My disenchantment with CRTV

Concerning my case, when the former management of CRTV Douala, were relieved of their duty or transferred, I knew deep in me that, any hope of getting a permanent contract was gone. Hence I increase frantically all stratagems, I have earlier mentioned, in a bid to get employed. But, they were all null and void. But one man, within the new management quad, who replaced the former, revived my hope. The man was Nyoh Moses. He promised to do all in his power, to make sure that, I be given a permanent employment. Could he? Yes, Nyoh Moses could have helped get me a permanent employment, if and only if he wanted. But before talking about the disappointment that I developed toward Nyoh Moses, I must state first that, which I had toward late Linus Onana Mvondo, who was the manager of the provincial service of CRTV Douala. He too had the opportunity to plead my case with the Director General of CRTV, Professor Gervais Mendo ZE, but he did not. But, he at least was honest. He told me that, he could have helped me, but, he didn’t because he never suspected that, he would be relieved from his post as fast as it had happened and this, without prior notice. He added that, he knew that, one day he was to be replaced, but he at least, he expected that, he would be informed in advance and in that case, he would have first submitted my case to the Director General.

He apologised to me and told me that, he would try and contact some friends at Cameroon Tribune, the state owned bilingual daily, in order for me to get employment there. Did he do it? Yes, he did. And why did it not work out? I was no longer interested because of reasons that, I don’t think, it is worth explaining. As for Nyoh Moses, the man who raised my hopes needlessly, he did not respect his promises and made no attempts to explain things. He instead used his position to make one of his tribe’s man from the same region of the north of Anglophone Cameroon, who was a journalist working with a Roman catholic newspaper called L’Effort Camerounais to be employed at CRTV Douala. Tribal and regional based employment methods are not only used by the dignitaries of the regime. Ordinary Cameroonians do practice it, as the example of Nyoh Moses has shown. I too fell into the trap in another case that I will explain and it ended disappointingly. Since then, I have gone back to my real self. “Tribeless”, but I believe in a nation, whose existence is just is in my mind and head. I also now believe in Cameroon, especially since I came to exile and discovered that, it is better to have a bad country than not to have one at all. But my support for Cameroon will grow stronger, when the ruling French-speaking elites in power in Yaoundé decide to take the country back to its original foundation.

That is, a federation wherein, the English-speaking region that was a former British protected and formerly administered as part of Eastern Nigeria would be given back her semi autonomous status, as enunciated in the Foumban agreement which pave the way for the October 1st 1961 unification. Anything short of full respect of the Foumban agreement makes Cameroon in her present dispensation a fraudulent set up and anything built on fraud is bound to fall apart. At CRTV in general and CRTV Douala in particular, all my hope of getting permanently employed evaporated on the 19th of May 1997, when I last presented the Saturday morning programme, which I must state hereon, without any arrogance, was the only fully locally produced programme, that I was the producer and presenter and which was presented regularly. At first, I had the support of some staff that came in to present slots such as summary of the week’s news and Press review. But those willing staff journalists were discouraged by other staff, within the English desk because, they suspected their participation gave me prestige and could make them to be forced into producing and presenting programmes that, they promised to produce but never cared to honour their own words.