Chief Dr. Atem Ebako, the President of the South West House of Chiefs and Vice President of the Regional Executive Council, has in an exclusive interview granted Sunday radio magazine programme, Cameroon Calling on CRTV made startling revelations regarding government’s feet-dragging in transfer of competences to the regional and local authorities in order for them to effective start their job.
The traditional ruler of Talangaye in Kupe Muanenguba Division in the granted CRTV’s Sam Bokuba and Charles Tembei, says the much parroted Special Status accorded the NW, SW regions is merely on paper.
Though still optimistic and believing in the vision of the Head of State, Paul Biya, Chief Atem who equally doubles as board member of the CRTV faults minister for slowing the decentralization process clearly prescribed in the General Code of Regional and Local Authorities. Read his shocking revelations in this interview transcribed by Doh Bertrand Nua
What have you been able to do five months in office as Vice President of the South West Regional Assembly?
So far I have been able to stay only in my office because I have not had the opportunity to go to the field for lack of clarifications on what the competences that the Regional Assembly and by extension the House of Chiefs have now to take down to the population as projects and programs which I am called upon to design and use to change the life of my people, their standard of living and their wellbeing. So I am right now only in my office.
You mean since you took up office you’ve just been folding your arms and turning around?
That’s what we are doing apart from attending occasions outside which don’t have a direct bearing to the objective of the Regional Assembly.
What is the problem?
The problem is simple. We have not been given our competences yet and like you know, when transferring the competences from the ministries, they would have to be accompanied by resources; financial, human, material and the logistics. We don’t have this but there is now a move coming up from the government, giving us some office material. But we still need the finances, we need the human resources because we have not been able to employ workers here.
What really are these competences that are supposed to be devolved from the centre to the regions?
The General Code of Regional and Local Authorities has about 80 powers that have been devolved to regions. Now, that is what the state has to do. The state has done and that is why President Paul Biya in promulgating this code has done his own job. Now it is left because of the various sectors where the constitution has asked us to intervene. That is the economic development, health, social, educational and sports development…from these six areas, the competences in which the various ministries are involved, the 80 or so powers that have been devolved are along these lines of these six major domains constitutionally written down.
Each minister now would be in a position to transfer competences. This means judging from the principle of subsidiarity and complementarity, one thing has to be done and there are two of three actors in that field. They need to sit down and judging on their comparative advantage, they now share the various capacities. You are very good at this, the other person is good at this, you take this share of that power. This is what we mean by competences. It has not yet been done.
Are you saying that there is a difference between devolved powers on paper and effective transfer of powers?
That is exactly what is am saying, that the devolved powers have already been enumerated in the code of regional and local authorities under these six things that the constitution has said and they involved many actors; the ministries, the regional assembly and the councils.
These are all the actors that are in that code. Let me talk for the Regional Assembly. The competences that are design for the regional assembly have not yet been told. All we hear are rumours that 20 or so ministries have already bothered to want to transfer their competences but only but only 19 so far have even made a draft. So there is a big difference between devolved powers and transferred competences.
In your reckoning, who is stalling the effective transfer of powers?
Good! Let’s make a difference. Transfer of competences not transfer of powers. The powers are already in the law. What is not yet clarified are the competences, according to which actor. For those powers now to be examined and the various competences shared out to the various actors because you have the centralized actors here like the ministry then you have the regional assembly as one other actor and the other councils as other actors.
So, these three or so category of actors will be given different task which are the competences and the law says in transferring these competences, resources, that is financial, material, human would have to follow. This is what I mean by it has not been done yet.
So you are saying that four months after taking office, the regional House of Assembly has been idle, waiting for competences to be transferred and you that you that the regions were set up as part of the solution to this crisis. What effect do you think these feet-dragging will have on the attempt to solve this crisis?
First of all, we have a mandate of five years and to be pioneers in a project where we don’t have a reference to make. So you begin to see that every one day lost is very crucial in carrying out the five year mandate. So, this first year of the mandate we are in the fifth month. We do not know what we have to do because we don’t know the competences…the consequence is that we will be late in doing our job. The population is expecting us to do the job but we don’t have yet what we can give to them projects and programmes.
So what are you telling the population?
I don’t have anything to tell the population because they too see it and when they accuse us, we too tell them no, be careful, don’t accuse us because we have not yet been given what we should do, so be patient like we too are being patient.
You don’t have anything to tell them but you were very optimistic when the regions were setup and you expressed optimism that this was coming to…?
Yes you cannot blame me. I was very optimistic but I did not know there will be this kind of frustrating period where I have to sit for about four, five, six months with nothing happening. I never saw this coming. I knew was that when I get to the Regional Assembly I would have my competences laid out, the resources given and I start my work. I have never foreseen this period of long wait. It is very frustrating.
Is it another case of high hopes and dashed expectations?
You can always give the name that you want but the fact is that I am not happy about it. I would have liked to start my work given the fact that the ministry of decentralization had been put in place before finally the regions were put in place. So I expected the government and the ministry particularly to have already come out with all the implementation documents. I don’t know what is happened. It is they you should go and ask. All I know is that I am not yet active to satisfy the expectations and aspirations of my population whom I am called to serve.
Did you overrate the good fate of those husbanding the decentralization process?
My faith and belief in the vision of President Paul Biya has not been shaken at all. He has done his work by promulgating the law of 24 December 2019 which is the General Code of Decentralization and Local Authorities. He has done his work. It is his ministries that now must do their own work. So if I had any comment to make, I will make it to the ministries and particularly the ministry which is the titular authority of my regional Assembly and that is the ministry decentralization and local development. That has not in any way watered down my belief is that we shall succeed with the hope of President Paul Biya handling that vision. Don’t forget all of this is hinged on vision 2035.
You are still talking about the vision but that is something that started in 1996 with the promulgation of the constitution and the December 24, 2019 law to institute the General Code of Regional and Local Authorities. We expected that decentralization was going to be taken to another level and you say you still have faith in the vision of the president?
Yes, I have faith in the vision of President Paul Biya which is vision 2035 but what is contained in the General Code of Regional and Local Authorities which gave flesh on that aspect of decentralization which is in vision 2035 that it has already about 80 powers that have been devolved to regional and local authorities but because they are several actors, in it, a referee must came in to say you have this comparative advantage to handle this aspect of it, then these competences are now transferred to the separate actors. This is what I am saying has not yet been done. But you are like saying you have been idle but we got information to the fact that you have been carrying out some trainings especially with design of the budget and stuffs like that.
So there has been some activity going on, right?
From that perspective you are right. But my public wants to see what I will do that is already affecting their wellbeing, their standard of living. This is what they are not seeing and so they have me as their servant to answer questions in one way or the other. But who told you that some of these things like learning how to elaborate a budget, you thing that some of us don’t know how to go about it? We do!
You already have office space and some computers as well?
Yes, I have office space, furniture and equipment. This is only in the office but it is not something that the public sees. The public wants to see activities, they want to see things happening. You can go and put air conditioners, put gold on my table. Does that make my population satisfied? No!
Some people say you guys have an axe to grind with some of those bought those equipment and sent to you. They send the equipment like computers for example that hard soft wares in French?
Yes, that is the observation and I don’t have any axe to grind with those who did it. All I am saying is that the equipment right now in my office, the system of the computer is in French and the usual programs that we make for our services like the Microsoft is in French. They sent a technician the other day to come and change the system into English but you can imagine, trying to change a man into a woman. The surgery can be a very difficult one. So we have that problem.
You say your people will like to see you active on the field trying to carryout projects and programs that will impact on their lives positively. I also imagine they have been asking you about their Special Status. What have you been able to tell them about that?
That is a very tricky question because what makes the special status so distinctive in the North West and the South West is that, when you look at the organizational structure of the regional assembly, beneath it, you have two distinct houses – the House of Chiefs and the House of Divisional Representatives an down somewhere there, its executive is made up of eight members who form the regional executive council.
This is not the case with the other eight regions. As their own organizational structure they have a president, that is the regional council made up of 90 councillors just like we too 90, they don’t have what they call the House of Chiefs. That is the chiefs who are in the 90 don’t have a separate house.
They are all long into the regional council and then their bureau is made up of the President alone whereas in the South West and North West, we have, in our structure the regional assembly, House of Chiefs and then the House of Divisional Representatives. The House of Chiefs made up of the 20 chiefs and the House of Divisional Representatives made up of the 70. Then there is a regional executive council which is the management structure. We are eight of us. It is collegial where you have a president, a vice president, three commissioners, two secretaries and one quester. They don’t have commissioners here. They have two secretaries and two questers.
The Special Status was conferred on the NW & SW regions as a move to resolve the sociopolitical crisis in these two regions. From the way things have played out, do you have sense that it’s resolving the problem for which the Special Status was conferred on these two regions?
Yes, I can answer that with the affirmative given that here is a doctor who has diagnosed a disease of a patient and has come out with a management plan. Now, that management plan which normally is the nurse to go and carry on the patient by itself is not the treatment.
But the doctor has done his work?
The doctor in this case is President Paul Biya. He has given out the management on how to treat that patient. It is written out, now the nurse has t go and administer the treatment. So, we are at the level where that treatment is not yet administered.
That nurse is complaining that medications that she is supposed to use are not yet available?
No! The medicines are there in the pharmacy. Now the laws are here in Cameroon for the devolution of powers because as you know, one of them root cause of the crisis in the SW and NW, what you call the separatist agenda is simply that the overbearing, overarching big hand of the centralized nature which is all here in Yaoundé over the rest of the country. And we are not used to this.
We have always been used to the fact that when I am involved in something, my voice should be heard but Yaoundé in a way has completely hijacked the voice of the people. And this is one of the reasons why, because I have talked to some of them, they said no, the political nature of the country today is one that they cannot accept. So, they want to break away and setup their own political agenda. Whether I agree with them or not, the problem is true, that there is an overarching big hand of centralization over the rest of the country. And that is why President Paul Biya came up with the issue of decentralization and the various devolved powers. Now we are waiting on the devolved competences. Why is it taking so long?
The officials are saying that Chief Dr. Atem Ebako is trying to run so fast. They are coming gradually and that things will happen?
How does that help the situation in the NW, SW regions? Have we not had so many deaths? Is it one more death that will be okay to solve the problem? Any death is one too many. People are dying, people cannot go to their places, people cannot enjoy their life and you tell me we are running so fast? I think that we are not running at all yet.
Are you saying that the Special Status has done nothing?
It has not got any meaning yet. It is on paper. It has not got meaning yet in the ground for people to see.
Another distinguishing mark of the Special Status from what the delegates proposed during the Major National Dialogue was that the overbearing powers of supervisory authority be removed from the regional and local councils. Clearly, that has not been the case?
No, there is an institution known as representative of the state. Because things have not yet started. We cannot even judge it before time. One of the organs in the regional assembly is the function of representative of the state. Today it is the governor and at the level of the councils down there, it is the SDOs. Because we have not yet gone into action, I cannot judge them how they are behaving because there is nothing for me from the point of view of observation, experience and lesson to learn and so I cannot say anything.
So when you go about with the Governor of the South West region, how does he look at you?
He very humbly and respectfully refers to me as President of the House of Chiefs but these are just honours. Is that what my people want? No! My people want action. Those titles of Vice President of the Regional Executive Council doubling as President of the House of Chiefs are just big honours on me. But that is not what my people want from me.
Chief, are you not expecting too much from…?
I have told you I am not over expecting. I have been given a job to do. I want to do that job but I have not even been told the areas that I have to do that job. Secondly, I have not been given the resources to do that job. Yes, you came to my office, it is well equipped. But is that want my people want? For me to have an equipped office? No! Give me the money, give me the human resources, give me the material, give me the competences, I will start doing the job.
They say government machinery grinds slowly but surely
No no no…that is a slogan you people use here in Yaounde to have your way out to punish us in the regions. We don’t accept that slogan. You cannot run a country with slogans. We run a country with laws and programs.
Chief Dr Atem Ebako, so far there have been a special allocation of FCFA 250 million from the Head of State for you to start up
It is you the journalist who announced. I have not seen it. It is you who announced that the Head of State has permitted allocation. I have not yet seen it.
Have you asked to see it?
From Who?
From competent authorities?
Give me then one of those competent authorities…yes, I have tried to find out but there is no direct state statement. For me to believe that it is so, it is not whatever whoever will tell me. I want a document where I can read but I have not seen such a document yet.
You are expressing your disappointment and frustration…?
I am not expressing my disappointment and frustration. I am merely telling you that for the four months or five that I have been there, I have not been able to do anything to substantiate and to tell my people you put me here to do this. I will accept the word impatience.
Okay, you are expressing your impatience. If in the next two or three months things don’t takeoff and the competences are effectively transferred by the ministries that have been feet-dragging and the financial and material resources that should accompany these competences also transferred, am sure you will change your mood?
Certainly my mood will change but that would not mean that I accept the injustice done to me. I have a mandate of five years so don’t cheat me.
What is the injustice you are talking about?
The injustice is that you have not provided me the competences, the resources and the materials to do my work. Of course you know every year we have to render account. So tell whoever has to give us the competences let them…and by the way, where there is law, respect, I told you that the sharing of these powers into competences is done on the principle of subsidiarity and complementarity. So one of the actors whether he is a supervisory authority, the law and moral conscience demands that, call the other actors together and you discuss. That has not yet been done. Don’t you see that it is social injustice? That something that concerns me, you sit somewhere and decide on my behalf? Do we do that in a modern country anymore or a modern democracy?
Do you have the impression that this whole concept of decentralization is taking so long to takeoff?
Now, I will want to tell you that my observation because my impression may not be document is that since four, five months that we have been sitting there to take it off, it has not and that is what makes me impatient. It is not an impression. This is something documented.
So will you now tell me when it will takeoff whether in the next three, four, five months?
No no! I don’t agree with that kind of supposition because I have a mandate, a political mandate of five years and I have been cheated of four, five months.
Are you still as optimistic as you were before the beginning of the process?
Very optimistic. I just told you that before the process kicked off, I had not thought of this phase which we are going through. I had not.
On the day of the installation of the Regional Executive Council by the Governor, what did he tell you?
He told us that we have this job to do. That is the one of making sure that the population, their wellbeing, their standards of living are going to change in our hands. We were very happy to hear that not as a representative of the state but as a governor who was representing the minister in Yaounde back there in the region. But here we are.
So what will be you final message to the government and to your people?
My first message is to my people who I can in a way regulate their minds. Please, understand us, bear with us, and pray hard that the government now gives us the competences and the resources so that we can start doing the job for you people. Those are our masters, the population. To the government, I just tell the government that they should do their job. They are paid for it. They have been given everything to do that job. Let them do it.
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