Please bear with me but I do not believe coronavirus has reached our shores. I am highly suspicious of the circumstances surrounding its announcement. (Even the subsequent claim that his spouse or partner had been affected too only sound like a way to lend credence to the questionable allegation.) It came only hours after IMF announced a $50 billion (over 27.5 billion FCFA) fund to fight against the pandemic. That suggested countries affected by the virus would receive a share of the money to help them contain its spread and treat its patients.
Once I heard that report, I said to myself, “We will soon hear the virus has reached Cameroon.” I said so because I know my country a bit. I know how much interest funded projects generate among those on the line of benefit and even those way off the mark who scramble to be in line. I also know my country can accept victim status even when it suffers not or how it would scorn whoever dared suggest a problem was not serious enough or that they knew an easier solution to the problem, which could jeopardize chances of receiving funding for the project.
That was the case of the colossal Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. Ahead of a conference in Yaounde in the year 2000 where the funding was to be discussed, local health officials whose ministry was to be the direct beneficiary of the fund, hushed, scorned and ridiculed the venerated professor Victor Anomah Ngu for daring to report just then that he had found a curative vaccine (Vanhivax) which he believed could be the beginning of the HIV/AIDS solution.
But let’s go back to coronavirus. A curiosity about it is that it has spared the black race, leaving the belief that the black race is somehow immune or resistant to it. Coronavirus victims are mainly people with white or yellow or pink skin. Who knows any Blackman or African from south of the Sahara affected by coronavirus? In Nigeria, the reported victim is an Italian who had just flown in. In Senegal, it was first a French and later two more French and a Briton (all Whites or Caucasians). Even reports of a Cameroonian victim in China now look like the typical Cameroonian ruse. No other Africans resident in China have reported coronavirus. They might have succeeded in their ploy to get a 50 million FCFA gift from President Biya and that story is now dead.
Talk about truly speaking corona virus is in Africa and you want to marvel at Africa’s capacity to contain it better than developed countries with better health systems. In most countries, once the first cases are announced, it is a matter of days, if not hours for the spread to increase geometrically. How come Africa’s cases are so well quarantined that they do not spread? But ever since our supposed coronavirus case, a Cameroonian (Blackman) with French nationality was “diagnosed”, there have rather miraculously been no further infections, even though he had spent over two weeks (the incubation period) in the country and had travelled around, including to a funeral in Mbangasina in the Mbam area. Imagine the crowds and body contact at funerals! This Cameroonian coronavirus sef!
Mr, Mrs Ndam Njoya and Biya issues!
As Senior Editor and Political Reporter at Radio Reine in Yaounde, I covered the 2001 convention of Adamou Ndam Njoya’s Cameroon Democratic Union (CDU) at the Yaounde Conference Centre. Ndam Njoya died in Yaounde on March 6 and was laid to rest in his native Foumban on March 8.
In his policy speech at the close of that 2001 convention, Ndam Njoya opened with praise for his wife. He thanked her for opting to marry, not a president but an opposition leader like him. I looked around the hall for reactions and noticed hardly any. They had taken his statement for some ordinary courtesy. It meant more than that to me. I knew a thing about that hint and thought that was my chance to get my facts straight. In a mid-1990s story in The Messenger newspaper of Hilary Kebila Fokum, journalist Bernard Sanusi had reported that after the death of former First Lady, Jeanne Irene Biya, the widowed Biya had contemplated taking a certain Helmine Patricia Tomaino as new wife. Sanusi said the young, beautiful intelligent Bamoun girl had been proposed to Biya by his friend, Sultan Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya.
At the end of the convention, I approached Mrs Ndam Njoya and interviewed her over the comment by her husband. I asked her what she thought he meant by that. She simply said, she was surprised he said that and that had she been aware he would say it she would have advised him against doing so. My conclusion was, yes, truly Biya meant to marry her, but she turned him down and preferred Adamou Ndam Njoya.
If Ndam Njoya got Biya’s woman, Biya might have gotten Ndam Njoya’s New Deal. The story has long been told how Ndam Njoya who, as a member of government in his 20s, had effected many reforms, some still resonating today, was dramatically sacked from the government one afternoon in June 1982. But it is a renowned historian and former member of Ndam Njoya’s CDU who told me further details about the matter.
The story goes that Ndam Njoya, then Minister Delegate for the Supreme State Audit, which ministry was then also in charge of administrative reforms, had made some proposals to President Ahidjo who was still in office. Ndam Njoya’s reforms obviously had to do with tightening state spending and limiting room for manoeuvres by vote holders, which was the cradle of embezzlement and corruption, which he reportedly styled the New Deal. Ahidjo reportedly directed Ndam Njoya to treat the file with then Prime Minister Paul Biya and the two were at it. It is hard to tell what might have transpired or what Biya might have told Ahidjo about Ndam Njoya and what the president might have believed. But my historian source said, on an appointed date when Ndam Njoya and Biya were to meet Ahidjo at 2pm with the file, Ndam Njoya was sacked from government in the 1pm news. And thus ended Ndam Njoya’s New Deal.
But Ahidjo would quit power only months later in November and Biya would succeed him. And what was Biya’s political slogan? New Deal! Ndam Njoya partisans claim Biya had just dusted Ndam Njoya’s reforms and plagiarized them as his. Hard to tell where the truth lies. But nine years later, Ndam Njoya reruens to the political scene with the return of the multiparty system and created CDU. To not repeat what his fans believe Biya stole from him, he fashioned his new political doctrine New Ethics.
outside cameroon
Ouatarra’s Putin tactic
As the world salutes Ivorian president Alassane Ouatarra for his magnanimity to renounce a third term bid, his critics say they do not trust him and have cast doubts over the sincerity of his announcement. An opposition leader told an international radio station last week that by also seeking to modify the new constitution, to make it possible for the president to appoint his vice president (the new constitution provided for them to run on the same ticket) Ouatarra means to hide behind his chosen successor, help him win and later cause the new president to appoint him as his VP.
That sounds like what Russian president, Vladimir Putin did after his first two terms in office, when he stood behind a chosen successor Dimitri Medvedev and later got appointed prime minister to the new president. At the end of Medvedev’s one term, Putin returned as president, thus circumventing the limitations of two term limits. It is believed that is what Ouatarra plans to do.
outside sport
CHAN 2020 Coronazed?
If Cameroon lied about coronavirus to “bite” a share of its fund, it might just have been penny-wise and pound-foolish. Its coronavirus scare has now thrown doubts over its capacity to host the African nations’ Championship (CHAN) next month. Some participating countries have begun expressing fears about travelling to Cameroon and CAF is reflecting over remedy options, not excluding postponement or outright cancellation.