Ernest Sumelong
19 October 2008
interview
The newly elected President of the Cameroon Union of Journalists, CUJ, Charly Ndi Chia, has called on journalists to close ranks, work together and speak with one voice.
Ndi Chia also challenges journalists, publishers and the government to make the journalism profession the noble and respected profession it is supposed to be. In this must-read interview, he talks about his journalism career, his vision for CUJ and his assignment to cover the US Presidential Elections.
You were recently elected to head the Cameroon Union of Journalists, CUJ. Could we first of all know your background in journalism?
I started practising journalism in primary school, precisely in CBC Great Soppo. I was nicknamed "Mr. Mola", following an essay I wrote and which was considered by the teacher as excellent. That encouraged me to start writing.
One of the pieces I wrote was highly critical of the fact that the Ahidjo regime had arrested an Archbishop, His Lordship Albert Ndongmou and others like Wambou Le Courant, Ernest Ouandji, Celestin Takala and accused them of terrorist activities. Even in its childish delivery, it was both critical and abrasive that but it didn't get to be published because my uncle laid his hands on the script.
He had me decently caned before tearing the thing to shreds. All the same, some of the pieces I wrote were used on a popular Buea Radio programme, Listeners' Viewpoint, This programme was hosted by the venerated journalist, Ngiewih Asunkwan. Cameroon Times published some of them.
From there what later happened?
I was eventually admitted into the Government Technical College, Ombe where I did Carpentry and Joinery and upon graduating, I joined Plantations Pamol Du Cameroun. I was also correspondent for Cameroon Times in Ndian Division. When Pamol sacked me two and a half years later for insubordination, I was taken in by Cameroon Times as a Cub Reporter.
Within one and a half years, I had four promotions, the last being Sub Editor before I left for Nigeria where I was lucky to have been admitted into the renowned Nigerian Institute of Journalism where the cream of Nigerian journalists are trained. I returned in 1981 and took over the running of Cameroon Outlook, as an editor.
Two years later, my good friend Innocent Bonu "bought me over" to Cameroon Times, insisting that I should return to "our cradle" where Paul Nkemayang and I had started off. We worked for sometime before Cameroon Times went under. I started off as Correspondent for IC Publications, the publishers of New African and African Business. They sent me out to do country surveys in Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome and Principe.
It was during one of my trips abroad that "Unite Television", now called CRTV was being put in place. The Ministry of Information and Culture employed and had me seconded to Television House. By the time I voted from Cameroon Television with my feet, I was Deputy Head of Service in charge of Information at the East Provincial Station of Bertoua. What happened here is another story on its own.
However, by May, 1995, when Paddy Mbawa was hounded into jail and Cameroon Post went comatose, Charles Taku and Lawrence Tasha, made available some money from Amity Bank, and I brought back the paper to its feet. But somebody turned up, purporting to have bought Cameroon Post from its original owner, and brought in Francis Wache as Executive Editor.
I was Managing Editor and later on, Editor-in-Chief. We ran the thing for about a year and some months and when we were dissatisfied how the new Publisher was treating us, we broke away with other staff and started The Post Newspaper.
About the CUJ, at what stage did you meet the Union?
Unfortunately, I was part of the executive that messed up the Union. I was one of the four Advisers to the President, Celestin Lingo. When I was voted as President, the Union was comatose. Everyone else had practically left the boat, including some serving members of our Exco.
What vision do you and your executive have for the Union?
We want to have everybody back in the fold. We are in the tiresome but important process of rendering the Union performing and credible. We are bringing back sanity and credibility into the Union in so many ways. We have 11 positions in the executive and I am like the choirmaster with a duty to ensure that the tune is concordant, harmonious. When we meet, debate is very free and profound and whatever we resolve is often in the best interest of the Union.
One would have expected that the CUJ, being the umbrella journalists union, would want to assemble all the other satellite journalist unions. What are you doing in that direction?
That cannot be done in one day. To put it in a way, the sheep had strayed too far that it would take the shepherd a long time and so much energy to bring them back into the fold. In our one but last meeting, we decided that we were going to stretch a hand of fellowship and invite other unions to come in and we work together.
We are not like saying we are going to instruct people on what to do. If we have to speak with one voice and stay under one umbrella devoid of leakages, then, we have to close our ranks and work together. We are stretching a hand to CAMASEJ, the Commonwealth Journalists Association, the Economic Journalists etc.
We have already written letters to that effect and I have personally reached out to some newspapers where there are journalists belonging to a constellation of associations. I have been preaching to them of the need to speak with one voice and listen to newsmakers and other information stakeholders with a single pair of ears.
Besides belonging to the CUJ, you are a member of the National Communication Council and the Cameroon Media Council
No, I am not a member of the Cameroon Media Council. I am a member of the National Communication Council appointed by Presidential Decree in 2004. We are serving our second three-year term after which someone else should be appointed because I wouldn't want to pile positions on my head.
Professionally speaking, you have been practising journalism for about 30 years, how do you assess the media landscape in Cameroon?
It is easier to see those things that are disturbing than the ones that are plain-sailing. In which case I would say that it could have been better than it is today but for the fact that it is punctuated by many frivolous newspapers and other bogus media outfits. You have quite some credible gentlemen and women in both the so-called official media and private media.
You have, for instance, very brilliant and daring journalists at CRTV who have helped and continue to help in no small way, to promote good governance and democratisation in this country despite the odds. By the same token, some of them, are, short and simple, "Journalists of the Next of Kin". They are just there, scheming to be appointed chief of this or Director of that. These are the hallelujah journalists.
We also have within the ranks of the official media, "Journalists Iscariot"; and caprices who rather than tell the story as it is, who would tinker it to suit taste of their paymasters, of pen robbers who insist on a lie until it assumes the status of the truth.
On the other side of the divide, you have brazen harlots or at best, errand boys. These ones are basically at the beck and call of emergency politicians and other seekers of high office. That is practically what is happening in the Northwest Province today. See what sleaze into which these candy raps have put the traditional institutions of the Northwest Province as they cringe for vaulting power mongers and power brokers.
Back in my old house CRTV, there is a mixture of both good and bad practice. The majority of journalists here serve their conscience, despite the odds while a few others have conveniently elected to remain the dog of the new deal king, in order to acquire and maintain the status of the king of dogs as it were.
You see, if I had to go back to CRTV today, I would readily identify myself with "Morning Safari" and "Cameroon Calling". This is where selfless and critical journalism is practised and the young men and women here are the truly patriotic Cameroonians. They are fertilising the public place of debate; using the taxpayers' outfit to let the people have their say.
When you look at journalists of other African countries, say Nigeria, they look gorgeous and outstanding but the case is different, especially with the print journalists in Cameroon. What is the problem?
The first thing is that some of these papers are neither manned by professional journalists or good managers. Some publishers are just out for cheap fame and money. Many of these so-called big newspapers in the country do not as much as bother to pay their taxes; they do not have their staff registered with the National Social Insurance Fund, they pay their staff starvation wages even as such staff work under dire conditions.
They are only interested in the paper hitting the kiosks and advertisement money paid up. In Nigeria the press is respected, much respected and its practitioners, especially the brilliant ones, pampered. I was in Tanzania recently and the media here is solid, relative to ours.
This is why I have been insisting that the Publisher who short-changes his Reporters and refuses to collaborate with tax officials lacks the moral authority to criticise the government. Even so, it is no excuse for some journalists selling news cheaply and serving as rented harlots.
The regime, or some members of it, has seen the confusion in which we find ourselves, practically created and sponsored confusion within our ranks because the more journalists disagree, the more the government is at ease to have its undemocratic way.
One would have expected the media council to sanction some of these media outfits...
Unfortunately, it is very clear that the Media Council failed like lazy schoolboys. For the two or three years that it operated it didn't quite do anything. We only knew that it received some 20 something million francs from the Canadians that were supporting it and a few other millions from elsewhere and bought furniture for 11 million francs and nothing is being done. That is why I personally went to Yaounde to stop the illegitimate action of its President late last month.
You have been talking recently of journalists' status and other problems they face, what concretely are you going to do to bring up the status of the journalist?
I think it has to do with some kind of collective bargaining. First of all, it takes the journalist to recognise that he has his/her personal dignity to defend and the profession to practise the way it is supposed to be practised. It takes the journalist to remind their employers that we are the ones making the money; we are the ones putting the newspapers on the kiosks; recognise our output.
We have started talking to Journalists; we are going to be talking to Publishers that this business of publishing is not buyam-sellam; that they are dealing with hearts, you are dealing with communicators who should necessarily send out refined works; help in the propagation of good governance ideals and should not be prevented from achieving the ultimate goals of journalism.
Publishers should treat them like human beings and recognise the fact that these journalists also have ambitions to get married, to make children, to build houses and buy cars; in short to live the good life. Journalism is not like a long sentenced in poverty. It has never been, not in other parts of the world and should not be the case here. In our own dispensation, the case of the monkey working and the baboon eating should stop.
The Press is considered the fourth arm of government and one would have expected them to function together but they operate like the opposition and the ruling parties where they are always at logger heads. How do you see the relationship between the two?
I have always said the media is the first arm of the realm, I don't know why the concept that the press is the fourth. It cannot be because governments come and go but the media stays. We preside over the activities of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. We are the court of public opinion and our decisions count, summarily.
Remember Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Water Gate fame. These two boys unseated the Head of State of the greatest country of this world. No government has ever succeeded and will never succeed in laying journalism to rest anywhere, even in the most dictatorial regimes. If we do not recognise this, the regime and other individuals will continue to manipulate us and make sure that we are in dispersed.
A journalist should have self-preservation. He is not synonymous with some kind of public football which anybody can kick left and right, high, low and hard. But the one virtue the journalists must cultivate is humility. We all make mistakes and you must not think that because you are a journalist you can make a mistake and justify it and deceive the public.
When we make our mistakes we must say we are sorry whether on radio, on the television or newspapers. That does not change the fact that we ought to assert ourselves and have our profession recognised, respected.
How do you want to see the Union you are heading, journalism in Cameroon five or ten years from now?
I have a two-year term renewable. I will do the most I can and leave it there for others to judge.
You have been so vocal about poor treatment of journalists and other ills by some media organs. You also come from a media house; would you say your media organ is a model or above criticism?
I think The Post has its own fare share of the blames. The Post as a newspaper could have been far off from where it is now if we, the managers, were a bit more serious. But, unfortunately, we haven't quite been. Otherwise by now, it would have been possible for an Editor of The Post to earn 500,000 francs monthly.
It is only a matter of planning. Same goes for other newspapers. It would have been possible for The Post to be publishing as a daily newspaper by now. It would have been possible for The Post to own its own infrastructure by way of buildings and a printing press by now. That is why I am saying that before we set out as journalists to criticise, our hands must be clean.
I am indirectly telling you that my own hands are not very clean and the difference between me and others is that I have the humility to accept when I fail. In the future, if we have to be the independent newspaper at the service of the people that we claim to be, we have to make our peace with the authorities; we have to make sure that our workers are more comfortable than they are now and that The Post is read as a daily newspaper.
We also have to improve on the quality of our language, staff discipline, which is, to say the least, dismal; on the spread of our coverage as well as on the spread of our distribution network.
You were among 50 journalists chosen recently by the US Department of State, and the only one from the Central African sub region; I am sure it is a huge challenge.
I think it is an honour for me. When I was asked, like others, to submit my CV, I was told I could be taken or not. I think I was taken on the strength of what the United States government believe I can offer. The bigger challenge is for me now to go and do my best and not betray those who felt that I could be the one to represent this part of the world, covering the American elections.
We are 50 chosen from the whole wide world and I think only India and China have two Reporters each. It is a big brief for me and may be I should indicate that I would not be covering the elections for the Cameroonian media or for The Post.
I am going to be embedded in one of the American communication outfits. All what I would be doing would be consumed by the American public. But if I happen to send anything to The Post, it would be but a bonus.
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