Questions on why I left CRTV

Some of the questions that I did pose to myself in order to understand why Nyoh Moses could have taken the decision he took , were these: Is/was it true that Mr Mellone Mbe Francis, the provincial head of National Security of the Littoral province, rang Nyoh Moses to ask him to stop the claimed seditious programme? Or was it a ploy from Nyoh Moses to get rid of me, after he too could not help me to obtain a permanent contract with CRTV, as he had promised? Nyoh Moses instead made Mr Chechuma Mbanglah, a print journalist, who was working for the English department of the Roman Catholic daily, L’Effort Camerounais and who was from the same region as him to get a permanent job at CRTV. But the interview that, I realised with Dr Alexander Taku, was over 6 minutes long and after editing, it was just a minute and fifteen seconds, that was allowed to be broadcast. Hence it is strange how a tape that, had not even finished 50 seconds of broadcast, could have sparked Mr Mellone Mbe Francis; the head of National Security of the Littoral province to panic to the point of ring Nyoh Moses and ordering him to stop the programme. Mr Mellone Mbe Francis is an English-speaking Cameroonian, with the rank of Divisional Police Superintendent. Perhaps because English-speaking Cameroonians are seldom elevated to such rank within the Cameroonian Military and Police Forces, it may explained why he was struck with paranoia, when he listened to the interview of Dr Taku. Hence he decided to ring Nyoh Moses ordering him to stop the programme.

Nyoh Moses told me with annoyance that, Mr Francis, the Police Commissioner even went the extra length of asking him that: why on earth could he allow such subversive programme to be broadcast? But poor Moses could not say anything other than try to exonerate himself by saying that he did not see the name of Alexander Taku in the listed names of interviewees, which were boldly written on the conductor sheets that I presented to him to sign before I could go on air. In other words, I took it upon myself to include and broadcast the interview of Dr Alexander Taku, which to the provincial head of national security, was a dangerous and seditious interview. Nonetheless, that so-called dangerous interview which caused my end and shattered any hopes I had nursed of getting permanently employed at CRTV had suffered many cuts or editing on my editing machine, in a bid to respect the editorial line of the broadcasting house and also make it fit for official broadcast and public consumptions. I suddenly discovered that, had I broadcast the interview of Dr Alexander Taku unedited, I won’t have even left the studios of CRTV Douala Broadcasting House that morning. I would have been arrested. But because I had edited it properly, as all other interviews are cleanse at CRTV before broadcast, I was free but lost all prospects of ever getting employed at the state own corporation.

Moses told me immediately after that, I was suspended. It was a metaphor, for termination of my collaboration with CRTV. I think, Nyoh Moses was also afraid of his personal career and thus, thought that, my continuous presence may jeopardize his career, because I was now presented as a close friend to Dr Alexander Taku and a sympathiser of the SDF. I left CRTV Douala that day, May 19th 1997 and went home disenchanted. I also knew that, had it been I was from an influential family with connections within the government, I won’t have had all the difficulties I had undergone, in a bid to be employed. I also knew that, I won’t have pretended or invented myself a tribal belongingness, as I did, all in a bid to get employed. I was brought up “tribeless” but within a country that was to me, inexistent. But belonged nonetheless to an official country, which I have never thought as being mine or it became mine by default. I went home and stayed for while and decided to create a small Communications firms called Emmanuel & Smith Communications, with the objective of producing documentaries and ultimately to own a newspaper company one day. I have always been a person who likes to do business or own my own business.