Biya admits regime failure – Fru Ndi
BY
ATIA TILARIOUS AZOHNWI
The National Chairman of the opposition
Social Democratic Front (SDF) party, Ni John Fru Ndi was reacting to the
traditional end of year message of the Head of State, President Paul Biya to
the nation last December 31, 2013.
“If your state institutions lack
efficiency, who has put those people there? When they started embezzling money,
capital flights, people going abroad with money, the SDF cried it out loud and
clear. Mr. Biya said they needed proof. Today, they’ve had the proofs; they’ve
locked up some people in prison either because of political challenges or one
thing or the other,” Fru Ndi bemoaned.
“Otherwise,” the SDF National Chairman
said, “Cameroon is not the only country where we have embezzlers. But if we
have embezzlers in Cameroon, we expect the government to take a firm stand to
make sure that these people are truly punished. Or the money recovered and the
people are set free.”
Fru Ndi predicts that if such repressive measures
are not put in place; state action which is said to lack efficiency will
continue for a long time to come.
“Biya has openly admitted to Cameroonians
that his government has failed...Mr Biya is gradually bringing Cameroon into a
state of anarchy,” Fru Ndi reiterated.
He insisted that he had told the Head of
State that Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) is not the right institution to run
free, fair and transparent elections, given that he singlehandedly set up the body
and appointed its members and officials.
Fru Ndi said after SDF calls for biometric
registration in 1992, it is only about 20 years after that biometrics was used
to register the electorate for an election. He wondered why government refused
to use biometrics throughout the electoral process and why vote buying and
other irregularities surfaced their ugly heads.
“...once I got to Maroua, drove to the
petrol point to refill my tank before driving to Garoua and Ngaoundere. In less
than five minutes, I had over a hundred small kids begging. I had a cold in my
spine and I asked myself; why are these children not in school, what are they
doing here?” Fru Ndi explained.
“...A woman came up and said Mr. Chairman
these children are refugees from Nigeria, Chad. I said if they have come here,
Cameroon government should take immediate action to see what they can do to
rehabilitate these children, send them to schools and open farms for them to
work on,” he went on.
To Fru Ndi, “some of the children I met
were three, five years old. If these children live in Cameroon for the next 20 years,
at the age of twenty five, there’s no way you’ll tell me that the child is
Nigerian, Chadian or Central African Republican. The home they know is
Cameroon. Since they don’t have a proper parental upbringing, these are the
children that will start problems in our country.”
Fru Ndi said government should do something
for the street children around the country, if we must fight highway robbery
and others.
Concerning the attacks in the east and
kidnapping of foreign nationals, Fru Ndi wonders why only the French are
targeted in Cameroon. He advised President Biya to dialogue with the French to
solve these problems.
He congratulated our security forces, but
called on government to better equip our security services at the borders and
improve on military training.
“I want to congratulate the Indomitable
Lions too. But we should take note that the Indomitable Lions train themselves.
We’ve not seen an aggressive approach to train footballers in Cameroon. If the
government wants to have more victories, they should be able to build us more
stadiums, train more children into footballers so that we can be proud. It is
ridiculous that Cameroon for these number of years, Cameroon, after enjoying
all the glories they’ve had with winning the African Nations Cup and others, we
do not have stadiums in the country. I think the government should do
something,” he concluded.
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