TRUTH THAT MUST BE TOLD

By Asong Ndifor

When illegally is right

So the minister of communication and the New Deal spin doctor, Issa Tchiroma Bakary has given some FM radio and television stations eight day’s notice to regularise or be gagged by the law?

 It was the reputed Nigerian human rights lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi who said in a society where the vast majority of people are criminals, the neglected minority are instead the law-breakers.

That reminds me of this cradle of our fathers, and mothers too, land. We are accustomed to illegal schools writing their exams in “external centres” and even candidates in government approved schools who are illegally forced to write in private centres so as to criminally give the impression that their institutions are teaching well.

There are also illegal, or are they satanic “churches” refusing to get free authorization. They are involved in “faith healing” which is for the purpose of advertising branded as “miracles”. They claim to cast out demons residing illegally in the images of God.

 I have almost forgotten to mention illegal health centres and hospitals or abortion clinics strewn left, right and centre with screaming bill boards.

   As communication minister, Tchiroma who is also board chair of CRTV should know or be informed that it is illegal for a serving member of government to sit on a board of a state corporation.

  

There are countless members of government who sit on board chair for a position President Biya has reserved as retirement benefits for former ministers who over the years serve his regime to the point of adoring his official effigy conspicuously displayed in minister’s offices.

     

Space constraints limit my list of illegality and so when Minister Tchiroma gave the communication sector a week to comply, I hope we may be getting out of the yoke of illegality to a society where the rule of law is respected.

Many of the “illegal” radio stations are community media and I wonder where they would have to cough 25 million francs from as required by law to become lawful. As for TV stations, they will need to pay 100 million francs and some may just shut their doors permanently if Tchiroma sends the police after them.

     Many of these FM radio stations are owned by self-help projects serving communities CRTV signals do not get there. They are the organs sensitising the communities even in their vernacular languages about HIV/AIDS, the Ebola virus and some societal issues and information.

I have never been an advocate of illegality but a servant of truth which does not hurt the teller. I think it is sinful for churches to operate in lawlessness. I either would not support schools, hospitals or communication houses being linked with transgressions.

Schools, churches and health centres do not get the type of mass exposure the radio and television get. They can afford to hide for a while like ostriches, but with its mass appeal, there is no hiding place for radio and television stations.

Why did government, in the first place authorise the illegality to continue for so long? Some of the media houses were created even when Tchiroma was not yet minister of communication. What has prompted the minister to hurriedly give them this short notice knowing that some of the radio houses are run with unpaid volunteers as staff because the communities that own them cannot afford to pay salaries?

As minister of communication, Tchiroma knows that the media play a crucial rule in any society; informing, educating and entertaining. To silence the media houses shortlisted is to reduce the Cameroonian avenues of learning, deprive the common man of daily information and reduce his source of being distracted from the daily problems of unemployment, land grabbing, corruption and other socio-political ills.

The best the minister can do to promote and develop the Cameroon media landscape which falls within his portfolio is to extend the period and table a bill in parliament to reduce the whooping fees required for the legalisation of private radio and television stations given the toddling Cameroon economy with stingy advertising budgets.

Unlike churches, schools, health centres and other strings of illegality that pay no levies to operate, the mitigating circumstances for radio and television is that they are slammed with huge fees.

 In a country where laws are more respected in the breech than in the observance, the media should not be forced to join the frill on the plinth of prohibited registration levies.

Post script: To make matters worse, a spectrum of illegality makes it acceptable to break the rules in some circumstances yet not others. -Adam Dachis