bamenda in a bid to sensitise media practitioners on responsible journalism practice. The sensitization seminar is billed for today in Bafoussam while a similar seminar will follow suit in Bamenda.

Several media observers and analysts hold that a similar sensitization mission that was last year staged by the late NCC president, Bishop Befe Ateba to Buea and Douala yielded little or no fruits.

Commission seizes plastic-packaged goods

From Peter Adi Fonte in Kumbo

The divisional coordination committee charged with the control of the use of non biodegradable plastic bags in Kumbo has confiscated 319 loaves of bread wrapped in plastics and 74 sachets of gin.

The commission members who were led by the divisional officer for Kumbo Central sub division, Nkamto Francis Ndifon also constituted of the Bui divisional delegate of environment, nature protection and sustainable development, Mfonfu Emmanuel; the chief of bureau MINEPDED, Nguefack Gaeten and a representative of the Bui divisional delegate of commerce.

The commission members were operating in conformity with a joint ministerial order No. 004/MINEPDED/MIN Commerce of 24^th October 2012 on the fight against non biodegradable plastics in Cameroon.

The control team carried out controls through Kumbo Squares, Bamkika-ai, Mbveh and back to Tobin, seizing loaves of bread of assorted sizes wrapped in non biodegradable bags. The team also visited The People’s Choice Bakery in Mbveh where workers were busy wrapping bread in plastics. The loaves of bread and plastics were seized.

At the end of the exercise, the divisional delegate of MINEPDED suggested to the members of the commission that seized products be given to the inmates of the Kumbo main prison which was heeded. The seized products were then taken to the inmates while all the plastics were removed and destroyed.

TRUTH THAT MUST BE SPOKEN

Free advocate for land-grabbers

By Asong Ndifor

When thieves with skimpy minds are caught red-handed, they most often still deny their guilt. In court they continue to plead innocent until “proven without reasonable doubt” , to used the cliché coined by members of “the learned profession” , even if some are not so schooled.

But “thieves” come in various sizes, diminutions and definitions. Their operative word is “lie”. We all do tell lies at one point or the other. We are humanly not infallible. But when a liar is exposed, he should own up to his misdeeds.

As a press officer in a consulting public relations firm for a major oil firm in Lagos some years back, there was an oil spill in one of our client’s drilling wells near a village. We were flown in a small helicopter big enough to carry only five of us to the site. The decision after assessing the damage by four of the experts was to keep the accident hidden from the probing Nigerian press. I asked what would happen if an inquisitive reporter was on the beat for the story?  One of the experts quickly said that: “That is why you are in the delegation Asong”. My recommendation was that we should tell the truth and apologize if the cat was let out of the bag.

 Back to Lagos, the media plan to tell the truth was prepared and kept in the locker. A few days after, a reporter called to get confirmation that there had been an oil spill into the sea at Warri.The reply was yes, “we are having a press conference in the afternoon in time for the newspapers to go to press the next day with the true story”.

At the press conference, we explained the amenities the company had provided in the affected community such as pipe borne water, clinic and school. Indeed, the community was an integral part of the company and we apologised for the accident which was beyond our control. The company was forgiven and it maintained its good corporate image in the community.

But in a system where the argument of force and blackmail reign supreme and where thin gods want to burry the truth, they widen the credibility gap of the entire government. Those involved in the Fako land scandal whose names need not to be mentioned so as to give them some iota of importance would have admitted their errors, apologised and relinquished the land to their rightful owners. But they continue to grope from one blunder to the other floundering for public support.

A governor denies in a newspaper interview that he owns no land impounded from the community. The next day, another newspaper comes out with a graphic site plan of an acre of land belonging to a man who had sworn he was not also eating the pudding of rotten tomatoes.

Then some small village chiefs on creeping knees in front of their administrative “patrons” muster the effrontery to issue a statement saying “newspapers have been bought over to drag the names of eminent personalities into mud.”

In that defence of the indefensible, bleeding with ignorance in the role of the fourth estate of the realm, the “auxiliaries of the administration” were instead doing more harm to their “imminent personalities”. They make themselves accomplices if the various commissions investigating the land scam find their “eminences” guilty. But for now they only stand accused of “grabbing land”.

CONAC and other anti-graft bodies will conclude their work and the people, to whom power is derived will know on what side of the law, the chiefs accusing newspapers of being bought over without saying who is buying; stand. But if I were to be a devil’s advocate for any of those implicated in the land scam, free of any legal fees, I would have advised them to return the land and apologise before the sword of justice strikes with all its excruciating pains.

POSTSCRIPT: “The fight against corruption will continue to be intensified, without discrimination and without regard for the social status or political leaning of those incriminated”- Paul Biya.

EDITORIAL

Finke’s CAN qualifiers list:New wine rebranded in old bottles

Every patriotic Cameroonian was ashamed and flabbergasted with the performance of the nation’s soccer team at the World Cup tournament in Brazil. So shocking were the events before, during and after the competition that the head of state, President Paul Biya did not hesitate to instruct Prime Minister Philemon Yang to institute a commission to investigate the causes of the disgraceful performances in the field and off the pitch.

To illustrate the urgency and soothe the rage that was flaring in many Cameroonians, the president gave the prime minister just one month to do the job and submit a report.

Several weeks since the report has been lying on the presidential desk, nothing has so far been heard about the report, except for a leakage of parts of the recommendation. Would the report whose commission cost the tax payers a whooping amount be of any use after the FECAFOOT elections; expected in a matter of weeks?  Wasn’t the report intended to know the fraudulent and obstinate officials involved in the show of shame in Brazil before the FECAFOOT elections take place?  Or was the commission just one of those subterfuges intended to cover up sacred cows of the system especially as there is a local saying that “the best way to cover such atrocities in Cameroon is to set up a commission of enquiry whose findings are never made public”.

Such cynics may not be entirely wrong. When the finance department of the national assembly went ablaze, a commission was put in place and till date the public has never been told what the commission found out. It was the same scenario when explosives rocked the military headquarters. The number of commissions publicly set up whose outcomes have remained secret are legion.

As for that concerning the military headquarters’ commission, excuses may be given that it involved classified issues, but that of football ought not to be swathed in confidentiality. It should be public knowledge just as the game itself is never played in hiding.

To keep the Yang report secret will only amount to disservice to the game Cameroonians so much love, which remains the only event that genuinely unites Cameroonians. In the nineties, it gave the nation an envious international image its combined diplomatic missions could not. And why does the Yaounde authorities not build on that by exposing those dragging that reputation into reeking sludge?

At least, the Yang’s report would have named names to be sanctioned. The scandals did not happen in sacred, they were overt. Cameroonians will decide individually where to attribute blames and would even extend their indictment to the presidency if the report is not released before expected FECAFOOT election.  Publishing the result before that crucial election will guide members of the electoral college to give a sanction vote to those implicated and might want to run for office into the management of Cameroon football.

Whether the report is released or allowed to rot at the presidency may not make much of a difference to identify where to point accusing fingers. The captain of the team, Samuel Eto’o Fils should naturally take much of the reprimand being the leader. He failed to set an emulative example of patriotism and nationalism by refusing to play in the farewell match. It is alleged that he made-up an injury in order to not to be indicted for rejecting the national flag which they were going to defend in Brazil.

He was on the reserve bench and could have instructed his colleagues to take the flag. What stopped him from springing up as leader to collect the national colours when he observed that his team mates were streaming into the dressing room as the prime minister went to hand the flag to them?  Coach Finke, a German, who received the flag, has publicly found Eto’o so blameworthy to the point of being quoted as saying “only a fool will select” the captain again.

A vox pop The Guardian Post conducted among Cameroonian football fans also attributed some of the inequities of Brazil 2014 to Finke. He did not as much as accompany the team back to Yaounde after the Lions were knocked out. He should have learnt not to throw stones from a glass house where he lives.

Whether the Yang report remains classified or not, articulate Cameroonian football fans will continue to grieve from the shame Alexander Song inflicted on the national image by punching a player off the ball. The injury brought by Assou Ekoto for giving a fellow team mate a head butt remains an open wound on the national psyche. The refusal to board a plane at the last minute for Brazil because of bonuses adds salt to the injury and of course coming the last among the 32 teams that took part in the tournament was just too much for Cameroonians to swallow.

Joseph Owona who as chairman of the normalisation committee did not complete his assignment as scheduled so as to extend it to the World Cup obviously takes some of the knocks. He has been given all the time he needed, and more to “normslise” the management of Cameroon football. The Guardian Post wishes him good luck and the outcome of his assignment will be judged by the comportment of roaring Lions who should prove that they are indomitable as qualifiers for the 2015 African Nations Cup tournament begin on September 6, 2014.

But we doubt its indomitability if we continue to rebrand new wine in old bottles just made new by shining labels. All that just because Cameroonians were not told what is in Yang’s report and the sanction the president meted out to defaulters. We think the president can still release the report and sanction culprits of the Brazil scandals before the FECAFOOT elections take place in the coming weeks. 

Frightened by possible S. Cameroons independence:

Gov’t refuses visa to UNPO delegation 

By Amindeh Blaise Atabong in Yaounde

Chief Ayamba

Apparently frightened by the latest developments and the decisive direction the Southern Cameroons independence struggle is taking, the Yaounde authorities have instructed the Cameroon embassy in Brussels, Belgium not to issue visas to members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation, UNPO, who were expected in Cameroon in the days ahead.

A highly-placed source within the SCNC who announced the development to The Guardian Post has qualified government’s decision to refuse giving visas to the UNPO delegation members as shameful. Said he: “ I thought that for once, the Biya regime would pretend that there is freedom of gathering in Cameroon by allowing the UNPO delegation entry in Cameroon…If they did this, it would have gone a long way to reverse the international opprobrium which Cameroon has suffered  since the introduction of multi-party politics’’.  

It should be recalled that the UNPO delegation was not only coming to Cameroon to condole with the family of the late SCNC national chairman, Chief Ayamba Ette Otun but also to get first hand information on the problems being faced by Anglophones in Cameroon.

The delegation’s first stop-over was to be in Mamfe where they were expected to condole with Chief Ayamba’s family before undertaking a tour of the Southern Cameroons territory to live the true picture of Anglophones. They had also planned to get testimonies from aggrieved Anglophones which would have been used by the UNPO to strengthen the Southern Cameroons’ independence struggle. SCNC activists were already mobilizing to give the UNPO delegation a red carpet reception.

But while SCNC activists are crest-fallen that  the UNPO delegation would no longer make the Cameroon trip,  a sympathizer of the movement, Yembe Martin rather sees it as a blessing in disguised: ‘’It is a good thing for the SCNC that the Biya regime has blocked the UNPO delegation from getting to Mamfe to condole with Chief Ayamba’s family and then later make a tour of the Southern Cameroons’ territory...the Yaounde authorities have not only inadvertently given the SCNC publicity but have reported themselves to international bodies  as being a truly repressive regime…’’

It should be recalled that when news of Chief Ayamba’s death was made public, the UNPO head office in Brussels issued a condolence statement which read in part: ‘’…the UNPO presidency, secretariat and members would like to express their sincerest condolences to Chief Ayamba’s family, friends and the people of Southern Cameroons…Mr. Ayamba Ette Otun dedicated his life to protecting and promoting the rights of the Southern Cameroons. His activism for the right to self-determination has been relentless…he had vowed never to shave his beard until the Southern Cameroons is completely free. With the passing away of Chief Ayamba, the Southern Cameroons movement for self-determination has lost a great leader. The UNPO stands with the people of Southern Cameroons in this difficult moment and hopes the legacy of Chief Ayamba may inspire many…’’

About the UNPO

The UNPO, it must be said, is a movement whose main objective centres on drawing attention to issues affecting marginalized groups at the United Nations. For its over twenty years of existence,  the UNPO’s  key action plan has been  to ensure that it members are able to effectively access and take part in the discussions of international bodies mandated to protect their rights.

Membership to the UNPO where the Southern Cameroons is also a member is open to all nations and peoples who are not adequately represented at the United Nations. Prospective members have to be a nation or a people, possessing the will to be identified as a nation or a people and are bound to a common heritage which can be historical, racial, ethnic, religious or territorial. The prospective participant can also be a section of a people, constituting a minority, living on a portion of its ancestral territory, incorporated into a state other than a state represented by that people.

UN appoints Cameroonian teenager ambassador

From Michael Ndi in Bamenda

A 19-year old Cameroonian girl, Bongbenuoh Fabiola, has featured amongst the six girls appointed by the United Nations to fight for the rights of the girl child. Of the six appointees selected across the world, only two came from Africa -  Bongbenuoh Fabiola who hails from Bamesing village in Ngoketunjia division, North West region, Cameroon and another Kenyan girl.

Bongbenuoh Fabiola, 19, Cameroonian

Bongbenuoh Fabiola rose to the limelight when, as a secondary school student, she became a member of Plan-Cameroon International’s Youth Empowerment through technology, arts and media project; producing youth programmes to raise awareness around gender issues and helping girls’ access their rights.

In 2011, she participated in the 55^th UN session of the commission on the status of women and was inspired to create an association dubbed; Girls On the Front (G-Front) which aims at ensuring that girls have more opportunities to promote and defend their rights locally, nationally and internationally.

On a one-on-one with this reporter, Fabiola said the six of them appointed by the UN are expected to campaign against violence against women and empower women principally through education of the girl-child. She said their appointment came on the heels of the United Nations creating the international day of the girl-child.

Throwing light on the advantages that follow their appointments, Fabiola intimated that they will attend all United Nations summits concerning girl-child education and we have their projects on girl-child education and campaign against violence against women sponsored”. She stressed that after a Pakistan girl, Malala, was shot by the Taliban government in 2013 for campaigning for girl-child education and discouraging forceful early marriages for girls, the UN was spurred to start identifying young girl activists across the world.

Bongbenuoh Fabiola had her Advanced Level (3 papers) from CCAST Bambili this year. In October 2013, she was interviewed by CNN for close to 5 minutes on her activities in Cameroon.

Ebola virus fear:

Pork, bush-meat vendors go off business

From Mua Patrick Mughe in Buea

Business persons specialised in the commercialisation of pork and bush-meat have virtually disappeared from the main streets of Buea and its environs, barely days after rumour went wild that a suspected case of an Ebola infected patient was discovered in Nguti, South West region.

Though the South West regional delegate of public health, Victor Mbome Njie recently over the state-run CRTV Buea, refuted claims of the existence of the deadly virus in the region, many inhabitants, apparently for fear of contracting the virus have shunned from consuming pork and other items identified as major carriers  of the virus.

Popular sales point of pork such as Check Point Molyko, Malingo Street the Muea main market, have been abandoned by the owners. Also, bush meat was completely absent from a renown spot at the Bokwaongo neighborhood last week. When contacted, the vendor said her suppliers had failed to show-up with the usual consignment but added the failure could however not be unconnected with the much talked Ebola Virus.

Ngong Ivo, a resident of Muea told this reporter that he could not eat pork any longer. “I hear one can easily be infected with Ebola by consuming pork. And though the price for a plate of pork has drop from 600FCFA to 300FCFA, many people are still reluctant to consume it”, Ngong noted. 

In a related development, the consumption of ‘bitter kola’ has reportedly increased.

Elvis, 14, a bitter cola hawker, told The Guardian Post that he has been making brisk business from the sale of ‘bitter kola’ ever since rumour of the existence of Ebola started circulating in the region.

By the time of compelling this report, this reporter received a message from a friend that stated: “Ebola virus has hit Bamenda and Mamfe. Avoid eating pork, monkey, chimpanzee and bat. Please before bathing, put salt in warm water and bath with it, and then drink some. Rub your body with Vaseline and avoid greeting people with your hand. Spread the message”. Though it is still unconfirmed, many seemed not to have taken such messages lightly.

Apparently jokingly, a colleague in Yaounde at the close of the week forwarded a humoristic message saying “God is great! Ebola may not be good but it’s nice that it came so that men like me can be safe from the hands of ladies concerning meat palava. I beg God to extent it to fish, fowl, canda and other pepperish things”

While debunking allegations of the virus, South West regional delegate public health   insisted that stringent measures have been taken to prevent the spread of Ebola into the region. Border health posts he said have been officially created in Limbe, Tiko and Idenau with health workers posted to report to the district on a daily basis.

Kumba mayors urged to join city council’s development efforts

From Njingang Godwin in Kumba

The mayors of Kumba I, II and III sub-divisional councils have been exhorted to work in synergy with the Kumba city council, KCC in order to foster the development of the city.

The call for a renewed multilateral synergy was made by the government delegate to the Kumba city council, Ngoh Victor Nkelle during the second quarter KCC session that took place at the council’s conference hall, Thursday July 24.

Ngoh Nkelle Victor: KCC Gov't Delegate

Thursday’s session was devoted to the examination and adoption of special budgets for the council and to cross-examine the report of the Kumba and Fiango market inquiry committee.

Speaking during the session, the government delegate expressed satisfaction and noted that the session was very timely since time was accorded for KCCand the sub-divisional councils to concert and come up with the common ideals for the development of the municipality.

Ngoh Nkelle equally begged the grand councillors to put in indefatigable efforts for the collective interest of the municipality. He intimated that with the participatory approach, more will not only be done, but will be done very well.

The senior divisional officer for Meme, Koulbout Aman David, who supervised the session for his part, lauded the initiative put in place by the government delegate and his staff to collect revenue and prayed that the revenue collected be ploughed back into developing the municipality.

The visibly satisfied government delegate later told pressmen the additional budget will contribute to the development of the municipality. He further noted that the development of the municipality was almost stalled because previous budgets were low.

From statistics presented by the market ad hoc committee set up by the Kumba city council session of April 23, 2014, market collection accounts for 17MFCFA.