Indomitable Against Zambia and Sudan...What Next?

By Innocent Chia
After shredding the Copper Bullets of Zambia and drowning the Nile Crocodiles of Sudan, the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon will be having a face-off against the 2004 African Nations Cup title winners, the Carthage Eagles of Tunisia. The quarter final encounter between both teams comes exactly eight (8) years after their last semi-finals encounter at the 2000 African Nations Cup that was co-hosted by Ghana and Nigeria, both jointly replacing Zimbabwe. The Indomitable Lions chewed-up the Carthage Eagles in that encounter, with Eto'o Fils scoring one of many goals leading to his top scoring position in the history of African soccer. Will history repeat itself in favor of the Indomitable Lions or will the Tunisian side maintain the momentum of their recent dominance in the arena?

Coming off a humbling defeat at the hands of the Egyptian Pharaohs the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon regained its poise as a serious contender to tie Egypt for a fifth title of the African Cup of Nations. But skeptics of the team's prowess have been fast pointing out that the wins over Zambia and Sudan were expected easy wins for the team. Although both nations did not pose serious trouble for the Lions, they continued exposing the deficiencies of the Lions. On more than one occasion against Sudan, the sweeping defender for the Lions, Rigobert Song found himself upfront when the Sudanese offensive machine was in his backyard. An Eto'o Fils playing against the Cameroon side would have had a field day with the opportunities that were squandered by the Nile Crocodiles and thankfully saved by the vigilant keeper Kameni. But the defense was not alone. The midfield was almost non-existent for the Lions. Most of the players were cramped up front, leaving the middle ripe for explosive offensive counter-attacks. These areas could be exploited by the more agile and experienced offensive line of Tunisia with the duo of Francileudo Dos Santos and Amine Chermiti.

Ardent supporters, however see otherwise and have been re-energized by what they describe as convincing victories by the Lions. So, in a speak common to Cameroonians, "on ne change pas une equipe qui gagne" - there is no need to make changes to a winning team. Besides, they are confident that the low-scoring performance of the two qualifying group D teams, Tunisia and Angola, would abode well for the Lions that are averaging close to 3.5 goals per game. The Lions have a uphill task to continue the goal-fest against the Tunisian side on Monday, February 4th, 2008.

Innocent Chia
Citizen Journalist
Email: innochia@gmail.com

Mummified Lions of Cameroon: Will they Withstand the Bullets of Zambia?

By Innocent Chia

If ever a greater irony there was it is this: Cameroon's national football is the most common denominator in the land, but it is also the point of least agreement. Cameroonians are known to bury their political hatchets, ethnic and class differences when their Lions are playing. But talk to any number of Cameroonians and they will never be agreed on several things concerning the team - its composition, coaching staff, intervention of the political elite in the team's management, style of play or lack thereof etc. The differences even go as far as the motives for which different groups and individuals are watching the team; a point that we will revisit much later. Whatever the case, the heated discussions and disagreements surface mostly when the Lions suffer a humiliating trouncing, such as bowing to the Pharaohs of Egypt (2-4) at the African Cup of Nations in Ghana.

Cocky Cameroonian fans were bragging that their international selection with big time stars would simply erase the team of Egyptian unknowns. After all, of the 23 Lions selected there are 19 playing professional football Europe, including Eto'o Fils, FIFA's chosen face for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. As for the rest of the squad, one plays in Asia, another in South America and one other in Tunisia. A whopping total of 01 player is based in Cameroon, and as second reserve goalkeeper Janvier Charles Mbarga of Canon of Yaounde will definitely not be seeing the field of play during this tournament.Team captain Song greets the Prime Minister while Eto'o awaits his turn...to take over the team.

Ballooned by the professional status of the squad, its supporters entitled themselves to a sweeping victory over the Pharaohs. But that was on paper that they were Indomitable. On the field of play they were Paper Lions mummified by the Pharaohs. The Indomitable Lions and its supporters failed to revisit the tell-tell signs of recent history and how the Pharaohs have been making their lives a living hell. Cameroon forgot that they failed to attend the World cup in 2006, which would have made it their fifth consecutive trip, because of a 1-1 tie with the Pharaohs in Yaounde. A win against the Pharaohs would have crushed the hopes of the Elephants of Cote d'Ivoire from attending its first ever World Cup tournament. Helas! The Lions, after failing to secure wins against Sudan, the weaklings of the group, roused expectations that beating the Pharaohs handily in Cairo on the away leg could be equated with another victory at home, in Yaounde. They were wrong. They stayed home and watched the World Cup in 2006 from afar.

What explains the success of the Pharaohs over the Lions? They are a team that has had a lot of playing time together. Of 23 players in the selection there are 17 of them playing in Egypt. Only five (5) of the players play professionally outside of Egypt. It is also noteworthy that most of the 17 players play either for Al-Ahly or for Ismaily. This gives the team great potency because of the cohesiveness that has been rehearsed over and over again. Compare this to the 23 juggernauts that make up the Lions and you know you just brewed a panache for yourself. Besides, the offensive linemen of the Pharaohs were riding an express train on the field while the fatigued defensive lineup of the Lions was riding on the back of motorcycles. The main sweeper for the Lions, Rigobert Bahanag Song has been ripe for retirement since the 1998 world cup tournament and may just constitute another liability against the Zambia Chipolopolo (the Copper Bullets) on Saturday.

Like the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Copper Bullets are not to be taken lightly by the limping Lions of Cameroon. While the Copper Bullets are without the impressive five (5) African Cup of Nations trophies that prefixes the Egyptian squad, they have ambition and determination to go past their 2 times runners up resume of 1994 and 1974. All they need to do in the game is to triple team Eto'o Fils and pray that the rest of the Cameroonian team remains true to character and stay without a goal. They pull a draw against Cameroon. But it is my suspicion that they will be going for more. And there is motivation to go for more. In a telephone conversation with the team after its 3-0 victory over underdogs Sudan, the Zambian Vice-President Banda said Cameroon could easily be beaten because they were playing 'big names' while Zambia was dependant on all her players, regardless of their status.
“Yes! Yes! It’s very possible to beat Cameroon on Saturday. We are playing players not names,” he said. “The team played well in the Sudan match and made Zambians proud and all the people including the government leaders are behind them," he said.

That is the hard part for the Lions of Cameroon. The Indomitable Lions is a team that has adoring supporters. But it is also a team that is despised by many Cameroonians because the exploits of the team are used for political gain by the good-for-nothing ruling elite. Avid observers of the political arena in Cameroon will point to time after time when the Executive has taken advantage to sneak-in unpopular legislation while the population is a distracted with a competition involving its national team. The current attempt at passing legislation that will guarantee a life presidency for Paul Biya is a case in point. Will the Lions cash in on the PM's promise of 73 million francs each?

This explains why so many Cameroonians literally go on their knees praying to their God that the team's performance should be mediocre. Many a times, the prayer is for the team not to qualify at all because national life grinds to a standstill. But in the background of the stillness there are all kinds of machinations by the ruling political class and its hand-clapping, rubber stamp stolen majority at the National Assembly. Football is not always football.
Whatever be the case, the Lions of Cameroon and the nation need to face up to certain realities:
1) The squad is a disjointed one that needs to be demolished. There are very few players on that team that deserve to continue playing for the enjoyment of soccer lovers.
2) There are some of the players, including team captain Rigobert Song and Geremi Njitap that deserve to go on retirement. They have given their best and need to move on and keep themselves for club football.
3) A new selection must be put together if the country qualifies for South Africa 2008. That selection must include at least 50 percent of local players that should be full starters. This has the benefit of growing the local league.
4) The Cameroon Football federation and the Ministry of Sports need to build befitting infrastructure in which the team can train. There is no reason for Cameroon not to have good stadia after all the money earned from 5 world cup participations.
5) Cameroon can find a coach from within the ranks of all its star players of yesteryears and stop importing coaches that produce little results.

Innocent Chia
Citizen Journalist.
Email: innochia@gmail.com

SEX CORRUPTION AND AIDS IN UNIVERSITIES

The list that was reportedly submitted in his confessional to the Priest contained the names of over five dozen female University students that he had been having sex with. Over 60 names! Some of the girls were recent graduates. The vine yard had it that some of the girls were present at the wake keeping. The youngest student on the list was said to be 18 years of age and a good friend and age mate of the daughter of the deceased University don. He now lay in casket, a charred-black face looking pale white from the mortician’s reconstruction and restitution efforts. Yet, even though tuned out of his mortal remains, the world behind him could not help but continue wondering at the monstrosity of what his sexual licentiousness meant to his dependent family, disillusioned mistresses, the University and community at large.

He had been a lecturer at the Yaounde University in Cameroon, West Africa. He had established more than a reputation for himself after several years of lecturing in the English Department. Pass grades were not always attributed to studious, smart and attentive female students. Rather, any pretty witless female student that dropped her dross in his office-turned-motel-room scored more than the pass grade. In fact, it now became an open-secret that those female students were possibly on his “A” list for possible AIDS infection.

The idea of a “list” that could not be made public was repugnant, repulsive and shocking depending on who you talked to. But it certainly gave lee way for a lot of speculation on who was or not on the list. If true, the number of students on that list was a tenth of the entire female population in the English department. That would be 1 of every 10 girls. Who was that one?

I could not help but count myself lucky for not enrolling in the Department. Even better, my girlfriend was reading Law like myself. But I got the adrenaline rush from revisiting conversations of her telling me of a Teacher Associate (TA) that she was frequenting in the English Department. She never disclosed the nature of the relationship, only telling me how insecure I was. So I started thinking the worst. What if she had a sexual relationship with this “friend” who may have had unprotected sex with one of the “infected” mistresses? After all, TA’s wield enough power over undergraduate students. It was already midnight past. I would go to her hostel in the morning.

The question was to the point: - “Are you having sex with that “friend” of yours in the English Department?”

What?” She asked.

Just answer my question and stop buying time. You heard me…

Well, go hang yourself! Why should it bother you, Mr. Condom?

So, how come you accused “Mr. Condom” of your pregnancy some four months ago?

I was pulling your legs to squeeze some money out of you…

You ought to be ashamed of yourself….I said on my way out, feeling the weight of the world fall off my shoulders. Still, the relief would be temporal until the results of an AIDS test that came back negative a couple of years later.

The military, students and prostitutes have respectively led the AIDS prevalence charts in Cameroon. There is a nexus between the proclivities for reckless sexual behavior with multiple partners and high wages or salaries. The military in Cameroon remains the only institution that never suffered any salary cuts after the devaluations of the CFA currency that is pegged to the French Franc. Instead, military men and women have continued enjoying salary increases; which is good measure by the dictator president to keep his rivals at bay. As a result, their purchasing power has continued to grow as that of the rest of the country has plummeted, excepting those of rapaciously corrupt civil servants and the business community. The colossal currency collapse and devaluations annihilated the buying power of the civil service middle class and the hard working poor farmers – the very ones that are struggling to guarantee the education of their children in national / local universities.

Therefore, saddled by cancerous financial backbones in an expensive economy, coupled with shaky moral compasses and bleak futures, many of the female students succumbed to the easy life of mistresses. The Nouveau riche military, erstwhile in the distant back, became front runners that were disbursing cash payments most of the time. As for the University faculty, the tactic has always been to make life a living hell for many attractive female students by failing them at exams unless they trade sex favors for pass grades. These girls generally have their true boyfriends that are campus students also, with whom they may have unprotected sex. But the boyfriends are not naïve. They know the pressures of campus life on their girlfriends, and since fighting the patron is a losing proposition, they compensate their loss by stepping down to high schools for their own flings….It is a circus.

How do we stop it? The thirst and lust for younger, tender female skin has been unquenchable from time immemorial. We may not stop it ever. However, mindfulness about some truths and facts will lead to certain decisions and actions that will remove us and our dear ones from harms way.

1) Acknowledge the fact that University education for all is a misleading and dangerous proposition that is directly tied to dysfunctional economies. University education is for those who can afford it or those who earn it through brain power – scholarships. It should be understood that University education is not an end in and of itself. It is a means to other ends.

2) Every University must have a Career Counseling division for every eligible university candidate. It will help those without a purpose to figure out what they want and whether or not investing in University education is worth their time.

3) Establish a General Counseling office that would retain chaplain services among other expertise. This office will be a pillar focusing on those areas of student and even faculty life that are not strictly academic. For instance, counseling AIDS infected individuals that seek their services.

4) Every University should have an Independent Examinations Review Committee that will be reviewing manuscripts of complaining students that may be victimized by faculty desiring sex favors.

5) Mandatory AIDS testing for all University staff at the beginning of every semester at an independent trusted and vetted health facility.

6) Criminalize verifiable sex relationships between a faculty member and a current student.

7) Pressure for more community schools focusing on trades.

These and other measures that you are free to suggest will be geared towards un-cluttering University campuses. Young people who have no business wasting their time and scarce money in University education will identify other profitable career paths much earlier than later. This leaves a university campus free of adventurers and gives breathing space for those that can afford academic pursuit or can earn it by their wit. This means that University faculty would have to be very careful with whom they are messing up. The rich can afford to be heard in court and the poor smart students have the Independent Examination Review Committee to count on. In addition, the mandatory AIDS testing for faculty, including TA’s, will be a safeguard to their pathetic selves, their spouses and the students that may fall through the cracks of sex corruption.

Innocent Chia
Citizen Journalist
Email: innochia@gmail.com

PRESIDENT BIYA’s LIFE TERM ON WHEELS

In a much anticipated move, the septuagenarian who has been holding unto the helm of power in the dog-eat-dog country known as Cameroon is pulling the rug of democracy from underneath his brazenly docile citizens. In his 2008 New Year address to this Central-West African nation that has won three gold medals from Transparency International (TI) for the most corrupt country, President Paul Biya made it known that he could no longer remain “indifferent” to popular calls for a Constitutional revision that would make him President for life. In other words, he would jump in a lake with hungry crocodiles if this was the “people’s will”… You think? Well, Article 6, Paragraph 2 provides that “the President of the Republic shall be elected for a term of office of seven years renewable once”. Oh, how convenient that the “people’s will” is for him to become President for life! If this is not a mockery of what democracy is, then nothing would qualify as a slap in its face and what common sense dictates.

It is absolutely nonsensical for any Cameroonian, even if endowed with a brain half the size of the shit of a rat, to ruminate the thought that this despot that is clinging unto power could ever effect or be the agent of positive and meaningful change in the beautiful land that has been turned into a hell-hole under his 25 years of unaccountable stewardship. It is under his watch that Cameroonian youths have become worldwide conmen and are becoming a monthly staple of American media for all the wrong reasons. Little town newspapers and television stations have become so familiar with the` location of Cameroon on the map of Africa they can point to it in their sleep. The story line is the same: We can double your money in a twinkle of an eye if only you entrust us with so much of your American currency.

The line is taken right out of the pocket book of their commander-in-chief, President Paul Biya who is constantly feeding lies to Cameroonians while robbing it of life. After his ostensibly stolen victory at the 1992 Presidential elections he earned a five year mandate that was renewable once. However, like the puppets that many African leaders are, he conveniently made revisions to the Constitution for no other reason than the fact that France had also changed the mandate of its Presidents to a Seven year term. But he did not stop there. Together with his subordinates that had marched the streets clamoring against multiparty politics in Cameroon, the slate was wiped clean and he was eligible for a new seven year term renewable once, a term that is slated to expire in 2011 on his 78^th birthday.

His cowardice at addressing the issue when asked by journalists at France Channel 24 on October 30, 2007 was the only constant for a ruler whose country has become a dragnet of poverty in the region. Indeed, according to his very own admission, economic “growth… stood 3.5% in 2006; it will probably reach 4.1% in 2007 and forecasts put it as 4.5 in 2008. This is not bad, but it is not sufficient to ensure the effective takeoff of our economy.” One thing that is striking about this section of his speech is that it speaks of the year 2007 and 2008 in a future tense! And it is difficult to wonder whether this is not an old script from 2006 that was dusted and presented to his “Excellency, the President of the Banana Republic”. Also, one would be amiss not pointing out the low expectations that he sets for his country and the fact that he inherited a robust economy that had never grown at less that 4.5% under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. Furthermore, it is his own admission that he is a failed leader: I instructed the government to speed up the launching of major agricultural and industrial projects that I have listed time and again.” Why would he have to list projects “time and again” if he is serious about them and have Ministers that execute his orders?

One also loses a pulse even as foreign interests are discovering more reserves of natural resources under his Royal CLOWNSHIP, while his forecasts remain less than promising for the majority of citizens that are living at less than a dollar a day. Far from his earlier rhetoric that the light was at the end of the tunnel, Cameroonians seem not to even know whether or not they are in a tunnel or in a sealed cave. Unemployment rates are above 20% and are hardly ever published. Survival for most is hinged on remittances from the Diasporas, which is said to account for a little less than $1.5 billion in 2007 alone. These disbursements can help only so much in taking care of tuition, putting food on the table, clothing and cell phone bill payments to keep the lines open for the next month or next pay check. No one seems to even care about how the sender is surviving, so long as they can milk the cow dry.

In the morbidly dry speech, he flies over enumerations of the achievements of his government to include “hundreds of new school (that) have been opened”. Really! This is a country where government’s responsibility in opening a new school all but means that the President issues a Decree to this effect without allocating resources for the building of the structures. It behooves the villagers or Parent Teacher Association (PTA) to figure out how to beg, borrow and steal to build the school and even house the administration. In the meantime, a bunch of self-seeking and misguided elite draft and send “Motion of Support” letters to their idol President thanking him for his benevolence and wondrousness.

Cameroonians truly deserve what they have if they can no longer find reason in why six young people died in Bamenda on May 26^th, 1990 while marching in hope of a better future. Many more have died after them. Many more are incarcerated across the country. Several have been maimed. Dreams have been crushed. The temptation to get out of Cameroon has never been so pressing. China. Dubai. Australia. Russia. Germany. Ghana. Equatorial Guinea. America. South Africa. Nigeria….. Anywhere! Cameroonians just want to get out of there. Then what?

Running from the country must not tantamount to running from the problem. It would be a disastrous proposition for sensible Cameroonians and just the type of victory that Biya and his cohorts await.

It is time for the masses to stand up and give these lying bastards a taste of their own medicine. According to the Liar-in-Chief, his desire to review the Constitution is based on popular will. Well then, let’s try this:

1) Cameroonians at home that do not want the furtherance of this monarchy should bombard any government institutions including Divisional Offices, as well as private and foreign media with letters stating where they stand. We know that the government media will not publish them or talk about them. But let it be done even for the sake of archives.

2) Cameroonians abroad should also write letters about this affront to democracy. They should copy their embassies, international financial and humanitarian organizations doing business with Cameroon, and flood news outlets that deal in international affairs like CNN, BBC and France 24 with these developments.

3) Cameroonians in the Diasporas have to infiltrate colleges with African Studies Departments to talk about the reversal of the democratic process in Cameroon. This may provide some understanding to the US Immigration and Naturalization Services that is quite alarmed by the staggering numbers of Cameroonians that are applying for asylum.

4) Each time and everywhere that President Biya goes on an official or officious visit, even one Cameroonian should attract the attention of the local press with placards or posters exposing the dictator.

The blood of over 300 Kenyans has not dried off the charred church building. The genocide in Rwanda is still fresh on the minds of caring beings the world over. The carnage of Darfur is ever still present in living rooms. Cameroon is in toe. The only question that observers are agreed on is when? But observers have been wrong in the past. This is what Cameroonians are banking on – fading hope.

Innocent Chia
Citizen Journalist.
email: innochia@gmail.com