CAMEROUN’S CURSED PRESIDENCY

BY AYAH Paul ABINE

 As Christ cursed the fig tree for tantalizing him, there are palpable reasons to suppose that Ahidjo cursed the Presidency for treating him similarly. If only the stories of the Secretaries General of that edifice in the past two decades give cogent corroboration. Historians will vindicate me in respect of the President of the Republic himself. Not without reason! Those are patients while he is the actor. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt till his exit. No-one I prevent from drawing the curtain, or even the dagger! None should urge me so to do either!

 Few are unaware that on the advent of multi-party system in Cameroun, the former Secretary General at the Presidency, Samuel Ebua, was arrested and given a snake beating by the forces of oppression. One could say he was tortured without infringing the decorum of using mild terms in artificial decency. His advanced age meant little to the advanced democracy Cameroun is purported to epitomize.

 Secretary General, Owona Rene, died in active service. I regret that my memory fails me on how many in ministerial positions have similarly died since Mr. President took over from Ahidjo. If by your refusal, failure or neglect to refresh my memory I should persist in my erroneous (erroneous?) conclusion, this singular exception would I count as a second curse.

 A former secretary general, Dr Titus Edjoa, Mr. President’s personal physician, has been languishing in Kondengui for over a decade now, methinks. His arrest and imprisonment coincided with his declaration to run for the Presidency of Cameroun.

 Then came some four years ago the turn of another former secretary general, Atangana Megara. His being remanded in prison custody that long coincided with his giving lavishly to the needed virtually on a daily basis – paying an expensive price for his rising popularity that was feared could eclipse that of the master.

 aIn the 5th place now comes the arrest and remand in prison custody of yet another of Mr. President’s former secretary general, Marafa Hamidou Yaya. His own ordeal has coincided with newspaper publications of late that France favoured his succeeding Mr. President. His tsunami has swept along another former secretary general, Chief Inoni Ephraim. This one was seen as being too close to the heels of the brother who is championing one of Mr. President’s ostentatious outings christened “50th anniversary of Reunification”. Who wants to dismiss the Bakweri Land Claim?

 Obviously, the clarion is loud enough to put on their enquiry those still entertaining wild dreams in similar positions to soar to dreamlands. The coincidences are too many, too varied, to pass the test of coincidence. Once a coincidence loses its accidental character, it ceases to be a coincidence. And the veil becomes outrageously threadbare where a coincidence becomes a colossal buffer zone between the people’s fury over the rape of democracy in a palace coup, and the twin arrests of former secretaries general. The most ignorant villager would cry out: “de sick whe kill cacca na ye go kill coffee”! The “electoral” code palaver is too important to be hidden in a net!