Peter Essoka: A man of integrity

Objectivity and integrity are the words that can best describe the interim president of the National Communication Council (NCC) Peter Essoka as far as the decisions taken by that institution recently, with respect to complaints made against some media organs, are concerned.

Cameroon is a country where the Executive wills power ad nauseam. Otherwise, government ministers and other members of the executive are almost always considered to be right. Every other institution or personality seems to be at their beck and call. That is why a sitting minister was able to flout a Supreme Court ruling and get away with it.

After Paul Atanga Nji, minister of Special Duties at the Presidency of the Republic, was indicted by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (CONAC) for alleged embezzlement of public funds and the matter taken to the Special Criminal Tribunal, media organs picked it up and reported it variously, albeit not deviating from the facts as revealed by the court.

The minister, powerful and influential as he thinks he is, invited the sledge hammer of the NCC to fall on the said media organs; viz, The Guardian Post, The Post, le jour and L’oeil du Sahel. But that was not to be. Peter Essoka, the man now in charge of the NCC, refused to be remote-controlled!

He called up the authors of the articles in question for questioning, and after the exercise he and the other members of the NCC came to the edifying realisation that the journalists only reported the facts and nothing but the facts made public by the National Anti-Corruption Commission and other such agencies. The matter was thus thrown out.

Atanga Nji, who had obviously vowed to himself to teach the pressmen a lesson, now has his tail between his hind legs. It behoves him to be disciplined rather than be otherwise and seek to resort to intimidation.

Martinez Zogo, the presenter of the program “Embouteillage” on Amplitude Radio, who spoke unethically about the minister, deservedly earned a one-month suspension decreed by the NCC. But this will hardly wipe the tears of Paul Atanga Nji who certainly would have been a happier man had The Guardian Post, The post and the other tabloids been suspended.

In the same vein, the NCC rejected the complaint of Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, minister of Economy and Planning, against Intégration newspaper and Amplitude FM radio.

Thinking like Atanga Nji that Peter Essoka and his men were easily malleable, Djoumessi only made a verbal complaint and retired to his air-conditioned office, waiting to see these media houses punished. Far from it. Essoka, being a man of principle, kicked out the complaint on the basis that it was not presented in writing as required by the law.

Credit thus goes to this veteran journalist who has been in this noble profession for 48 uninterrupted years (Peter Essoka joined Radio Cameroon on 21 March 1967; waoh)!

For it needed a man of his maturity and strength of character to refuse to be daunted by those gigantic government personalities who wanted to use short cuts to muzzle the press.

Essoka and his men undoubtedly did some positive reflections before coming up with that objective and milestone decision. If they continue in this light, as The Median hopes they will, then the days ahead for the Cameroonian press are surely brighter!