Of Reigning and Ruling

Of the various forms of leaders in the world, some reign and some rule. When a leader reigns, it means he is just a figure head of the collectivity over which he presides. The one who rules is the one who puts his stamp on the collectivity over which he presides and has total control of the daily business of such. In Cameroon and Africa, except for Morocco and Lesotho where there are constitutional monarchies, ascension to power, is supposed to be through elections, during which the people choose those to rule them and preside over their destiny.

By Christopher Fon Achobang

Unfortunately, this is not always the case as most of those pretenders to the throne have arrived the helm not through the ballot box. Whatever fate projected them to the highest level is not my concern here but what they eventually do at the top. Some people have hurried to call these leaders who are just wall papers or window dressing, absentee presidents. I wish to call them Off Topic Presidents. This is because in all their actions they betray their lack of knowledge of the people they reign over. In fact, when they tinker the constitutions of their countries to give themselves Life Presidencies, there is no other way to consider them other than little monarchs.

In Britain, where there is a constitutional monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who reigns since 1952, the British have always elected a Prime Minister (PM) who rules. The elected PM takes responsibility for all what goes on in the British polity. When the PM fails to deliver, the people have the right to pass a no confidence vote on him, in which case he resigns calling fresh elections. In most African countries like Cameroon, nobody takes responsibility for leadership failure.

Recently, like most patriotic Cameroonians, I was shocked when the reigning life president missed a golden opportunity at the United Nations General Assembly where the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were discussed to press for UN support. Cameroon has been going through a cholera pandemic with hundreds of deaths. The palpable causes are lack of sanitation and potable water. As sordid as that might sound, a country which hopes to be an emerging nation in 25 years is unable to harness the huge water resources available for its thirsty populations to drink.

At the 2010 UN General Assembly meeting in New York, Cameroon’s for life reigning monarch presented a speech calling for more representation of Africa in the power broking organs of the UN. Mr. President went off topic and mentioned nothing about the cholera in Cameroon. This Presidential OFFTOPICKSM confused me and I went ahead to ask whether the Cameroonian delegation was representing the African Union. Even African union meetings have always been snubbed by the reigning monarch of Etoudi. He has never cared to attend regional meetings where regional leaders meet to brainstorm on issues pertaining to their people.

The Lake Chad Basin Commission has been meeting next door in Ndjamena to brainstorm on how to put back water into Lake Chad and prevent it from drying up. The meeting brought sympathizers from as far as Senegal, which is not even watered by Lake Chad basin. Libyan leader, Khadafy and his Senegalese counterpart, Abdoulaye Wade attended the meeting and made important inputs because Lake Chad has become a global issue. Yet the reigning off topic president in Cameroon was absent.

If the reigning regime in Yaounde ruled Cameroon, they should be able to bring an end to most of the ills plaguing the country. Corruption, embezzlement, human rights abuses, bad governance, and lack of democracy preoccupy the leadership of Cameroon. It takes just one executive action of a ruler to fix the mess. But the life president has been at a loss for more than seven years as to how to get out of these dire straits. He once asked a rhetorical question, “Why is it that a country (Cameroon) blessed with huge natural and human resources is unable to have its economic takeoff?” I was ready to volunteer the answer and the solution. A prerequisite to my addressing the issue was for him to tender his resignation. Unpredictably, the captain who had lost his bearings went ahead a few months later to stage a constitutional coup and awarded himself a life presidency.

Some observers posit that bad leaders only appear to have control over their people when they are about to violate their fundamental rights. They excel in dictatorship, oligarchy, divide and rule, and bad governance.

Mr. Life president should be able to order the improvement of so many basic things in this country. His predecessor, the benevolent despot, Ahmdou Babatoura Ahidjo built presidential palaces in all regions of the country. He took time to take the heartbeat of the country by paying visits to all parts of his country. He went by road some of the time and could gauge the bad roads. For very long, the reigning monarch does not know what is happening in parts of Cameroon. The last time he came to Buea was during the 1999 Mount Cameroon volcanic eruption. Since then, the road between Bonaberi and Bekoko had degraded beyond human dignity. PMs Peter Musonge and Inoni Ephraim used this horrible road to go back to their village every weekend. If Cameroon had a ruler, he would have ruled that the road be fixed. The last time Mr. President was blocked by the River Mfoundi on his way to the airport, he immediately ordered FCFA 23 billion work to widen and stabilize the Mfoundi bed. At least he could gauge where the shoes was pinching him.

Before I go, let me share an anecdote about what happened to an absentee leader with you. Sometime in the 1980s I lived in a small community called Esse, 75 kilometers Northeast of Yaounde. Ateba worked there as the sub delegate of agriculture. He usually spent 80 percent of his time out of home. The family knew his habits and took maximum advantage of his prolonged absence. The 20 percent of his time he spent at home was just for breakfast, dinner and sleep. The wife soon started feeling free and the daughter got pregnant. For nine months the daughter lived in the same house without the absentee father knowing. The wife had told her husband their first daughter had travelled to Yaounde to live with the aunt. After the ninth month of pregnancy, the girl gave birth to a set of twins at the Esse District hospital. One morning, Ateba was going to the hospital to visit a colleague who had an accident. When he reached the hospital, those who saw him asked if he came to visit the daughter who had delivered. He was surprised saying none of his daughters was pregnant. He was led by the hand to the ward where the daughter and her twins was admitted. Ateba collapsed on seeing the daughter breastfeeding a set of twins. This is what happens to absentee leaders.

African leaders should become rulers. They should know their countries like a captain knows his ship. Because the captain knows his ship he does not wait for it to lisp before piloting it to a safe port. African problems cannot become global problems, because if all Africans perished, the other races will rejoice and troop in to occupy and reap its resources. Of course, the other races, if given the chance will come in and also transform King Solomon’s Mines (Africa) into a Garden of Eden.