Illegal logging: Over 7.5 Billion FCFA lost yearly in Cameroon

Illegal Logging: Over 7.5 Billion FCFA lost yearly

Cameroon loses some 7.5 Billion FCFA annually to illegal logging, a recent finding by TRAFFIC; a renowned international non-governmental organization monitoring trade in wild fauna and flora, has shown. Going by the TRAFFIC report published on Thursday,4 May, “the illicit trade in timber is a real scourge for the national economy.”

The NGO estimates that about 7.5 per cent of revenue accruing from the country’s global income on forest exploitation does not get into the State treasury. However, the report notes that the sector still pumps in 4.5 Billion FCFA or 4% of Cameroon’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in export earnings.

According to the NGO whose goal is to reduce the pressure of illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade on biodiversity, the losses commonly occur through informal channels where controls and different taxes are non-existent or slacked. It points out that the results were generated after a “serious and meticulous investigation” carried out in the various areas of timber exploitation throughout the country.

Against the backdrop of the illegal exploitation of the country’s timber resources, government, through the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, has been taking many measures to circumvent the malpractice. Early this year, a forward-looking approach was adopted whereby the capacity of community volunteers in forest areas were being strengthened on using smartphones to take geo-tagged images of newly felled trees. Under the new dispensation, the volunteers, using satellite-linked phones to document tree-cutting in areas where logging is not allowed, report to MINFOF officials, police officers and even the National Anti-Corruption Commission. We learned from forestry officials in the East region that this particular measure has been paying off.

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Nkwenti Ngwei Sylvia:

Seasoned arts and culture promoter now set to preserve and promote culture in Ngoketunjia.

Nkwenty Ngwei Sylvia in handshake with Minister of Arts and Culture Professor Narcisse Mouelle Kombi during the Nikai Cultural Festival in Babungo

Madame Nkwenti Ngwei Sylvia; a seasoned arts and culture promoter has disclosed that she is now set to preserve and promote culture in Ngoketunjia Division. She made this declaration recently in her first contact with the media following her installation as the first ever Divisional Delegate of Arts and Culture in this Division. Sylvia is holder of a Masters Degree In Human Rights from the University of Dschang. She has equally had an opportunity to have a scholarship from the World Intellectual Property Organisation where she studied Authors Rights in France. She also had a scholarship with the Chinese Government to study the Economy and Culture of the Chinese People at the University of Nangchang.

Back in Cameroon she made her debut with the Ministry of Arts and Culture in 2009 as the Chargee d’etudes No. 2 of the follow up unit at the ministry in 2013 and later in 2014 she was appointed the Chargee D’etudes No. 1 of the Follow up unit.

Besides this Nkwenty Sylvia has been the Raporteur of CPMC a National Permanent Commission that takes care of the control of authors rights in Cameroon. She also occupied this position as raporteur for the Standardisation Commission to revive the Law on authors rights.

She eventually became the Representative of the Ministry of Arts and Culture in the Board of Directors of Heritage and Arts Foundation.

“Being the first Divisional Delegate of Arts and Culture in Ngoketunjia Division and the only Female Divisional Delegate in the Northwest Region, I really wish to do things differently with all the experience I have gathered. Ngoketunjia has a very rich culture and I don’t just want to get into work without getting to the people so my first plan of action is trying to meet the Fon of each village and talk to them about the importance of preserving and selling our culture. I equally intend to show them the need to collaborate with the Ministry in their efforts to preserve their Identity.”

Commenting on her first impressions on arrival in the Division which is found in the Upper Noun Valley, Nkwenty Ngwei Sylvia said the place was full of talented artists. When she made her first call for artists in the Division a good number of talented ones turned up she explained. “They came in their numbers for registration and in the different categories of authors rights. That aside, the people of Ngoketunjia are very welcoming and are ready to listen and collaborate and help me in any way that they can to realise my ambitions. My first impressions are very positive.”

The maiden Divisional Delegate said she was very optimistic because she has all the tools that she needed to realise her dreams in Ngoketunjia. She already had a fore taste of the culture of the Division during her participation at the Bambalang Cultural Festival and the Nikai Cultural Festival of the Babungo Fondom during which she did not fail to notice the rich culture of the Division. “I saw how the people are so attached to their culture and as an opportunity to collaborate with them in the preservation of that culture and promoting it for international consumption and as a tool for social and National Integration.”

“I call on all the artists in the Division and all stakeholders to know that we now have an office in Ndop and that we are now open to work with them. They should come on board so that we create a united force to forge ahead in our quest to preserve and promote arts and culture in Ngoketunjia in particular and Cameroon in general.” 

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Kingship Ministry, Bamenda Celebrates Second Anniversary

Prophet Walter N.N. of Kingship Ministry, Bamenda has disclosed that his Ministry is celebrating the second year of its existence. According to prophet Walter N.N., it marks the aliveness of the power of God to save His people. In a startling revelation, the Pastor said God had chosen him to destroy ancestral alters that had been planted and worshiped as God in the communities. He said it was very important to know that there were no other Gods except the God of Abraham and Jacob and Jesus Christ. The Pastor was speaking during a pre-event press chat within the premises of his church near the former Bamenda City Council Premises.

The Pastor said in the past two years, they had toured the Northwest and Southwest Regions and other parts of Cameroon  as well as parts of Nigeria. Many people he said had been released from the bonds of ancestral chains and could now grow and fulfill their dreams. Many have been given the fruit of the womb, others he said had traveled especially to Dubai and other parts of the world for greener pastures. These changes he said had been made possible pursuant of their being set free from the dark ancestral altars that held them bondage from ancestral times.

  

Pastor Walter said Kingship had visited about seventeen quarters in Bamenda in a programme called operation storm the land as well as about 80% of the villages in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. He said many of them who come from these villages later on came to confirm that their lives had changed and that the Almighty God was indeed the true God and not the altars on which they had been praying and offering sacrifices.

Addressing those who look at altars as the African way of relating to God, he said “the only way we can reach out to them is through the word of God. Any culture, practice or religion that goes against the word of God is the one that should be abolished. The Almighty God that created our ancestors who died have ordered that we should worship no other God except him.”

True worshipers he said must worship God in spirit and in faith and when the word of God is worshiped in its true and real nature, the power of God manifests. Ancestral altars are certainly not the way he explained, for God doesn’t share his glory with anyone.

He further explained in the same vein that our forefathers were deceived by missionaries who came and saw the hidden riches of the continent and as such they did not give the true message simply because they needed to compromise in order to tap the riches they realised existed in Africa.

The celebrations marking this second anniversary the prophet said will involve a review of the achievements and shall be used to edify Gods people. Christ Himself the prophet said shall be celebrated through praise, singing, dancing and feasting since this was a communion designed by God before He left though remaining with God’s people now through the spirit.

The main challenges he said have so far come from people who are resisting that alters should not be destroyed. Hear him: “We have also had challenges in forms of the nature of the roads to get to the villages. In most cases I’ve had to park my car and trek for kilometers and reach out to God’s people who are in the suburbs. We have difficulties to cross rivers and climb mountains to reach out to God’s people.”

The anniversary was programmed to begin on Sunday May 14 with introductions of what the occasion was all about accompanied by prayers interceding for Cameroon in these trying moments. The second day he said would involve some of the demonstrations and the third day he said would involve feasting and closing of the event. He called on Christians to stand firm because in the race as he called it, people had to stand firm since they are so many trials on the way.

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Fonkam Azu’u, shown the door as former Governor becomes Board Chairman of ELECAM

                   

Former Governor Enow Abram Egbe has been named new Chairman of the Electoral Board of Elections Cameroon, ELECAM.

The former Governor of Adamawa region replaced Dr Samuel Fonkam AZU’U who has held the position since the creation of ELECAM. Madam Amougou née Abena was named Vice president of the Board.

Enow Abrams Egbe who served as Inspector General at the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization was appointed last year to join the Board on April 21, 2016.

Samuel Fonkam Azu’u leaves ELECAM at the time when the house seems to be moving in turbulent waters with a cold war which has always reigned even before the appointment of new Director General, Abdoulaye Babale last year.

He will be remembered for having waged a battle to establish the authority of the president of the Electoral Board over the Directorate General of Elections. But perhaps his greatest achievement was the right interpretation of the electoral law on sociological composition of electoral lists, leading to the increase of female MPs and Senators. This earned him a distinction from the Coalition of More Women in Politics, led by Prof. Justine Diffo.

Observers saw his removal as punishment for trying to clean the electoral system which would have seen a change of leadership at the upcoming polls.

Another presidential decree renewed the mandate of members for another two years.

Enow Abrams Egbe comes one year before the electoral period with four elections expected for 2018 including the Presidential.

ELECAM has recorded low turnout in the recent times in terms of registration. For the first three months only 104400 people have registered with South West region tailing the table.

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AN OPEN LETTER FROM FATHER GERALD JUMBAM TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE OF CAMEROON (NECC) – Archbishop Samuel KLEDA

Your Grace,

When I yielded to the earnest desire within me that I should write you, a friend encouraged me to do so. I consented with something of the reluctance which I developed when I thought of the huge and exalted task of writing you. I rejected the thought of writing.  After a little moment, I went on deep thought, meditation and personal prayer about this issue. When I felt the call, I held my pen and began writing until I arrived at this letter before you. It may happen to some persons to feel surprised that it is a priest who is writing an Archbishop. I do so with the happiness and conviction of speaking my own mind, in conscience, about a situation which touches us all in Cameroon. These are my own thoughts and solutions to our recent predicament -  welling from unshakeable convictions. I have written them freely without coercion from anyone but only being guided by my conscience - a small voice telling me, ‘Gerald tell the archbishop and the world your own convictions about the crisis bedeviling your homeland. Do so freely without any fear knowing that you and the Archbishop are just citizens and Christians seeking to know and serve God’. It is this voice in me that has enabled me send you this letter in its entirety and helping the world also – by addressing it an open letter - to learn from its ideas. I am happy to embrace this challenge.

Opening Remarks

I wish to begin straight away by informing Your Grace of the raison d’être of my letter. I share the conviction of the Cameroonian who has recently commented about your letter that “It is discernible from an anxious reading of the first letter of the Bishops of Cameroon, that of the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda and the present letter of the Bishops of Cameroon that the latest letter of the Bishops of Cameroon is actuated by political rather than Christian motivations.” To me the tone and spirit of your recent letter is not only Pontius Pilating your brother bishops of the Southern Cameroons, but the silence over what you were supposed to have done and have not done, is an impeachment of your brother bishops West of the Mungo. What were you supposed to do? I fear to expose my own ignorance of Episcopal policies and proceedings, but I had thought that as leaders who feel for their suffering brothers of English speaking Cameroon, you bishops of French speaking Cameroon would write a public letter condemning the act of taking whole bishops to court. We know who is behind these things; not so Archbishop? Why are we pretending to call a spade a spade when we have been given the mandate as Apostles of Jesus (who is The Truth) to defend the truth even on to the cross. To me it has been a betrayal which the Church leaders of East Cameroon ought  to hang their heads in ashamed.

Your silence has given the impression that the Bishops of  our Church province have been disobedient to the country. Our Bishops have not been unfaithful to the State. They have been united to the State very much like a believing wife to a husband who is about to commit suicide and so as a Christian wife holding to the relationship, the Bishops have struggled recently to save not themselves, but the government from the crime of political apostasy. 

We of the Southern Cameroons, if we act consistently with our history, we cannot be loyal subjects to the despicable and tyrannous Yaoundé government. Archbishop, you speak of Decentralization and you offer us it as the best gift you think fitting for the resolution of this crisis? We are determined to decline a gift so laden with spurious promises and deceitful propensities. And who can blame us for so doing? Who should be surprised that Yaoundé would still do to Buea what it did after the Foumban constitutional conference of 1961 – turn traitor to the very constitution that bound them together as brothers with two equal strengths (and not that spurious decentralization you are talking about that wants to equate Buea with Garoua as if you do not know that Buea is the capital of a country and Garoua is a mere region of another country) or turn Cain against his brother Abel by killing everything we (Abel) had as culture, economy, jurisprudence, education, politics, military etc.  The Church is the joy and happiness of all of us, and therefore, when justice cries out as it did in the Southern Cameroons (with rapes and killings and abductions and military bestiality over defenseless civilians), it is the duty of the Bishops to speak out loud for the poor and the underprivileged. You spoke but we never got that loudness and that weak voice gave the Yaoundé political cabal encouragement to go ahead.  Our Bishops of the Southern Cameroons took the bull by the horns and spoken out loud for the poor and used history, scriptures and the Church’s social teachings to state their case because they love the Church which is people and not money.

The world of politics has its own logic and truth that brooks no breaking. One of them is that of nemesis – that any despotism that goes up would come down.  Yaoundé has perpetuated that tyranny on Buea and that tyranny is about to have its nemesis. Remember history – that there are two states in Cameroon represented by Yaoundé and Buea. That is why I will always equate the two capitals for that is how it was supposed to be.

I wish to let you know something of the people of the Southern Cameroons which many French Speaking Cameroonians seem to be ignorant of. They are people who do not distinguish between their love of country and their love of the Church. They love those two things with their whole hearts. Their patriotism is ethical, concrete, and religiously dutiful - reason why your brother bishops of Southern Cameroons (in the example of that pragmatic culture) have spoken for their subjugated and dispossessed people against such a stinking political tyranny as Biya’s. That is why though many from East Cameroon are comfortable with  the atheistic political system glorifyingly baptizedlaicite, it has been scandal of the highest order to the religious sensitivity of Southern Cameroons who like true Africans (and tinged by Anglicanism’s reverence for  God and respect for the Monarch) believe that without God and indigenous culture life is impossible. We know very well that this atheism we see in Cameron politics is not from your own ancestors but it is borrowed from France. The people East of the Mungo have been educated in Gallican opinions. We of the West have been educated in Anglican opinions. The respect of each other’s opinions from those educational systems have been what La republique du Cameroun has deprived us of, and it pains us to the marrow. That is why our teachers and lawyers took to the streets to peacefully demonstrate their anger and protest against an evil system. They were met with an autocratic response by a government you fear to criticize.

The Testimony of Early Church History

To explain my case I make the first century of the Church my special model; It was a virgin Church, yet, a period afflicted by the political autocracy of the Roman empire and its emperors. When Emperors Decius and Diocletian slaughtered thousands of Christians because they stood for truth, the Christian family stood courageously strong against that political cruelty. Both bishops and laity were one against such political tyranny in the example of the Bishops of Southern Cameroons with their maligned flock. They publicly and formally abjured to worship the gods of the Roman empire’s totalitarianism. The picture is what is happening today in our land the Southern Cameroons by the colonial emperors of La Republique du Cameroun. St. Athanasius as a result would go on exile and St Chrysostom would be sent off to Cucusus to be worried to death by an empress. St. Ignatius of Antioch would be arrested by the political authorities and taken to Rome to be given to wild beasts to eat him up because of the Truth. And that is why I am angry with the behavior of the Bishops of Southern Cameroons to have allowed you walk around doing what you are doing and  giving the impression like they have no authority over their jurisdictions as full consecrated bishops of Local Sees of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. If the governance of that Church called Cameroon is beyond your governance, the best thing is to inform the Pope to send a Vatican delegate to do that job. I feel your going round Southern Cameroons for such an exercise is the unwisest thing the Bishops of that Church province have allowed to happen in recent times.

Good Shepherds lay Life for Flock

Times like this are dangerous times. Times when our future is decide by a clay footed political clique that has bastardized the fortunes of the British Cameroons to a shambolic muddle. Sacred altars have been desecrated. For if we are to score the Church leadership performance in these times, it will be clear to all that the tail has been wagging the dog.

In moral and spiritual terms, much has been given to religious leadership, and much is expect of her. That is why the tenacity and integrity that Christian giants like Cardinal Christian Tumi and Cardinal Albert Malula, Mgr. Oscar Romero and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. have mustered in the world, take us back to the visionary words of President John F. Kennedy:

Of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment of each of us…recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state…our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answer to four questions:

Were we truly men of courage…

Were we truly men of judgment…

Were we truly men of integrity…

Were we truly men of dedication…

With the towering paradigm of Pope Francis in recent times, the world correctly recognizes that Christianity has the potential to lead the way as champion of mores and faith. Perhaps it would be much truer in the Cameroon context. However, the current Catholic national leadership certainly has not lived up to its possibilities, for the most part because the majority of its bishops have been intimidated into silence and inactivity. A Bayangi proverb goes that, “a man who cannot challenge what is wrong is not better than a corpse”.  We are living in times where our political and spiritual shepherds have been found wanting in challenging falsehood, and therefore Cameroon has turned in to a graveyard, a cemetery of silence in the face of blatant half-truths, divide-and-rule tactics, flagrant disrespect of human rights, mass abductions and killings.The National Episcopal Council (NEC) has been silent because it concerns the British Cameroons. Though it is disgraceful, we thank them. We thank them for the  powerful memento sent to the world that there are two countries in this country. It reminds us of the evil of silence before evil.

 We know very well that when theNational Episcopal Council (NECC) speaks out, it is listened to by the political powers in Cameroon. When tinged by the inspiration and endorsement of Cardinal Christian Tumi in 2000, the NECC spoke against the canker warm of bribery and corruption. The whole world listened and the government of Cameroon adjusted. Those were prophetic times for the clergy. Spiritual leaders the world over are always pace-setters; their intervention on socio-political disasters has always been prototypical, precisely because it sets the tyrants quaking. With the retirement and deaths among your circles, of names like Ndongmo, Tumi, Etoga, Wouking, Verdzekov, Awah, the national Episcopal Council all this while has been a sleeping bag. Today, NEC has been a fiasco, if we must speak the truth.

Cameroon should be courageous to accept they are flawed and stop blaming France or Britain. The Bribery and corruption that we have been African champions for more than a decade, is self-inflicted. Bribery and corruption are a moral and spiritual problem. And therefore the moral and spiritual authorities are to blame.  If the Church truly cared for its members, the problem will not be happening every now and then. And the oppressed people of British Cameroons are undergoing something of a genocide now because the National Episcopal Council (NEC) is on holidays, and the world knows that too well.

We know what the bishops of the British Cameroons have gone through from the national episcopacy because they kicked up the storm in the daring letter they wrote (despite earlier hesitations) not because they were hoping the leadership of NEC would notice, but precisely because they knew that with the 2016-2017 NEC leadership in charge, every raped, maimed and unjustly imprisoned British Cameroonian might as well add NEC to their laundry list of Do-It-Yourself. The bishops of the British Cameroons came up with another communiqué by the very to the effect that they have not closed down their schools and that they are waiting for the Catholic pupils and students to return to school. But right up till now, the pupils and students have not returned, meaning that the parents have lost faith in the Church’s hierarchy. It is precisely because the Cameroon National Church lacks the courage to support what is right that people are going their own sweet ways.  Is it asking too much from Church leaders to say good shepherds must lay life for flock?

The Writing is on the Wall

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