Editorial: Mendo Ze’s arrest: Biya’s loud-sounding warning to fanatics

Ungrateful fables are stories meant for entertainment but they always have an underlying message. They are like parables. One of the most relevant fables to Cameroonians is that of the lion and the monkey. According to this popular fable, a monkey using its tail rescued a lion which had fallen into a pit.

But once out, the lion wouldn’t let go the monkey’s tail, complaining that he had been hungry while in the pit and desperately needed the monkey’s flesh to survive. I will not bother the reader with details of how the lion was tricked to get back into the pit and the monkey saved.

Paul Biya took the name “Lion-man” when he saw the Cameroonian presidency about to slip out of his hand and vowed to devour anybody who stood in his way. Fru Ndi’s house arrest and all that followed proved it wasn’t a joke. Biya’s supporters didn’t realize lions don’t distinguish between friends and foes when they are hungry.

Former CRTV general manager, Gervais Mendo Ze is one of those who thought he could escape the powerful paws of Biya because he had been singing the praises of the First Lady, Chantal Biya. The arrest certainly came as a rude shock. Mendo Ze’s arrest has come as a great surprise to those who remember his deification of First Lady Chantal Biya.

He is on record as the first suspect of embezzlement to have pleaded guilty and promised giving back the stolen loot a gargantuan sum (totalling billions) given his uncommon largesse. Mendo Ze, like Gerard Emmanuel Ondo Ndong needed only to be asked and he gave away huge chunks of state funds to the church, to his cronies and whoever sang his praises.

The arrest comes as another reminder following those of Ondo Ndong, Jean Marie Atangana Mebarah, Polycarp Abbah Abah, Inoni Ephraim, Yves Michel Fotso and especially Zaccheus Forjindam. The reader would easily recall that the former FEICOM general manager, Ondo Ndong used a huge chunk of the money he misappropriated to assist the Chantal Biya Foundation. Yves Michel Fotso’s father besides being a CPDM mayor built a magnificent council edifice and offered to the state.

The most glaring example is Forjindam whom Biya praised more than once on CRTV for his astute management skills manifested by his stewardship at the helm of Chantier Naval. It was even Forjindam, who during a CPDM ceremony in Santa in 2007 launched and championed the campaign for President Biya’s life presidency project.

The former Chantier Naval general manager spent hundreds of millions during the 2007 municipal and legislative elections just so that the CPDM could win the parliamentary and council seats in Santa. Biya’s big Thank You or compensation to Forjindam is the life jail sentence he is presently serving at the New Bell prison in Douala.

Unfortunately, politicians never learn. Many of them continue to think that what has happened to others cannot happen to them. Our Lion Man, like every member of the feline (cat) family is a patient man. He is also merciless once he is convinced that a particular individual can compromise his position as president by act or omission. Most of those languishing in jail are suspected members of Generation 11. Persons close to Biya who hoped to take over from him in 2011 when his second 7-year mandate would have ended in 2011. One thing worth noting about Biya is that he doesn’t need concrete evidence to order the arrest of any suspect.

It suffices that somebody he really trusts (like Chantal) should tell him that so and so minister or director is eyeing his seat. The decision to arrest suspected members of the G11 reportedly came after he and Chantal were nearly killed in the Albatross purchased under very controversial circumstances.

Most of those languishing in jail for the purchase might have engaged in the shady financial deals that characterized the purchase purely out of greed and not because they wanted the first couple killed. A suspicious mind is capable of imagining anything. Chantal reportedly vowed never to enter the Albatross again after its first official outing to France which succeeded thanks to the competence of the pilot or to chance.

Paul Nji Atanga is Biya’s loyalist to the core. He is not only minister of special duties but also permanent secretary at the national security council who accompanies Biya round the globe.

He is also a major suspect in the embezzlement of Cameroon postal service funds. He obviously thinks his closeness to the president could secure him from any financial reckoning so long as Biya is in power.

He surely thinks that because he reportedly once gave 57MFCFA to government or bought 72 taxis which Cameroon’s security agents used in an attempt to neutralize the “Ghost Towns” Operation in 1991 Biya will remain forever grateful to him. Biya needed him at that time nearly as much as he needed Jean Fochive.

Atanga Nji can even get all SCNC activists to decamp to the CPDM as it was made to believe it happened in Bamenda last Thursday but let him be reminded that when Biya would have sufficiently sucked out all the useful stuff in him, dumping will be the next logical step. If Biya has done it to Ondo Ndong, Marafa who as MINAT/D boss helped him to ‘win’ all elections...and today Mendo Ze, what more of a graffi like Atanga Nji? That is what it means when a president governs with the spirit of a lion.