When he went seeking glory at the VIP lounge of the Olembe Stadium, an architectural masterpiece, Jacques Fame Ndongo, Cameroon’s higher education minister, did not know he was stirring a hornet’s nest.

Fame Ndongo has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons on many occasions and he knows he is not the most loved Cameroonian at this time, especially as he belongs to a government and a political party that has messed up things in a country once considered as an oasis of peace in a desert of chaos.

Fame Ndongo is no stranger to controversy and has crossed some of the reddest of the red lines which could have taken him to the Yaounde Maximum Security Prison known as Kondengui.

A few years ago, he manufactured a story about supplying laptops to Cameroon’s university students as a way of making the country’s president, Paul Biya, popular among the country’s youths; a story the head of state took down hook, line and sinker.

But Fame Ndongo’s real objective was not to make the president popular. He wanted to feather his own nest. A  project worth millions of dollars was a great opportunity for him to serve his parochial and selfish interest.

Fame Ndongo, a man noted for his grandiloquence, thought that things would just work like a conveyor belt and that the proceeds of his crime would hit his bank account with relative ease.

He is a man who overestimates himself and he thought he would   make quick work of the challenging project which became a millstone around his neck.

Once the project started hitting many bumps in its path, the learned professor came up with fake computer science theories he himself did not understand, sometimes enlisting his collaborators in crime to come and help him bamboozle Cameroonians who were already in the know of his selfish and misleading intentions.

The massive online protests about his embezzlement of funds allocated for the laptop computer program finally caught the president’s attention and many thought he would be caught out of the government in the next cabinet reshuffle.

During a ceremony in 2019 wherein cabinet ministers were extending their New Year Wishes to the head of state, Fame Ndongo, the desperate higher education minister, wanted to use that opportunity to demonstrate his enduring loyalty and unwavering support to President Paul Biya, but he was soundly and roundly humiliated in plain sight by the president.

The message was clear! Fame Ndongo was in trouble and his next destination was clearly visible. Kondengui has been a good place for many cabinet ministers who have fallen out of favor with the president and Fame does not like that residence.

In the cabinet reshuffle that succeeded that incident at the Unity Palace, Fame Ndongo was maintained in his position after many letters to the president and following the timely intervention of the president’s trusted friends.

But old habits diehard. Fame Ndongo will always be a repeat offender. He likes fame and loves lining his pocket with money that is not his.

It was fame that took him to the VIP lounge on that day when the Indomitable Lions were working hard to make Cameroonians proud.

Fame Ndongo, for his part, had organized a massive and a costly drinking party that has left Cameroonians heartbroken.

The cost of the wines, which were being consumed by Fame Ndongo’s lackeys, is what has angered Cameroonians. They could not believe their eyes and ears. To many, that is just the tip of the wasteful iceberg that is ruining the country.

A bottle of wine consumed by people who earn less than CFAF 40,000 was more than CFAF 3 miilion and many of such bottles of wine were uncorked on that unfortunate day.

A video of the party, which seemed to have been made in Heaven, tells of a bunch of sycophants forged in the crucible of corruption, extoling the virtues of the pompous and bombastic higher education minister.

But the fame Fame Ndongo got on that has become the next millstone around his neck. The head of state, Paul Biya, has ordered an investigation into the incident.

Social media has become a tool of governance and citizens in Cameroon and abroad are using it now as a whistleblowing mechanism which is causing many government officials to lose sleep.

Fame Ndongo is once more in hot water. He knows he has been in the eye of the storm for a long time and the wine incident may just be the last straw that might open the gates of Kondengui for him.

But it is not yet over. Fame Ndong still holds a trump card. He knows that the president loves his collaborators to always bow to him like angels do to God.

Being the crook he has always been, the learned criminal has already issued a motion of support,  pledging his unalloyed support to the head of state in whatever the president does.

Fame Ndongo has roped in  hundreds of people from the country’s South region just to demonstrate that the South, led by him, is solidly behind the president.

But this last gimmick may not work. The investigation has been launched and those in charge of the enquiry are already doing their work. The are meticulously analyzing the video and some of those identified in the video have already been questioned.

There is panic within the professor’s cycle and things are not really looking good for the man who erroneously holds that he can spin the presidential couple around his finger.

According to a disgruntled source close to the arrogant minister of higher education, the man is no longer at ease. He has already briefed his entourage on what to say if questioned and this situation is already consuming him.

“The professor has already briefed his collaborators in crime on what to say. All of them are losing sleep and are looking for ways to demonstrate that the minister bought the drinks out of pocket, but the government’s records are telling a different tale” the source said.

“However, he does not understand that there are two issues involved. The video does not only show that the minister is wasteful, it also demonstrates that he is not discreet. Mr. Biya hates it when his collaborators get caught in situations which portray his government as being wasteful and arrogant. The negative optics are killing the president and Fame Ndongo is regretting that moment of indiscretion,” the source added.

Mr. Ndongo might have issued his motion of support but it is not clear if it will spare him the agony he is putting himself through.

Before the investigation gets concluded, Fame Ndongo would have become a shadow of his former self. He is losing sleep and given that Biya likes holding his cards so close to his chest, the learned professor might end up with a stroke before the findings of the enquiry are released.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

A senior Southern Cameroons academic says the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is under a very malicious occupation but some so-called front line leaders are closing their doors to the liberation journey to Buea, while at the same time reaching out to Southern Cameroons enemy in Yaounde.

Referring to the crisis that has rocked the Southern Cameroons group in Maryland often refered to as the Sako-IG, Dr. Patrick Ayuk said on Thursday, “We have to admit that the Maryland gang had private financial dealings with some people in Yaounde.”

“It is hard to believe that because of small amounts of money, the enemy in French Cameroun is now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Maryland group in the way we are seeing today, and the group is closing its doors to the Ambazonian struggle? Dr. Patrick Ayuk said during a meeting with the Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima on Thursday.

Dr. Patrick Ayuk in a soul-searching presentation to the Ambazonia war cabinet re-echoed the view that Dr. Ikome Sako and Pastor Chris Anu had used the Bible to blindfold Southern Cameroonians who were delivering millions of dollars for war purposes.

The pastors became front line leaders in the US and carefully transformed Southern Cameroonians into their personal piggy banks not to fight the intimidated Yaounde regime, but to line their pockets.

Dr. Patrick Ayuk condemned what he described as a treacherous stab in the back and appealed to Vice President Yerima to present a clearer picture to the people in Ground Zero and Ground One on the state of the Southern Cameroons revolution.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroonian journalist Amadou Vamoulké, the septuagenarian former head of the national radio and TV broadcaster, has just completed his 2,000th day in detention without being convicted on any charge. Cameroon’s disgraceful treatment of Vamoulké falls far below even the most basic standards of justice and human dignity, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Adjourned 90 times, his trial is the longest to have been held as part of the anti-corruption drive known as Operation Sparrowhawk that the Cameroonian authorities launched in 2006. Critics have often accused them of exploiting Sparrowhawk to get rid of personalities regarded as a nuisance. Aside from the shocking treatment of journalists in Eritrea, which is one of the world’s worst dictatorships and is rightly last in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, this case has also broken all records for the longest detention of an African journalist without being convicted. Vamoulké has been held for more than five and a half years.

Arrested on 29 July 2016, Vamoulké is the subject of two distinct grotesque proceedings on charges of misusing public funds as director-general of Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) – charges for which absolutely no evidence and no witness has ever been produced by the prosecution. In letter on 29 December to the secretary-general of the prime minister’s office, whose duties include ensuring Cameroon’s compliance with the international conventions and treaties it has signed, Vamoulké’s French and Cameroonian lawyers called on the authorities to free him in order to comply with the decision issued on 12 July 2020 by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. After being referred the case by RSF, the Working Group issued an unambiguous determination that Vamoulké’s provisional detention has “no legal basis” and that the violations of the right to due process are “of such gravity” that they confer an “arbitrary character” on Mr. Vamoulké’s detention.

“Two thousand days in prison and 90 trial adjournments – these are dizzying figures behind which lies the life of a journalist broken by five and a half years of totally illegal provisional detention,” said Arnaud Froger, the head of RSF’s Africa desk. “We reiterate our appeal to the Cameroonian authorities to end this judicial persecution, which is breaking all records, which is arbitrarily depriving a journalist of his freedom, and which is discrediting all of the Cameroonian institutions involved.”

In its decision, the UN Working Group also voiced concern about the health of Vamoulké, who will be 72 next month and who suffers from an illness described by medical experts as “severe.” He has never been given the tests and treatment required by his ailment and he is in great danger from Covid-19 because of his age and pre-existing conditions, and because of prison over-crowding.

Cameroon is ranked 135th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

Culled from RSF

Of the five African heads of state invited by the 88-year old President Paul Biya for the opening ceremony of the Africa Cup of Nations, only Azali Assoumani of the Union of Comoros showed up. Francophone African leaders including President Roch Marc Kabore of Burkina Faso and Macky Sall of Senegal pressured by Paris to make the trip to Yaoundé were conspicuous by their absence from the gathering of world football leaders.

A highly placed Cameroon government official who spoke to our Yaoundé City reporter late on Tuesday on grounds that he should not be identified said everyone at the presidency of the republic regretted that President Kabore of Burkina Faso and Macky Sall of Senegal did not avail themselves of the opportunity to address football issues in Africa. He however added that Biya was indeed the problem “as he never visits other African countries”.  Yaoundé has also expressed disappointment at several African governments’ political decision to not attend the Africa Cup of Nations.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that some of the African administrations have called on Etoudi to reconsider its Southern Cameroons war approach and commit in good faith to live up to its political-economic commitments towards the people of British Southern Cameroons.

By Rita Akana