Cameroon: Anti-Corruption Activists Jailed

The leader of the Citizens' Association for the Defense of Collective Interests, ACDIC, Bernard Njonga, has been slammed a two-month imprisonment term. The Mfoundi High Court delivered the judgment recently after a trial that began last December. The court found Njonga and one of his collaborators, Jean Georges Etele, guilty of organising an illegal protest march.

By Kini Nsom

The court sentenced the duo for two months but suspended the sentence for a period of three years. Besides the imprisonment term, the civil society activist and his colleague will pay a fine of FCFA 26.500. This means that if Njonga and his colleague organise any protest march within a period of three years, the police will take him straight to prison. But, the verdict discharged and acquitted three other accused persons. Bernard Njonga and four of his collaborators were arrested in Yaounde on December 10, 2008 for organizing a street demonstration to protest against corruption in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Before the protest march, the ACDIC authorities had published a report that exposed corruption in the Agriculture Ministry. The report revealed that FCFA billions of funds from the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, HIPC-I allocated to common initiative groups, CIGs involved in the production of maize, were embezzled with the complicity of senior officials in the ministry.
The report indicted some officials in the Ministry of Agriculture for creating fake CIGs in order to line their pockets with the HIPC-I funds.

ACDIC also exposed a corruption deal in which some 60 tractors the Indian Government donated to the Ministry of Agriculture to help farmers groups boost maize production, were divided among some Ministers and senior government officials.They concluded that 62 percent of the funds allocated to farmers in 2008 were embezzled. A press conference ACDIC organised to launch the report in Yaounde ran into a storm of disapproval by administrative officials.

Earlier planned to take place at the Yaounde Hilton Hotel, the ACDIC press conference failed to hold because the Divisional Officer for Yaounde III slammed a ban on it. It later took place somewhere at the Rue CEPER neighborhood. Ironically, Njonga was sentenced after the Vice Prime Minister in charge of Agriculture and Rural Development, Jean Kuete, received him and encouraged him to continue fighting corruption in his ministry.

The situation is akin to an earlier incident in which two journalists in Yaounde were recently slammed a five-month imprisonment term for attempting to expose corruption at the National School Administration and Magistracy, ENAM. The court charged the journalists with attempted blackmail against the Director of General Affairs.