Society

Ever since the inception of the mobile telephone company MTN Cameroon and its suspicious huge pay package, there have been too many mysterious deaths within the company. From Bamenda via Buea to Douala and now Yaounde, the story has been the same- MTN employees are dying like flies and in funny circumstances. This begs the question: Do they operate a “Nyongho” house in the company?

Recently, Pauline Hiol Laure, a 29 years old senior employee of MTN at the Yaounde regional office was found dead in her home in Anguissa neighborhood. Her body was discovered in an advanced state of decomposition. Like in every MTN case, the circumstances of her death remains unclear. Colleagues of the late mother of a five year old daughter have revealed that she was not sick and she lived alone in her modest home at Anguissa.

It is rumored in Cameroon that to gain employment with MTN, the applicant needs to perform some rituals that includes sacrificing some family relatives or friends.

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Ngwa Bertrand

21.Oct.2015

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Former minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Lazare Essimi Menye has reportedly been placed under surveillance since October 11, 2015 at the National Social Insurance Fund hospital in Yaounde. Cameroon Concord Intelligence Unit has learnt that Lazare Essimi Menye was denied the right to be evacuated to Europe by a regime he once served as a cabinet minister. 

Government sources say his request for medical evacuation was rejected last Friday and the act dedicating the rejection was notified to his lawyers. Former Minister Lazare Essimi Menye seen here inside the presidency with Cameroon Concord’s Chairman and CEO, Soter Agbaw-Ebai when he was top in those days, has two pending cases at the Special Criminal Court in Yaounde. The first corruption charge against him has been linked to Amity Bank Cameroon where he is expected to explain a payment of 9.025 billion FCFA to Atlantic Bank. And the second case is that of the defunct Cameroon Tobacco Company involving just over 50 million CFA francs.

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Ngwa Bertrand

20.Oct.2015

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Former minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Lazare Essimi Menye has reportedly been placed under surveillance since October 11, 2015 at the National Social Insurance Fund hospital in Yaounde. Cameroon Concord Intelligence Unit has learnt that Lazare Essimi Menye was denied the right to be evacuated to Europe by a regime he once served as a cabinet minister. 

Government sources say his request for medical evacuation was rejected last Friday and the act dedicating the rejection was notified to his lawyers. Former Minister Lazare Essimi Menye seen here inside the presidency with Cameroon Concord’s Chairman and CEO, Soter Agbaw-Ebai when he was top in those days, has two pending cases at the Special Criminal Court in Yaounde. The first corruption charge against him has been linked to Amity Bank Cameroon where he is expected to explain a payment of 9.025 billion FCFA to Atlantic Bank. And the second case is that of the defunct Cameroon Tobacco Company involving just over 50 million CFA francs.

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Ngwa Bertrand

20.Oct.2015

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Cameroon Concord has gathered from our informant in Essen, Germany that the renowned Eric Chinje will be among the guests of honor on October 30, 2015 at Erich-Brost-Institute, Dortmund. Chinje, our source added will present a paper on media and migration from a global perspective during an international press forum organized by Africa Positive International Magazine and sponsored by Deutchewelle and the German Interior Ministry. 

In the past months, political and public debate across Europe has been dominated by the ever-increasing wave of migrants from the Middle East and Africa. The conference will focus on migration from Africa and take a closer look at the role of the media – both in Africa and in Europe. Eric Chinje is also expected to present a talk on how African media reports and frame the current massive exodus to the West. The conference will inter alia examine how the European media houses cope with the challenges of covering the dramatic events at home and in the Mediterranean sea as well as the political and economic situation in the migrants’ home countries.

Eric Chinje is a long standing Cameroonian journalist and former Editor-in-Chief of the Cameroon Radio and Television.

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Ngwa Bertrand

18.Oct.2015

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Cameroon Concord has gathered from our informant in Essen, Germany that the renowned Eric Chinje will be among the guests of honor on October 30, 2015 at Erich-Brost-Institute, Dortmund. Chinje, our source added will present a paper on media and migration from a global perspective during an international press forum organized by Africa Positive International Magazine and sponsored by Deutchewelle and the German Interior Ministry. 

In the past months, political and public debate across Europe has been dominated by the ever-increasing wave of migrants from the Middle East and Africa. The conference will focus on migration from Africa and take a closer look at the role of the media – both in Africa and in Europe. Eric Chinje is also expected to present a talk on how African media reports and frame the current massive exodus to the West. The conference will inter alia examine how the European media houses cope with the challenges of covering the dramatic events at home and in the Mediterranean sea as well as the political and economic situation in the migrants’ home countries.

Eric Chinje is a long standing Cameroonian journalist and former Editor-in-Chief of the Cameroon Radio and Television.

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Ngwa Bertrand

18.Oct.2015

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Cameroon Tribune has sounded a note of caution to the CPDM government calling for an increase in maritime security on our waterways. The national daily in an editorial scripted by Nkemden Forbinake, the paper revealed that a strange fishing vessel has since last Wednesday been shored up in the Douala harbour after being impounded by the Cameroonian navy as it was carrying out illegal fishing activity within Cameroonian territorial waters off the coast of Limbe in the South-West Region. What is particularly interesting about the fishing vessel is the impressive quantity of fish found on board.

Initially determined by customs officials to be some tens of tons, officials of the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries in Douala, after verification of the vessel at the harbor, are rather talking of a much more impressive quantity which further betrays the impunity with which fishing boats come into the rich waters of our nation’s south-western coasts to fish. In effect, the captured vessel was about three nautical miles from the authorized line; so right into Cameroonian territory! This is just one case, certainly among many who do business right into our waters and get off scot-free with their huge catches. Cameroon is currently facing numerous security challenges with the Boko Haram insurgency in the Far-North Region of the country being the main theatre of operations to keep the national territory safe from the sporadic attempts of this heartless sect. This can partly explain the absence of the kind of security presence necessary to keep poachers at bay.

But there is more to that than meets the eye. This kind of fishing is not an exclusively Cameroonian phenomenon. But investing in security in our high seas is a matter of urgency if the animal protein needs of the citizens have to be met. For example, national demand for fish today is at about 400 000 tons while national production is staggering at about 182 000 tons with 180 000 coming from captured fishing or, simply put, fish harvested in the high seas off our coasts while a meager 2 000 tons come from ponds or fish harvested from internal waterways. The situation will be difficult to reverse without revolutionary measures. Fishing off our coasts in the high seas is done with such sophistication that available control measures can hardly stop. The illegal vessels, in their rush to fish-and-go, harvest just about every available fish even right up to fingerlings, therefore breaking the ordinary life cycle which obviously cleanses entire areas of fish.

So, the danger is not just about reducing available quantities of fish, but also exterminating even the small fish that could guarantee fish availability for the future. In this situation, one would have rightfully imagined that a solution could come from inland fishing; but the ridiculous production figure of 2 000 tons is rather a laughing matter in the wake of the whopping national demand for fish of about 400 000 tons! Assorted initiatives by the Ministry responsible for fishing to get Cameroonians more involved, at least in the less onerous inland fishing activity, have never yielded the expected results; otherwise production will not be that low. Even the 2 000 tons are the efforts, in the most part, of foreigners. Foreigners from as far afield as Ghana or Mali are the main actors of the peripheral fishing activity on such inland waterways as the Sanaga around Monatele or the Benue at Lagdo.

While government considers more proactive initiatives and even some stimulating measures, we must welcome the construction of the Limbe fishing academy as an important window of opportunity which can reverse present trends and help develop new interest in fishing activity around the country. At the same time, government must consider partnering with other neighbouring countries as well as regional organizations in the likes of the Gulf of Guinea Commission to set up security outfits that can properly check the regular forays into our coasts by foreign fishermen

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Ngwa Bertrand

17.Oct.2015

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