Corruption Thrives Where Poverty Persists

When ever I hear or read about the hue and cry on the fight against corruption, I laugh out my lungs because such song and dance slogan is not only like playing to the gallery but is more like an idle walk in a rowdy park.

By Paddy Awanfor

It is no longer news that our country is among highly rated corrupt Countries in the World as well as being a heavily indebted poor country. Somebody once said that one of his many solutions to end corruption in this country is for Government to put all known billionaires on the stakes and execute them mercilessly and without exception. Fine and good with a 'but'.

I take exception to the generalized clause of 'all billionaires without exception' because such generalisation in my opinion is sweepingly inappropriate since we cannot vouch with any degree of certainty that all billionaires in Cameroon are corrupt and as such, culpable for the stakes.
The fact that we, the majority, are helplessly, hopelessly and wretchedly poor to extremes, should not give rise to hate or envy or jealous for those few that are genuinely rich because to say that all billionaires in Cameroon without exception are corrupt is not only a biased statement overstated but a senseless presumption as well.

What is generally accepted is the fact that all morally minded persons hate riches that are not earned but acquired. Riches that are gotten outside the norms of virtues like honesty and prudence with the fear of God as the guide .In fact, riches that are not earned by dint of hard work but are simply, easily and leisurely acquired through astuteness and "mago mago" tactics like fraught, deceit, stealing, manipulation, 419, internet scams, bribery, etc, etc although the definition of corruption appears to centre mainly on official corruption which entails bribe taking.

An opinion may be probable if it suggests that billionaires who have been investigated on the basis of suspicion, tried and found guilty by the law courts to have acquired their billions corruptly should be made to put their backs on the stakes for execution. Yet, that probability is still debatable as to whether or not the government of this country is ready to reintroduce "firing squads" as methods of combating crimes like official corruption (bribe taking) which is undeniably on the upsurge.

I say so because it is not long that I discussed this issue of "Firing squad" in an article I wrote in The Sunday Eden Vol. 1 No 10 of Sunday 22 February -Sunday 1 March 2009 on page 8 captioned "Rising Crime Wave: The Pros And Cons On Facing The Firing squad".

I hear that social scientists believe that a problem can only be said to have been properly solved if its roots cause(s) has /have been eliminated. This problem of corruption cannot be different from other problems whose root cause (s) must first of all be traced and tackled. Just as one of the main root causes of rising crime wave has been identified to be unemployment, so too, one of the main root causes of corruption, in my opinion, is the excruciating poverty that is tearing our people apart like an affliction if not like a curse.

I know that just as moral purists and sociologists hold that stealing may not necessarily be a function of poverty considering that the very rich still find pleasure in stealing from the public till, one may want to argue also that bribe taking may not necessarily be a function of poverty given that very highly placed public service employees with heavy pay pockets of tax payers money still find pleasure in taking bribes even from the poor.

That logic not withstanding, Cameroonians of today virtually find themselves living in a perpetually poverty -stricken country in the midst of plenty but with little or nothing for the gander. Cameroon is luckily blessed with enormous resources, talented and hard working people but for its serious ailment of a cancerous nature like the siphoning of public funds into private pockets through misappropriation and embezzlement, mismanagement of both human and material resources and above all the stacking of the country's much needed money into foreign banks

The government of this country needs urgent and drastic measures to bail its citizens out of poverty and corruption rather than shamelessly lifting up its head high in pride with little or nothing on the ground to show. Cameroon at 49, has moved from bad to worse degenerating into one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world with increase in societal ills.

By the way, from the look of things, it appears as if the Prime Minister, like his predecessors, does not have the necessary statutory state authority to pursue the fight against corruption to its logical end following the removal of the National Anti-Corruption Commission from the Prime Minister's Office to the Presidency of the Republic. Also, it is common knowledge that most of those in government whose duties it is to implement policy directives culpably stand guilty of dirty cupboards full of skeletons.

However, President Biya's courage to sanction the arrest, detention, trial and imprisonment of some of his cronies hitherto considered as "untouchables" has not gone unnoticed. That is, in his vow to personally oversee the effectiveness of the campaign against corruption that has become a dangerous canker on the path of his greater ambitions programme. But, Mr. President could earn more "thumbs up" if he granted his Prime Minister some amount of additional power of state authority that can enable him to discreetly put in place certain state mechanisms that can speed up the retrieval of the country's stolen billions (not by all billionaires) now lying idle in foreign banks because the imprisonment of looters without a corresponding recovery of their booty is a sheer exercise in futility tantamount to an expensive joke.

Paradoxically, even though 80% of our population is believed to be poverty - stricken, Cameroonians have slowly but steadily cultivated a culture of living happily in a decayed environment where poverty appears to be a way of life, where corruption seems to be the purpose of governance, where merit is shun for mediocrity, where morals have been brazenly thrown to the dogs, where those without the guts to steal are looked upon as misfits, where capable and competent people are pushed from pillar to post, where tribalism is the order of the day, where justice is hard to come by, where duty consciousness is no longer any body's business, where the code of life has changed from the survival of the "fittest" to the survival of the fastest, etc, etc.

My last word here is that for government to manifest the seriousness of its intentions and commitment to effectively drive home its policies of good governance, anti-corruption campaign, etc, etc, it must first of all be seen to have strenuously eliminated all facets of poverty before anything else because as I have averred above, corruption thrives only where poverty persists. That is in most cases.