Voting with their feet from bad governance to slavery

Government’s hackneyed Good Friday pontifications notwithstanding, it is a cast iron fact the Cameroonian work ethic is pathetic. The few who land jobs in today’s Cameroon do so not by dint of qualification and performance but favouritism and moral fraud.

Competitive exams are negotiated and “passed”. A funny quota system that practically relegates scholarship to the back burner and highlights Regional mediocrity and imbalance has taken the biscuit.

As a consequence, the wrong people get into the professions, army, police and civil administration, not on account of any glittering credentials, but because they happen to belong to the “chosen tribe” or geographical/ethnic group.

Millions of youth with proven savvy, litter the landscape, doing odd jobs, playing second fiddle to jacks-in-office, or simply wasting away in drugs and gambling. It is a wasted generation.

Emergency prophets have taken advantage of the social decline and are making cheap wealth from Cameroon’s tragedy of social imbalance. Faith healers, instant prosperity providers and other con artists have taken over street corners, making cool millions from depressed minds.

Frustration is painfully etched on the forehead of the average Cameroonian youth. They are prepared to cut corners, to take every imaginable risk to wriggle out of the awful plight. Cybercafés have become work spaces for those who want to make the fast buck without breaking a sweat; to drive fast cars, generally live on the frontiers of decency and belong to the Joneses.

Above all, emigrating to Europe and other Western countries is the opium, with certain parents often prepared to go to the whole hog to send their children abroad.

Land is sold, houses too and in some cases, even female children are given out in marriage to raise the much needed finances for overseas projects. It is that bad, and goings on in South Africa and immigrants dying in droves off the Libyan coast and in the Sahara Desert is there for all to see. Thousands of frustrated Cameroonians are part of this shameful emigration.

Government is apparently out of touch with its social engineering responsibilities. From all indications, the Government needs a kick on its backside.

Despite the regular sweet pep talk, this country has been raped to the point that as we write, she still bleeds in all public and private parts. Taxes are simply inhuman, crushing. The rot in companies, parastatals run by Government is palpable. Public utility companies are at best, a national disgrace.

Cameroonians are daily fed with a grubby political diet of “great realizations” and the elusive “Vision2035”. All these are bogus slogans. They don’t add up. The Government could do with credible master plans that drive rapid and measurable development, as opposed to present day Ministerial departmental circus shows. That is the master key.

What the country needs is honest and realistic policies that should propel the private sector and create real jobs as opposed to political compensations and other such unfriendly labour palliatives.

We don’t need to shut down the entire nation for days, spend hundreds of millions to move the political elite, and sing the unemployed Cameroonian youth hoarse with inaugurating a single bridge over the Wouri, to quote but this. What is needed, it must be stressed, is investing in good roads, dams, healthcare, water supply and agriculture.

Good governance is never achieved by way of cheap political posturing. Like the present Agric Minister, Esimi Menye, every Minister else, ought to get down to the field, get practical, roll up their sleeves and put the right policies in place.

The potentials this country boasts are plenty and begging to be harnessed. Citizens have a right to ask their Government to invest in massive infrastructure, training and education. They have a right to demand fiscal discipline of their Government, so that the present urge of voting with their feet from an avoidable poverty to something worse…slavery could be avoided.

Cameroonians should be asking these and more, from their leaders as they march on May Day, brandishing placards that are at best, a grim reminder of the poor work ethic, so far, begotten of empty sloganeering.