BONAVADA football for health tourney CEO unveils mouth-watering prizes

     Prizes to be won by teams and players during the 4^th edition of the annually-organized BONAVADA Youths Football for Health Tournament have been made public, said the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the tournament, Mbua Emmanuel Mbua on Tuesday.

Mbua Emmanuel Mbua: Tournament Chief Executive

      Mbua said his reason for unveiling the prize-money for the tournament early enough was to allow individuals and organizations of goodwill who may want to sponsor some of the prizes to be aware quite ahead of time.

     According to him, football is a language that is spoken worldwide and excites emotions across all age groups and build long-lasting relationships.

He also disclosed that the prizes in the female category have witnessed an increase from those of last year as the management committee seeks to improve on the gender-equality component of the tournament.

     It should be recalled that the tournament is scheduled to kick-off at the community field in Upper Bokova village in the BONAVADA community on Saturday July 9 2016. The football project seeks to keep youths usefully-occupied (using free time in an interesting and dynamic way) during summer holidays, foster social interaction, give exposure to local football talents and organize free eye consultations in the community.

     The tournament will feature both the female and male categories, with each team expected to compete in both the league and knock-out phases.

     The BONAVADA community is found along the eastern slope of Buea, the capital city of the South West Region of the Republic of Cameroon in Central Africa. It is a rural community with mainly an agricultural population with a strong youth base. The community is made up of 13 villages namely; Bokulu, Bokwai, Bonakanda, Bonganjo, Boteva, Bova II, Bova II, Bwiteva, Bwitingi, Ewonda, Mwangai, Upper Bokova, and Upper Bolifamba.

He said the prizes are open for sponsorship and encourages individuals and organizations to tag their names on the prizes.

The prizes are distributed as follows;

Male category:

·        1^st Prize: 100,000

·        2^nd Prize: 50,000

·        3^rd Prize: 25,000

·        League Champions: 50,000

·        Most Disciplined Team: 10,000

·        Best Player: 10,000

·        highest goal scorer: 5,000

·        most disciplined player: 5,000

·        best defender: 5,000

·        best midfielder: 5,000

·        best attacker: 5,000

·        best goalkeeper: 5,000

Female category:

·        1^st Prize: 100,000

·        2^nd Prize: 50,000

·        3^rd Prize: 25,000

·        League Champions: 50,000

·        Most Disciplined Team: 10,000

·        Best Player: 10,000

·        highest goal scorer: 5,000

·        most disciplined player: 5,000

·        best defender: 5,000

·        best midfielder: 5,000

·        best attacker: 5,000

·        best goalkeeper: 5,000

Regarding the free eye consultation component, he stated tha the strongest indication for sponsorship has come from Mr. Hans Mokenge, a Bonavada youth based in the Diaspora.

For more information on sponsorship of prizes, the CEO gave the following contact details.

Mbua Emmanuel Mbua

LL. B Law (Hons) – University of Buea

Founder & CEO

Bonavada Youths Football for Health Tournament

Tel: (237) 676 29 28 29, Email: bonavadafootball@yahoo.com

www.facebook.com/bonavadafootballforhealthtournament

         

Biya’s 33 Years In Power And The Forgotten Sections Of Our Constitution (I)

By Macdonald Ayang Okumb

President Paul Biya (Photo courtesy PRC)

     The first ever President of the United States of America, George Washington, once said “the Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.” He was right. An explicitly drawn up constitution is a requisite instrument for every democracy. In fact, it is a workbook. And the simple reason is that it is the mother law that defines the fundamental political principles of a nation. Constitutionalists are very much aware of this fact; reason why they are always laborious and meticulous in drafting up constitutions. Having a fine constitution and implementing it is a good thing, but ignoring some of the pertinent provisions there in, or may be manipulating them to suit the vaulting aspirations of the Guarantor of that constitution, is quite unfortunate.

      Strangely in Cameroon, the President appears to be more powerful than the constitution. Apart from just twisting the constitution to suit his aspirations, political pundits hold that it is because the same constitutions arrogates to him, sweeping powers. In fact, he has the powers to dissolve Parliament. Just last week, he clocked three decades plus three years as president of Cameroon. Within this long uninterrupted period of his presidency, some portions of the constitution have virtually and regrettably been ignored in the day to day business of national life. 

Things have been in such a way that he orders for an amendment anytime he wills. Not just that; he also chooses which portion of it to implement and ignores others. It is in the spirit of such vexing discretional actions of President Paul Biya that it took seventeen years for the Senate to be put in place, for instance. And there was no genuine excuse for that. But maybe, let me begin with this bothersome issue which is about;

Bilingualism

     Section 1, paragraph 3 of the 1996 constitution as amended by law no. 2008/001 of 14 April 2008, states and I quote: “the official languages of the Republic of Cameroon shall be English and French, and both languages having the same status. The state shall guarantee the promotion of bilingualism through out the country. It shall endeavour to protect and promote national languages.” This is such a clear constitutional provision that has often been forgotten and relegated to the back ground to the chagrin of mostly Anglophones who constitute a minority population.

When francophone government officials struggle to speak English when they are required to do so, they behave as if they are doing a favour to anybody. I cannot recall when the Head of State last released a decree simultaneously in both languages. Many times we have heard English-speaking journalists of the national broadcaster struggle on air to translate documents signed by the Head of State. An aberration!   

     We are tired of this anomaly. For a country that boasts a number of training institutions for translators, this is not being fair to the constitution. And what even stops government from making it an official policy for some major national languages to be taught in our primary and secondary schools like the constitution states? South Africa has eleven official languages and about nine of them are their national languages which they promoted to that status. Let me leave the issue of language to talk about;

Appointments in Government

     Section ten (I) of the constitution says the President of the Republic shall appoint the Prime Minister and, on the proposal of the later, the other members of government. But over the years, we have seen the Prime Minister and Ministers appointed on the same day whereas the logic could have been that; the Prime Minister is first appointed and then days later, the other members of government. It is unconstitutional. That’s why in recent times, some members of government demonstrated unbridled obstinacy towards the head of government because probably they know he did not play any role in their appointment. That’s also why ministers do not thank the Prime Minister whenever they are appointed because they are not sure he is the one who proposed that they be appointed.

However, in the most recent cabinet, Minette Libom Li Likeng, set a new precedence when she publicly extended words of thanks to the Prime minister after she was appointed Telecommunications Minister. The constitution also says the president shall preside over the council of ministers but forgets to define within which duration it should be convened. Such ambiguities give room for inertia, just as is the case with the problem of;

Cumulation of functions

     This is a problem that continues to find fertile ground in a country crumbling under the weight of unemployment. Section thirteen of our fundamental law says “the office of member of government and any office ranking as such shall be incompatible with that of Member of Parliament, chairman of the executive or assembly of a local or regional authority, leader of a national professional association, or with any other employment or professional activity.” In outright defiance of this provision, many top government officials hold more than one official function. How do we expect to attain emergence by 2035 when people who are old and weak accumulate several crucial functions? This retards development and it is one of the reasons why skeptics are questioning the workability of the Emergency Plan. Then enter the issue of;

Private members’ Bills In Parliament

     It is always a strange thing to talk about private members’ bills in our parliament. The last one on the protection of water catchments and wetlands proposed by SDF’s Cyprian Awudu Mbaya was thrown to the dustbin by a CPDM dominated Chairmen’s Conference. Proverbially, it was like a baby killed at birth without allowing it the opportunity to breathe some life. Is it not a shame that, unlike provided for by section 25 of the constitution, private member bills have hardly scaled through?

Section 18, 2 (a) says “all private members’ bills and amendments, which if passed, would result in the reduction of public funds, or in an increase of public charges without a corresponding reduction in order expenditure or the grant of equivalent new supply of funds, shall be inadmissible.” So how then was Hon. Awudu Mbaya’s proposed bill, which only sought to guarantee safe sources of drinking water for Cameroonians especially in rural areas, repugnant to this provision? See you shorts for part II when I shall begin by questioning the non existence, up till date, of the Constitutional Council, which is why the Supreme Court, which is now working in its lieu, is over-stretching itself by executing assignments that are not constitutionally ascribed to it.

Littoral Region: Four Health Institutions Get FCFA 10 million Medical Equipment

By Macdonald Ayang Okumb

    Some four health institutions of the Mungo Division of the Littoral Region, last 4 November 2015, benefited from the donation of 48 medical equipment distributed amongst them by a Njombe-based Micro-financial institution, Muteuelle Communautaire de Croissance (MC2).

Donors, Beneficiaries With Some Of The Equipment

    The equipment worth over FCFA 10 million were distributed amongst the four health institutions which are: Dispensaire Publique de Njombe, Dispensaire Catholique de Njombe, Hopital ST Jean de Malte, Njombe, and Centre de Santé de Penja.

    The Equipment included: Delivery beds, Office chair, Microscope, Dressing trolley, Digital blood pressure machines, Otoscope, Surgical aspirators, Fridge and Stethoscope. The equipment were supplied to MC2 by Cameroon’s giant medical equipment company, Premier Medical SARL.

    With over fifteen years of experience in the sector of medical equipment, Premier Medical officials promised to take charge of the installation, user training, and after sales maintenance of the equipment in the various health establishments.

    The representative of the Senior Divisional Officer, SDO, for Njombe-Penja, Abel Tidsani, who presided over the distribution ceremony, acknowledged the massive turn out of the population for the event. Tidsani also congratulated MC2 for their commitment to community development, and reiterated the importance of communal growth, as a door way to achieving Cameroon’s emergence vision of 2035. 

    Also present during the ceremony were the Mayor of Penja, some traditional dignitaries, as well as the Director General of Premier Medical, Ebung Chrysantus.

    According to the Unit Director of MC2, Pierre Céléstin Themah, last Wednesday’s ceremony was another humbling activity for MC2, adding to a series of good will gestures carried out  by the institution to improve and promote community development.

    MC2 prides itself as a Microfinance institution, whose principal objective is to fight poverty in the community, through the provision of socio-Economic services.

Prior to the donation, MC2 had also been very active in the educational milieu, providing many benches to some schools in the area.

Rumours ‘Arrest’ Buea Chiefs’ Conference President

By Macdonald Ayang Okumb

     Rumours circulated for most of last week in Buea that the President of the Buea Chiefs’ Conference and traditional ruler of Wokaka, a small village near Muea in Buea, His Royal Majesty Chief Johnson Njoke Njombe had been arrested and detained.

Chief Njombe (Picture, courtesy cameroonjournal)

     Going by the information that circulated, Chief Njombe has been ‘arrested’ at the behest of a CONAC Mission that was in the South West Region the week before to investigate what has now been known as the Fako land-grabbing saga. By same information, Njombe had unjustifiably sold huge portions of land ceded to his and a neigbouring village.

     The CONAC mission had met with all the chiefs within Fako division, administrative officials as well as other stakeholders involved in land management in the division to investigate into the way land surrendered to villages by the Cameroon development corporation, CDC, had been managed between the period 2012 and 2015.

     When we met Chief Njombe last Tuesday during the launching ceremony of reorganisation activities for the Fako III section of the CPDM, the former secretary general of the Fako chiefs’ conference rather expressed surprise. “Arrest? That’s what people have been calling me ask. What have I done to be arrested?” Chief Njombe, who was putting on a hat adorned with CPDM colours, wondered.

     Within minutes of our chat, many other persons, including some of his royal colleagues, came around with the alleged arrest constituting the subject matter.

While some think that information about Chief Njombe’s arrest, was just a smear campaign cooked up to sabotage him, others strongly hold that there can't be smoke with out fire.

Fako Lawyers Refresh Skills In Legal Procedures

By Macdonald Ayang Okumb

Barrister Agbor Balla: The Visionary FAKLA President

     Over 300 lawyers based in Fako Division have upgraded their knowledge on issues of legal practice and procedure under the Cameroon judicial system.

This was during a one day symposium that took place last Friday 23 October in Buea, organised by the Fako Lawyers Association, known by the acronym, FAKLA.

     The symposium that was opened by the President of the South West court of appeal, Chief Justice Bechem Eyong Eneke, had four main subjects namely; criminal procedure, civil procedure, execution of court judgments and the OHADA law and practice.

     Limbe-based senior barrister Ngale Monono delivered one of the four exposes on; “the law and practice of adoption in the common law jurisdiction of Cameroon.” FAKLA president, barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor, agreed that Barrister Monono’s presentation was insightful given that “the issue of adoption is a very thorny one especially given the fact that there is a difference between what is happening in the civil law jurisdiction and what is happening in the common law jurisdiction.”

     One of the vice presidents of the court of appeal, Lord justice James Agbor Eyong, talked on “instituting and perfecting an appeal against a criminal judgment and seeking bail for the convict pending hearing of the appeal.”

His colleague of the same court, Lord Justice Martin Mbeng Ako, delved into the “provisional execution and stay of execution: the law, practice and procedure”

     Meanwhile the attorney general of the appeal court, Lord Justice Emile Essombe, talked elaborately on the OHADA law and practice with focus on “recovering a debt/securing the delivery or restitution of specific personal property.”

On this presentation, FAKLA boss, said the attorney general did a wonderful job because this “is a law we are just coming to grasp with because it was conceived in French and the English translation is not up-to-date.”

     After each of the four presentations, there was a question and answer session during which participants cleared some of their doubts. At the end, FAKLA president, Barrister Balla said this of the symposium; “What happened today was part of our continuous legal training, when I was campaigning to be FAKLA president; I said in my campaign manifesto that we shall engage in continuous legal education and training for our members. This is just the first in a series of conferences that we shall be holding; and this will help not only lawyers but law students, judges and magistrates of the bench.”

     Some of the participants confessed that they had become more knowledgeable in issues of their legal practice, which according to barrister Balla, “is helpful to the legal profession and also it would trickle down to the clients because the more knowledgeable the lawyers and judges are, the better for the client because they will brief them well and decisions from the judges would also be good.”

     Apart from Fako lawyers, representatives from the Meme lawyers as well as the North West lawyers associations were also present.

Limbe To Host First Ever Cameroon Wedding Expo

By Macdonald Ayang Okumb

     Preparations are far advanced for the first ever edition of a Wedding Exhibition Fair to be staged in the South West seaside city of Limbe.

Under the theme “Atlantic wedding Expo”, the show is slated to run from 13 to 15 November 2015 and is expected to see a cumulative attendance of about six thousand visitors.

     To be organised by a conglomeration of business firms under the banner of CORE5 network, the fair which is the very first of its kind would be a platform for professional vendors and service providers in the wedding industry to showcase their products and services to the public. CORE5 network is an events management company made up of a group of professional photographers.

     At a press briefing at the Buea chariot hotel recently, the Chief Executive of the organising company, Stanley Miki, revealed that the level of preparations had heightened ahead of the event which will be the first ever in the country. He said a mini exhibition at the chariot Banquet hall that sanctioned the Buea press conference actually marked the officially launch of the wedding expo which is expected to last three days.

     Hear him: “the Atlantic wedding expo is a marketing platform where people from different domains in the wedding business are going to come together to be able to showcase their products and services.”

     “We came out with this concept because people have been looking for quality services especially in the wedding business because a wedding is that one thing that happens once in your life. We are going to bring these business people together so that individuals who are looking forward to wedding can be able to select good services that suit their budgets” Miki explained.

     Miki justified the choice of the city of Limbe as venue for the Fair by laying claims to the presence of “the Atlantic Ocean, its touristic value….and its rare and very beautiful locations…”

“That’s why we think that if you want to get a dream wedding, go to a location like Limbe” he added.

     About the attendance and exhibitors, Miki said; “We are expecting over 6,000 guests. We have already printed 6000 tickets. We are as well expecting 25 vendors for this first edition. We are still having some vendors who are interested to take part but since this is the first edition, we want to limit the event to 25 vendors”

     Miki also told reporters that some of the exhibitioners would be coming from abroad.

Biya’s Day Of National Mourning: Genuine Grief Or Political Stunt?

By Macdonald Ayang Okumb

     It is always not in the best of interests to question every action of the Head of State, lest we are tagged as being regressive. But when the Commander-in-Chief does certain things in certain ways, certain questions unavoidably come to mind.

     On Friday 16 October 2015, President Paul Biya, for the first time since the Banga-Mpongo Kenya Airways crash in 2007, decreed a national day of mourning in memoriam of the Cameroonian Muslim pilgrims who lost their lives in a stampede in Mina, a town near Mecca while on Hajj.

     That the day of mourning was instituted is not a problem, but the fact that it was not made a public holiday and that it came so belatedly - almost a month after the tragic incident occurred on 24 September, was questionable.

And not only that, the controversy that surrounded the exact figures of those who actually died in the tragedy was worrying. Communication Minister, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, said in a press conference that the death toll stood at 76, but his colleague of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, who’s the Chairman of the National Hajj Commission, contradicted him when he said on 20 October, and I quote; “nous sommes globalement à 104 décès.”

     This can be roughly translated in English to mean “we are now at 104 deaths.” So which of the ministers should we believe? I think for Cameroonians to have known exactly how many of the pilgrims either died or went missing in Mecca without any mix up, it would have been more expedient for government to rather tell us how many of 4,467 pilgrims who went on the Hajj actually returned home. 

     Although the fervour of national mourning can differ dramatically from one country to another, or may be from the discretion of one president to another, the underlying factor is that the exercise is such a solemn one that must be observed with all sacrosanctity. That’s why, for instance, I sharply disagreed with a political analyst who said on CRTV’s Sunday talk show “Press Hour” on 18 October that, what was of import was the fact that the Head of State ordered that flags across the nation be flown at half mast. And that it was not important whatever activities individual citizens engaged in on that day. Even so, I saw flags at some public offices and at chiefs’ palaces that were fully flown.

     In most parts of the world, a day of national mourning is referred to as a “silent day” where music, dance events, or other public demonstrations are totally prohibited. But that was not the case on 16 October. So can we say that we genuinely commiserated with our fallen brothers?

     There’s no gainsaying that even at the level of homes, it matters a lot the activities of family members whenever they are mourning a loved one. You would hardly hear secular music being played, and so loudly. Mourners would not chat and laugh so uncontrollably and lousily. They’d naturally maintain an extremely sober mood.

     That aside; even when four days later (on Tuesday 20 October 2015), the President decreed a national day of prayer for the victims, he himself did not attend the service.

Couldn’t it have been exemplary and maybe a demonstration of genuine grief for the Head of State to have attended the national prayers at the multipurpose sports complex in Yaoundé? Was it appropriate for him to have rather sent the minister of territorial administration and decentralisation to represent him? Was he not by his absence from the prayers somehow under looking its importance?

     Verily, this has actually pushed me to question the very essence of that national day of mourning; what it really amounted to in practice, or whether it was indeed a meaningful expression of the grief of the Head of State and the Cameroonian nation or it was purely a symbolic political gesture intended to flatter the Muslims, who constitute a reasonable portion of the country teeming with dissension against the regime?

     Certainly, the way president Biya treated the national mourning issue, gives ample credence to the views of a United States professor, Jill Scott, an expert in the social dynamics of mourning, who once told the BBC that days of national mourning are “inherently political”.

     If not, why has the Head of State not also thought of declaring a day, or days of national mourning for the hundreds of Cameroonians who have been killed by Boko Haram insurgents either through border attacks or suicide bombings which are now their modus operandi? With due respect for the souls of the departed Muslim brothers of ours, I however think that no Cameroonian soul is more important than another. Like a fellow columnist wrote in a sister newspaper, what is good for the goose is also good for the ganger. I was just musing randomly.