Well-planted time bomb in Yaounde!

Why has relocating petty traders in Yaounde become an impossible task?

There is groaning and cursing in downtown Yaounde. Thousands of petty traders who were evicted from improvised locations that were destroyed to give the Pope a more aerated and sunny town are still unsettled. The city delegate Ntsimi Evouna passed the buck to Paul Biya who is taking his time to decide. We hope it is not too late when he does so. We also take the opportunity to deplore the many abusive management practices of Yaounde: unilateral decision-making, and a painfully slow administration etc.

The visit of the Pope to Yaounde last month was widely regarded as a success. But, for a sizeable class of petty traders in downtown Yaounde the visit spelled disaster.
The government decided at the last minute to clear out the thousands of petty businesses that illegally occupied street pavements, crevasses and gaps in between buildings.
Though the occupation was illegal, it had been so for so many years that a certain legitimacy had been established. Over the long decades of poor economic performance in Cameroon these micro-businesses had become a reliable livelihood for thousands of families.
Then in one fell swoop public authorities evicted them with little, if any notice! The men watched helpless how Council bulldozers smashed their premises, with anti-riot troops on standby.
The Pope’s visit since ended, but the government has not so far relocated the petty businessmen. Everyday hordes of idle men throng the city centre bemoaning their predicament. Pick pocketing and other minor crimes are on the rise.
The idle traders have several times planned to demonstrate in order to draw the government’s and the public’s attention to their plight but each time police nip the plan in the bud.
To divert growing irritation on the matter, Gilbert Ntsimi Evouna, the Yaounde delegate washed off his hands and explained that he was still waiting for a decision from the government to whom he has since made proposals for resettlement.
Fingers have since been pointing at Paul Biya who probably does not suspect how potentially explosive the gathering anger downtown Yaounde is. The president is taking his time on the matter. For the long term planning of Yaounde it would be advisable to go way out of town to resettle the traders. The experience of the movement of the Douala motor park to Mvan in recent years is a case in point. At first it looked distant enough from town but in less than a decade Mvan has become so crowded that shifting the park even further away on the Douala road would still be the right thing to do now.

Yet the appropriateness of a new market site for the displaced traders is only part of the problem. The real problem is that government does not give sufficient thought to matters and acts in haste or on the spur of the moment.
That approach victimises the traders and at the same time makes the government appear antagonistic. Is there a reason for creating such a mutually hostile situation when the Pope’s visit was known several months in advance? Why didn’t the government think out its programme more completely and notify the traders in good time?
The ideal would have been to give notice in good time and at the same time prepare a resettlement market in order to facilitate a smooth transfer. Why is government penalising citizens who only want to eke out a living for themselves and their families?
The government equally conveys the impression of incompetence. Why would it take so long for public authorities to decide on resettlement with so much space still available all around Yaounde? It is sad but true that much of this incompetence arises from the way government operates. Its highly centralised functioning obliges that matters of doubtful importance still be sent to the president for his approval.

Centralisation
The inherent shortcomings of centralisation would have been remedied by fluidity and dispatch in the treatment of files. No. They are even further compounded by a baffling maze of slow processes that never seem to end! You absolutely need the intervention of people to get a file out of the works. But the more important problem, it would appear, is the absence of cabinet decision-making whereby policy matters are discussed at meetings of policy ministers before implementation. In Yaounde Paul Biya personalises this process as much as he can.
Decision-making in government as such is devoid of the contribution of the intelligence and experience of the governmental team. Having decided, Paul Biya details a minister to proceed with implementation. Sometimes the matter may not be within the minister’s portfolio. No doubt, the problems of this approach are many.

CAMAIRCO, the new national air carrier that succeeds Cameroon Airlines, was for instance, foisted on the government for implementation. The president decided all by himself, against the huge odds stacked against the success of the venture. CAMAIR’s failure has still not been analysed nor understood. The president even demanded to have the air carrier in operation in three months, i.e. seven months late now! How did he arrive at that? Why didn’t he get the views of technical experts? How comfortable does he feel now with that decision that was well advertised? Moreover, given the yawning deficit in human and socio-economic development in Cameroon, would a new air carrier be a priority at this time, before education, health-care delivery, and a road network? The problems arising from Yaounde’s personalised decision-making can again be observed in roads that the president has again unilaterally decided would be redone. The recent decisions to expand the Nsimalen airport road and the road through Emana are examples. Both roads are only about two decades old! Why was there no foresight?

Why would the government have taken so much trouble to build an airport so far away from town (24 kms) and failed to conceive of a sizeable enough road to link it to the town? It can now be said that having missed the opportunity at that beginning, it is now a doubtful decision to embark upon a dual carriage way.
It will be extremely expensive now, partly because of the costly compensation to pay for the hundreds of premises that will have to be shifted further backwards.
The funds would better be applied to other more urgent development projects. A modest widening, straightening and smoothing of the Nsimalen road are what are needed now.
Like the airport road, the road through Emana is a fairly recent road. The same question applies: why did the government not have the foresight at the planning stage?
The Douala-Yaounde road is prone to accidents essentially because of its narrowness. Given the intensity of the traffic on that road commonsense would at planning stage have suggested a dual carriageway. And, if that were not the case, a good nine-meter wide road would have been the reasonable thing than the human trap that the road has since become.

Ahmadou Ahidjo
Paul Biya will surely say the road was Ahmadou Ahidjo’s, but that wouldn’t still answer the question why a considerable expansion had since not been undertaken on the very important and busy road. These visible consequences of unilateral decision-making are surely matched by many more that will never be known to the public, which take a heavy toll on the public treasury. With Cameroon’s disastrous economic growth rate of 3.2% it is far from helpful if important development projects have to be done again only a few years after. That is evidence of loss of the sense of priority.
With due regards, Paul Biya must admit that his unilateral approach to decision making is extremely prejudicial to the government and the country as a whole. The errors are many, expensive and time wasting. Moreover it does not make sense at all to ignore the input of senior assistants whose function is to provide support from their combined intelligences and experiences. All presidents, from Washington through Paris to Moscow personally chair policy meetings once every week. They are all directly involved in the making of important policy decisions and debates can sometimes be lively.

Paul Biya should not deny himself a practice that only strengthens him and makes the government more effective. What happens everywhere confirms the fact that being a political leader and head of state does not render anyone more intelligent than others. Leadership is a role that also requires the resource support of one’s collaborators.
For Cameroon one way of getting the government move faster is to make the Prime Minister work independently in treating the daily affairs of the government in such a way that they do not again have to be sent to the presidency for vetting.
Granting the PM autonomy is stewardship delegation whereby the steward renders account of his stewardship periodically. But all delegation, and stewardship delegation of authority in particular, is very much depended on a high level of trust for the steward.
Centralisation, which involves direct control and supervision of the work of the subordinate, is rooted in distrust and doubt about competence. In the early years of independence in the 1960s and 1970s with so much political uncertainty and danger of sabotage, Ahmadou Ahidjo might have had some justification for creating a highly centralised administration. The word sabotage was commonly used in those days!

But several decades into the post-independence era with so much of the system defined, clarified, and in control, and given a much bigger and more complex administration than in those early days, all with corresponding demands by a much bigger public, Paul Biya cannot any more justify the defective centralisation still practiced in Cameroon today. It has failed and should not continue. We think it is high time to go for delegation and empower others to work more efficiently at their different levels. It is high time for administrative efficiency in order to meet the demands of a modern state and good governance.
And if the president is still reticent about this let him note what damage his practice of unilateral decision-making is causing Cameroon. By not associating others fully in the decision-making process the result is poor and unconvincing; it lacks foresight that the intelligence and experience of others would provide.
An admirer once asked Isaac Newton, the 17th century English scientist and mathematician why it was that he saw everything so much better than everyone else. He could see better, Newton said, because he had the advantage of having sat on the backs of others.
The Bible also has a lesson in this regard for Paul Biya: “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Or doesn’t it matter to the president?
Source:The Herald