Elvis Tah
21 April 2008
interview
Mola Njoh Litumbe, first chattered accountant in Cameroon and Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Alliance, LDA, sees many things going wrong in the country. Nudging 90, he recalls his good old days in accountancy. In this exclusive interview with The Post, he also lays bare some of the afflictions inherent in the country; cut-throat taxation and corrupt practices that further devastate the economy while rendering Cameroonians poor. Litumbe comments on the lopsided union between La République du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons and the folly of a Southern Cameroonian hoping to rule the country. Excerpts:
Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
I am the son of the first ordained Presbyterian pastor on this side of the Mungo. I went through the usual elementary schools like Basel Mission, Baptist Mission, Sasse College. Thereafter, I started working in the plantation.
From there, I was awarded a scholarship to London where I qualified as the first Cameroonian chattered accountant in 1957. I practised for many years and I retired 20 years ago and began delving into politics, church work and other issues which affect the community generally. I am the Secretary General of the Bakweri Land Claims Committee as well as Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Alliance, LDA.
What were your experiences as a chattered accountant?
When I started professional practice, there was nobody else. You know, in years gone by, if you did not come from a respectable family, you did not aim at honourable professions like law or accounting. It is because things have changed for the better that is why everybody goes there. And the discipline is very strict and you have to do your work in accordance with certain ethics. I exploited those principles until I retired.
Could you draw a line between the accounting profession of the yesteryears and that of today?
I want the profession to be more disciplined. If I had my way, I would have said that in order not to lead young practising accountants into temptation by negotiating with director generals to falsify the accounts and so on, a public audit corporation should be set up and directors of the corporation should be past presidents of the Institute of Chattered Accountants or top officials like Directors of Taxation and so on.
The corporation would audit practising firms. I would have also preferred that the award of audits be done by a quasi-public body, which would evaluate the strength of various practitioners and award audits only to those practitioners whom they think are capable of delivering the goods. There is no negotiation between the practitioner and the client.
We would like you to comment on the tax policy in Cameroon. Does it encourage investment and generate revenue?
The whole thing has got to be reviewed. The system of taxation can encourage or discourage investors. The manner in which the Department of Taxation is working frightens even people who are supposed to be independent. They tend to crush down even small business owners through astronomical assessments so that they are forced to negotiate with them.
The development of the accountancy profession should be that if the accountants are independent they should certify their accounts, thereby facilitating the tax collection. This business of taxation, acting as auditors to business organisations, imposing tax and penalties just exposes the whole system to corruption because if a person doesn't know the tax code, he is bound to negotiate in order to reduce his burden of taxation and continue to be in business.
That is something to be corrected. Also, accountancy should be developed in such a way that the practitioners are subjected to a very high code of conduct to assist the taxation department where there are certified accounts that the department can rely on the certification.
It was because of false certification that caused problems in the accounting sector in Cameroon in the last few years. For investments to come in, we have got to eradicate corruption because to invest, you have to be certain that if you bring in your money and somebody steals it, you can take him to court and recover your money.
Outside the world of accounting, how do you assess the evolution of democracy in Cameroon from the early 60s till date?
The foundations of Cameroon democracy are wrong. The French Cameroon, which was a trust territory administered by the French got its independence on January 1, 1960. And, according to the provisions of the African Charter and so on, the territorial boundaries of any country are fixed the day it becomes independent.
So, the international boundary of La République du Cameroun was fixed on January 1. 1960. The English-speaking Cameroon territory was not and has never been part of La République du Cameroun, to the extent that La République du Cameroun is wrongly governing the British Cameroon territory. It has been a question of annexation. There is no internationally recognised marriage treaty between La Répubique and Southern Cameroons.
What is your stance on the SCNC struggle?
The struggle is valid. I was one of the nine people who went to the UN many years ago to complain about this. Unless La République du Cameroun can show that at some point subsequent to its independence, there was an international treaty joining La République du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons.
Let La République du Cameroun negotiate with political authorities in British Cameroon by re-establishing the organs and then they will negotiate with them whether they want to be associated or integrated in accordance with the provisions laid down by the UN before the trusteeship agreement was terminated.
Do you envisage an Anglophone to rule this country one day?
Which country? La République du Cameroun? It is just two people living together. There is nothing before the UN although the Charter prescribed in article 102 that any of its members entering into an association with another territory should put the terms in writing and a copy of the agreement filed at the Secretariat of the UN. Failure to do so, the agreement is null and void.
What about Anglophone opposition leaders who are nursing ambitions to become president of Cameroon?
It will be foolhardy for any Southern Cameroonian to aspire towards being a president in a foreign country like La République du Cameroun. It will be normal for any citizen in La République du Cameroun but for a British Cameroonian, you have no business there until we are joined.
Are you insinuating that somebody like John Fru Ndi, who is a presidential hopeful, is chasing his shadow?
Well, I think I have said enough to show that any British Cameroonian whishing to be president of Nigeria, Ivory Coast or La République du Cameroun should put on his thinking cap because you cannot be president in a foreign country.
The constitutional amendment has finally sailed through; your reaction...
I can only say that the honourable gentlemen who are representing us in the parliament are not independent. It will only lend credence to the allegations that in order to get a substantial majority, the vote was rigged and the people who got in there, got there through the CPDM rigging machinery.
So, since they are aware that without rigging, they wouldn't be earning their salaries, they had to adhere to whatever Biya said in order to stay in parliament. The electoral machine is stinking and should be amended to bring out an electoral commission that would supervise the election independently from the executive or legislative arm of the government. That way, legislators would emerge, who would work for the interest of their constituencies.
What is your take on the last nationwide strike; did it yield any fruits, you would say?
Well, after the strike, the President summoned his council and they increased the salaries and housing allowances of civil servants. The negative result was that the people will now know that this government can only listen when they go on strike. But my advice is that while people have the fundamental right to strike, they should not destroy property and if they are striking peacefully, no one has the right to use live bullets on them.
What do you say about the Bakweri land crisis?
The land was originally for the Bakweris. They Germans forced them out of it. The leading Bakweri village is stretched at the foot of the mountain. This people used to live on the riverside.
You know, up here there is no water and you will not imagine that these top Bakweri, Bonakanda, Bova, Ewonda, Buea, Likoko etc, are at the foot of the mountain, not by design but because they were uprooted from the fertile level land and pushed upward. I think there is nothing better than to give back their land.
I am not saying that we should give it to individual chiefs because the Bakweri Land Committee which was formed and its first President was late Chief EML Endeley. He wrote to the resident of the colonial government in 1946, informing him of the formation of the Bakweri Land Committee that would look after all the land in the Victoria division as it was called.
But some people claim that the Bakweri people are lazy and that giving the land back to them is like putting a golden ring in a pig's nose
Well, people can always give a dog a bad name to hang it, but what is yours is yours. Do we have foreign governments coming to attack our government because it is corrupt? To say that the Bakweri people are lazy will be an overstatement. Who gave them the right to decide how a person should be?
If they are lazy, they themselves will suffer as a result of their laziness and out of that, those who are hard working will emerge. People should not generalise an issue on the Bakweris. They have been hampered because their land was expropriated and they were forced to become labourers of lands their fathers owned.
They did not see any need to go there as labourers that is why a lot of labour from Nigeria and other parts of Cameroon was recruited into Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC. The Bakweris are stating that the land is theirs that was seized, that's why we went to court in the African Commission in Banjul with the Cameroon government about the improper use of our land.
You know that there is a land law in Cameroon which states that all land is national land except land that is occupied by the state, free hold lands and lands that were entered in the German register, apart from the CDC lands declared native land by the Governor General of Nigeria before we were annexed by La République du Cameroun. Because there were as many as 23 German plantations, having common boundaries, in order to avoid disagreement, each plantation holder had to map out his area and recorded in the register.
If you go to Bamenda, you will see a community hall built with CDC profits; if you go to Northern Cameroon you will see it but that has nothing to do with the Bakweri land for which they are claiming ground rents.
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