Roadside Drug Deal: Conac points at top officials

The Chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (CONAC), Rev. Dr. Dieudonné Massi Gams, has said corruption has permitted the proliferation of fake drugs as well as the putting in place of a network of illegal distribution of drugs, veterinary and phytosanitary products.

Massi Gams was speaking in Yaounde on December 9, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 12th international day for the fight against corruption.

Rev. Massi Gams said CONAC and the Business Coalition Against Corruption placed the day in Cameroon under the theme: “Roadside Drugs.”

He observed that drugs originally fabricated in authorised laboratories suffer from poor transportation and conservation conditions, coupled with their open air exposure that alters their active components, thereby rendering the said drugs dangerous for human and animal consumption.

“A greater part of the roadside drugs are fabricated in clandestine workshops abusively called ‘laboratories’ and sold in open air under the complacent eyes and complicity of our traditional, municipal, administrative and political authorities as well as the forces of law and order. Some dubious officials in the Ministry of Trade and of those in charge of drugs are not left out,” the CONAC Chair stated.

Describing the sale of roadside drugs as a business meant to kill, Massi Gams said it is difficult for one to understand how, under the watchful eyes of all, these officials would allow people engaged in illegal activity to set up and operate along streets, around road junctions and in markets. He added that some even come right into homes, neighbourhoods and villages; and carryout the brisk and deadly activity, unperturbed.

“Worse still, we are made to understand that health personnel and even dubious pharmacists go to these roadside drug vendors to procure their supplies. How could they allow such a crime committed in the open to perpetrate, knowing that at every moment our children, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents can go to these people to be poisoned in the name of buying such drugs?

“Can the bait for profit also explain the fact that you have anesthetised your conscience and dangerously exposing the live of your own families and those of your fellow citizens? Massi Gams rhetorically questioned the officials.

“Today, December 9, throughout the whole country, the administration, CONAC, the Cameroonian private sector, associations and NGOs, are mobilised around this roadside drug problems which is a clear indication of corruption in our country,” he declared.

The anti-graft agency Chair appealed to all sectors of the Cameroonian society that a single and simple gesture of refusing to fuel the deadly business by abstaining from buying the roadside drugs can make a difference. He reiterated that, by abstaining from encouraging the practice, we are refusing to put our own very lives in danger.

Massi Gams also addressed the global changing climatic conditions. He said it has been observed, since a couple of years, that rainfall is increasingly beginning late and that when it does come, it is virulent causing death and desolation amongst farmers, animal breeders and orchestrating destruction even in our towns.

“These are signs that the planet is becoming warmer; yields are dropping; sea levels are increasing each year, fisheries resources are diminishing; many animal species are under threats of extinction...” he outlined.

He said it is a sad thing to note and place that blame on the activities of man.

“It is undeniable that corruption favours the anarchical exploitation of forest and fisheries resources; poaching; trafficking of protected species; destruction of protected areas, thus exposing our planet to the climatic hazards we are observing today.

“The responsibility is common. It is, therefore, time for us to wake up and save our planet for we don’t have any other one. Neither is there a plan ‘B’ and we must understand that the human species which we are cannot live on the moon or the Planet Mars,” Rev. Massi Gams stated.

Calling for a minute of silence for the military and civilian population killed in the Northern part of Cameroon by Boko Haram, the CONAC Chair, who is also a Minister of God, said they don’t know of any religion or believer in God who takes pleasure in massacring people, men, women, children.

In condemning the perpetrators of the attacks and killings, he paid homage to the brave Cameroonian soldiers engaged in the fight against Boko Haram as well as to members of the local vigilante groups, who are putting their lives on the line against another type of enemy in the northern parts of the country.