Within a fortnight, two patriotic Cameroonian ministers have summoned up journalists of the private media in attempt to coerce or induce them into cleansing Cameroon’s image abroad. Very commendable indeed! Who on earth would want to wash his dirty linen in public? But the dichotomy between the public and the private media resembles the difference between reputation and disposition. The one is wholly in the limelight while the other is invisible. The latter is quite proximate to platonic love. If love has been represented as blind, it is because sight is the most unreliable of the five senses we have. What the eyes lead us to see in a dream for instance does not exist in reality. And when we throw up, we hate to see what on the tongue was so sweet, at times just seconds before. An Ibo man would jocularly ask succinctly: Who di shit for mop? We realize here that what was so sweet on the tongue is like abdominal waste before the eyes. And that is the vast difference between external visual judgment and internal reality.
Reputation being conclusions from external perceptions could be utterly misleading. We have just seen the example with vision above. What is dependable and durable then is disposition which is not only a natural endowment but is internal and direct. It is no lesson to anyone that feeling is the only sense that is exclusively personal. That is the inner drive that activates the being. As a gift from God who made us in his own image and likeness, and saw that “it was good”, disposition should be the target of our endeavours. False images built on false representation and faulty premisses are inimical to nation-building. That a weak foundation lacks the solidness to sustain the structure it carries for long is of common knowledge.
To put it the simplest way, patriotism is the rendering of honest and decent services to the nation with intent to secure the greatest joy for the greatest number. That is the direct antonym of misrepresentation which procures but abstract beatification and satisfaction of a few “good tifmen”. It is beyond doubt that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Even the Christian model, Jesus the son of God, rebuked someone for calling him holy. And he added that “There is only one holy one, my father in heaven”. When we fall, therefore, we should, like Jesus on the road to Calvary, get up with honest penitence and humility and continue carrying our crosses towards our doomsdays. We only add to our sins in our endeavour to place ourselves above our Saviour with inflated holy epithets purchased from the Pharisees. If one was a priest, one would have liked to direct the above cautionary words of Jesus to the Minister of Communication and to the President of CONAC.
The former tendered an inducement to the private press in the name of partnership in a bid to cleanse our international image with patriotic misrepresentation. One would have liked to suggest to the minister that the best solution is for him to convert the private press into public news media. Otherwise, the indestructible truth that there is a yawning chasm between the two is beyond destruction. One would also have wished to point out to him that one of the cardinal ingredients of vibrant democracy is the dissenting voice. Conversely, unison is the demise of democracy. Differences in appreciation do tickle critical reflection, and that is what helps to sustain the building of a better society. It would be fallacious to imagine that Cameroon can depart from those global, tested principles and yet end up with lasting results.
As for the President of CONAC, he completely contradicted his very mission of fighting corruption. By assigning to himself the mission to attempt to corrupt the private media with hollow representation veiled with barren slogans as patriotism, Mr. President rendered his commission nugatory. Every honest man would have thought that he would, in pursuance of his real mission, urge the private press to help him to expose the corrupt in our country. By no stretch of the imagination can anyone contend that it was within the jurisdiction of the elderly President of CONAC to invite the private press to fight for the cleansing of our image abroad by the corrupt concealment of facts. There can be no greater corruption than tendering invitations to Cameroonian pressmen to corrupt the intellect – the throne of conscience.
Mr. President may wish to know that the Ghanaian private press was not coerced into misrepresenting Ghana’s image abroad in order to attract foreign investment. Neither was it gagged with the rotten eggs of hens stolen from the commonwealth. Rawlings began by teaching the ordinary Ghanaian to be a true citizen and to earn his living honestly. He also taught that assiduous performance was the destroyer of poverty. He dispensed his teachings by personal examples rather that with sterile disquisition by regurgitation. We are living witnesses that the Ghanaians who roamed our streets as mobile tailors and tinkers all returned home to make Ghana the African model of today. Tender money to an ordinary Ghanaian carrying your luggage at a Ghanaian airport today and he/she would turn it down politely, informing you that he/she is being paid for the job.
Such are the lessons almost all Cameroonians need today, much more than high-sounding nothing awkwardly fashioned to justify unproductive disbursements. Those indeed are the sweet little deeds that build up the good image of a nation. Such virtues cannot be preached from the throne of Lucifer. They are pragmatic and do originate from firm individual and collective convictions.
But we so lack those basic notions of probity, even at those high levels in our country nowadays, that we can afford, without qualms, to invite fellow-Cameroonians to resort to the corrupt practice of falsehood in the name of cleansing our image abroad. One would have liked to feel that we all know full well that it is only the truth that sets a people free; and that only when people are free can they be productive.
Turning our backs to the truth patently explains why we are marking time, or even retrograding, while the rest of the world is making strides in the outer space. Few communities with minimal levels of morality would, to say the least, countenance the destruction of their collective image on the international scene by persons incapable of understanding even the missions assigned to them; or those shamelessly dragging those communities down the abyss of wrongdoing with unmeasured and crude pronouncements. But Cameroon is unique, in hopeless obsessions!
NB:This Piece was written on July 31, 2009 by Hon.Ayah Paul Abine, Member of Parliament for Akwaya,Cameroon. Mr.Ayah ,a career magistrate ,is generally described as a constructive critic of the Biya -regime
No comments:
Post a Comment