The idea of doing away with CDC was first mooted during the structural adjustment (SAP) days. Reaction against the sale was swift and came from nearly all parts of the country. What was the protest about? Essentially it was pointed out that the raison d’ętre for the incorporation of CDC as an agro industrial complex was entirely different from that of a conventional corporation, and therefore any thought of its disposal was unpardonably satanic.
At that time, John Niba Ngu was the General Manager, the first Cameroonian General Manager after the British. One could not immediately associate him with the privatisation plot especially as CDC was working in cooperation with the Commonwealth Development Corporation in Britain. Again, as General Manager, it was assumed that Niba Ngu knew the historical origin and character of CDC so well that in his influential position, he could dissuade government and the Bretton Woods institutions that were bringing pressure on government to sell off CDC without recourse to the counter productive economic and social effects of the sale.
For some time, talk of the sale took a low profile when Niba Ngu handed over to Peter Mafany Musonge to become Minister of Agriculture and the other portfolios he was later to hold.
Then in came the Highly/Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Program (HIPC) for which LRC a rich country lobbied so much to qualify. Then HIPC conditionalities once again placed the sale of CDC on high profile. Musonge, like Niba Ngu also left after handing over to Njalla Quan, to become Prime Minister and head of government. While the roles of the last two may not be ruled out in the conspiracy to auction CDC, John Niba Ngu has been the architect, spearheading the deal as unfolding events have proven.
The corporation was meant to have the character of a utility and therefore quite distinct from the conventional profit making corporation in which shareholders share annual or periodic dividends among members. CDC profits were to go to offset cost of the social services it was providing, namely: free or cheap housing for workers, health services, schools for workers’ children, adult education programmes, water and electricity, scholarship schemes for middle level and skilled man power training, assisting rural councils by funding some of their projects, and many other services including subsidising the government.
Under the scholarship schemes for example, doctors, nurses and other para-medics, engineers, agric and forestry experts, accountants, lawyers, educationists and other professionals were trained, some of whom later served in government departments. Some have retired from the service while leaving others waiting for retirement. Part of the profits, as is characteristic of such corporations, was ploughed back for extension or expansion work. Grants- in- aid or loans from the Commonwealth Development Corporation went, in the main, for extension purposes and research and not for deficit financing which was unknown. And thanks to its crop diversification approach to agriculture, CDC has never been threatened by some global falling world prices of its main crops like tea, rubber, palm produce, banana, coconuts, and pepper to a point where break- even became unattainable and shut down contemplated.
Even with the treacherous closure of the Victoria port and Bota wharf leading to the obligatory shipment of CDC products through the heavily silted creek port of Douala and the payment of exorbitant shipping and stevedoring charges to French companies as well as heavy overheads in customs and other miscellaneous charges including about 1 billion frs annual ground rents paid to government, CDC was, and is still making profits and expanding.
Unlike the rest of the government joint venture type corporations, CDC is 100% government capital on autochthonous land, with the rare exception that it is operationally or performant wise efficient and therefore a going concern.
With a labour force of about 12000 strong of various categories of workers and indisputably ranking as the largest employer after the government, as a public utility, CDC could pass for a quasi government. That is why one finds it irresistible not to perceive the auctioning of the corporation as the liquidation of part of government, or failing that, the liquidation of autochthonous lands along with its people. The selling off of CDC sounds like such a huge sell out that even a predatory government would want to steer clear of it.
Even if CDC were operating below break-even, its startling economic contribution to the growth and development of the country is of such important magnitude as to override any consideration that would jeopardise its benefiting from sustenance subvention. So, CDC must not be sold and going ahead with the sale will be nothing short of sabotage, pure and simple.
John Niba Ngu, the hunter hunted, as it were, might go down, when the history of CDC privatisation comes to be written, as a knowledgeable influential, and politically powerful man who was in a privileged position to turn around the privatisation in favour of his people and country, but he chose to sacrifice common interest for self interest.
“I own it. It was I, who was looking for a financing partner to join me.” (cf. the post N°0431 Monday January 13, 2003) That is the power-radiating statement of John Niba Ngu. That is the statement that fragmented CDC, letting things fall apart, replacing order with chaos, that is the statement.
John Niba Ngu was for 13 long years GM of CDC, knew the ins and outs of the CDC better than the sellers and buyers, and that the civil society of diverse shades of opinion were against the sale. Above all, he knew that the rights of CDC landlords were being grossly violated as was often articulated by the BLCC, mouthpiece of the landlords, and therefore that any sale of CDC estate(s) will be counter productive as in the case of the tea experiment. Yet Niba Ngu was determined to purchase the CDC by hook or by crook.
By the invisible divine teaching hand, not only has the sale of CDC tea (now CTE) been counter productive, Niba Ngu’s ownership of CTE has been forfeited, and not only have his partners in the crime including the government, abandoned him, they have turned against him (cf the Post N° 0438 Friday January 17, 2003.) Even the Court, to which an aggrieved Ngu turned for justice was not allowed to exercise justice in the John Niba Ngu/Cameroon Tea Estates and Brobon Finex case (cf The Heron N° 0038 Wednesday January 15-22, 2003.)
Is John Niba Ngu now licking his wounds? Should that be unexpected? Who, in his position, watching such high expectations crash-crumble, leaving no pieces to pick, would feel indifferent? And as if to add insult to injury, the Court to which he turns for justice in his country, identifies him as a non-favourite, leaving him with the ultimate choice of shopping for justice at the International Court of Arbitration in France as reported in the Star Headlines newspaper N° 298 of October 17, 2005.
Before coming back to Niba Ngu let us find out, why is “Government now on aggressive marketing to sell CDC,” when, for 3˝ long years that government, if it’s for the people, has not resolved the Cameroon Tea Estates, (CTE) crisis caused, in the first place, by government’s incompetent, opaque, highhanded, and fraudulent sale of CDC tea plantations? How does it make sense leaving huge unresolved problems created by the sale of one sector of a company and going ahead to sell the rest? Is it just taking pleasure in flexing muscles on the weak because it is felt that they can do nothing about it, or what?
The corridors of power in Yaounde were awash with complaints against the sale of SODECOTON and calls for cancellation of the sale, just as they are now in the case of the sale of CDC tea and the remaining plantations awaiting sale. Government listened to the people and responded by cancelling the sale of SODECOTON. Without even talking about the CDC as a going concern, its public utility value, and the many cogent reasons advanced against its sale which, all put together, either surpass or compare with those of SODECOTON, what is the reason, one would want to know, for not applying the SODECOTON precedent to the CTE and the rest of the CDC plantations awaiting sale?
The case for corruption and Human rights abuse has come out so clearly in the privatisation of the CDC tea plantations that even the blind can see.
For example, between October 18, 2002 when the privatisation agreement was signed by government and December 2003, Meva M’Eboutou the Minister of Finance who represented government in the sale, was allegedly involved in the theft of 17 billion francs. La Nouvelle Presse, Mutation, and the Herald newspapers carried various versions of the allegation. That of La Nouvelle Presse of 11 December is reported by the Herald N° 1443 Monday 22-23 December 2003 to have been reviewed “in the Prime Minister’s office websites around the world.”
The Herald also pointed out that “the Biya regime has kept a studied silence about persistent speculations that the Minister of Finance was caught with a very important sum of money. The amount being speculated….range from 6 to 17 billion francs.” That studied silence has persisted to date though the Minister has since been sacked but nothing mentioned about recovery of the stolen billions which is what the country wants to know. It may be said that corruption is a word of many interpretations. But is there any etymologist or philologist out there prepared to absolve Meva M’Eboutou of corruption under the circumstances? Let him come forward and be counted.
For 3˝ years since the fraudulent tea privatisation, plantation workers have been complaining daily of one deprivation after another. And not even strike action imposed by the excruciating suffering of the workers and their families has moved the employers to sympathy to improve their lot. Instead of government stepping in to arbitrate and letting the workers have their dues before cancelling the sale to correct their error, government has simply abandoned them to their fate, and is only interested in rushing ahead to liquidate the rest of the sectors. Are these workers not victims of human rights abuse compounded?
Take the case of the CDC landlords as another typical example of corruption and human rights abuse. The CDC land is historically and legally autochthonous land and not only is government privatising, indeed auctioning CDC without land owners consent and refusing to have any dialogue with them, government is illegally and illegitimately receiving huge annual rents from the CDC by pretentiously passing for landlord, in violation of the provisions of their Land Law N° 74-1 of 6 July 1974 that recognises CDC land as native land.
To make matters worse, government seems to be ignoring the decision arrived at in the BLCC Vs government of La Republique du Cameroun case in Banjul, The Gambia. The decision of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, among other things, cedes ownership of the contested CDC lands to the Bakweri people through the medium of the Bakweri Lands Claim Committee (BLCC) and recommends amicable settlement between the two parties on the questions of ground rents and the terms of CDC privatisation as raised and articulated by the BLCC. The annual ground rents which government has illegally and illegitimately been receiving under false pretence is a serious matter. I think the country’s penal code classifies the receiving of money under false pretence as theft, a crime certainly worse than corruption.
The aggressive marketing to sell CDC has led the Minister of Finance, Polycarpe Abah Abah to declare to some prospective buyers that “the privatisation will be carried out in a transparent manner involving all stakeholders.”
Is Polycarpe Abah Abah making a confession that the previous privatisation (of CDC tea) was not transparent and did not include all stakeholders, hence this phase will? And going by the assessment of the private press, how will Abah Abah be any different from his predecessor and tribes man who privatised CDC tea in the most incompetent, opaque, and fraudulent manner? With the persistent crisis at CTE that has resulted in untold human suffering after the likes of Meva M’Eboutou have enriched themselves, how can Abah Abah be taken seriously for an angel for example?
The history and character of CDC, its efficient performance, and its enormous contribution to the over all growth and development of the country stretching back to the former British Cameroon days , make the corporation an exception to privatisation. Privatisation of CDC will be counter productive as proven by the bitter experiment with the tea.
To come out of the deadlock at CTE and stand by the maxim: once beaten, twice shy, the sale of CDC tea should be cancelled and any further attempt to sell the rest of the CDC plantations as Abah Abah is campaigning, be stopped forthwith. Otherwise, it will be the same merry-go-round where government functionaries from top to bottom are given the license to line their pockets, then workers suffer arbitrary retrenchment, salary cuts or forfeiture, indignities, and the auctioning of autochthonous lands, all of which amount to the perpetration of corruption and human rights abuse in the disguised and refined name of privatisation.
Privatisation is a new discovery by the government of La Republique du Cameroun as the path of least resistance to the perpetration of corruption and human rights abuse of various forms including the right to self determination. More so because privatisation is a blank cheque requirement of the Bretton Woods institutions for funding SAP, HIPC, and the many other programmes of the IMF and the World Bank for “salvaging” the developing economies.
The privatisation of the CDC tea is a classical example of how government uses privatisation to perpetrate corruption and human rights abuse.
Boniface Forbin, publisher/Editor of the Herald newspaper, in the Herald’s Point of View, had this to say on the privatisation of the CDC tea: “you can see that however you look at the privatisation almost everything about it raises questions. In the end it is the public the real owners of the tea estates that are cheated. I mean robbed”. He adds: “public opinion in Cameroon is over whelmingly opposed to privatisation of state enterprises essentially because it is plain robbery of public property as it works out” (cf The Herald N° 1305 Wednesday 22-23 January 2003, P.3).
It therefore sounds reasonable and proper to concede that corruption and human rights abuse are fallouts or by-products of robbery which is worse than the two. Since by privatisation government perpetrates robbery, fight against it should of necessity be of interest to the IMF and the World Bank. Therefore, privatisation which is a blank cheque requirement of the IMF and the World Bank for funding, in view of its outrageous implementation, should either be closely monitored or scrapped altogether by funding agencies, and be replaced with robbery-free conditionalities. For example, freezing of foreign bank accounts of government functionaries who have stolen state money some in billions of francs, seizure of their passport and other travelling documents, repatriation of the stolen money by due process of law, assets declaration by civil servants, military people, and other government workers at all levels in a public or other transparent manner and unusually flamboyant wealth accounted for, let the government extend social security benefit to everyone, after all everyone pays tax directly or indirectly and thereby contributing to the national cake. It is therefore incumbent on government to provide an enabling environment for gainful employment.
If stolen money kept abroad was repatriated and that invested in conspicuous consumption projects retrieved by one way or another, and proceeds from the sale of oil and a few other precious natural resources such as the BAFACA GOLD retrieved, there will be no need for privatisation, indeed there will no reason to go begging for funds from the Bretton Woods institutions, the Paris Club, and the other financing agencies.
In conclusion, CDC should not be auctioned and the inappropriate sale of the tea estates should be revoked. Government should be seen to be preventing illegalities and not abetting or perpetrating it.





Vincent N. Feko
Civil Society Senior Citizen (CSSC)