Has the notion of state authority been thrown to the dogs? A few years ago, and notably at the time of the infamous political unrest taken to the streets by opposition parties in view of radical political change in the country. The notion of state authority has never been more manifest especially as we all saw how the state exerted its authority by bringing about normalcy and, in so doing, entrenching a spirit of fear of the state in many minds. Since that time, a new spirit of respect for the state seems to have finally settled in the minds of Cameroonians, as the observance of laws seems to be more visible, seen from the reduction of actions deemed as defying the authority of the state.

Even if corruption continues virtually unabated, its manifestations and modus operandi have drastically changed. It is no longer as brazen as it used to be obviously because of the new legislation in force to address the ill frontally. White-collar crime has stepped in and sometimes practiced by the most unsuspecting citizens. A few years ago apprentice-crooks could try their hand duping a few naïve people with simple tricks. As the taste of the pudding comes with the eating, more intelligent crooks are beginning to think that they could go a few steps higher and are not leaving any new avenue to chance. In our edition of yesterday, the Minister of the Supreme State Audit Office was calling the attention of the public to these new and rather courageous forms of impostures. As per the minister’s account, three persons including a woman were caught red-handed Tuesday last week as they attempted to obtain favours from some senior officials purportedly summoned to the ministry to render account of their financial stewardship. The story is simply chilling and tells of how far people can use their God-given intelligence in the pursuit of evil rather than using it to help other citizens. The three, who apparently had made some successes in earlier moves, had contacted the Government Delegate to the Bafoussam City Council, claiming they were senior officials of the Supreme State Audit Office and summoned the senior official to Yaounde to be auditioned on what they claimed was his mismanagement of the council’s funds. To make their sordid plan take some formal setting, they went to the Supreme State Audit Office and negotiated for office space and once such space was offered, they confidently sat in at the appointed time on the agreed date. The embattled Government Delegate who had made the trip from Bafoussam went into the hearing with an obvious heavy heart, knowing what befalls all embezzlers of public funds these days. The three crooks were unaware of the existence of an internal security system in the Audit Office which was activated and within minutes of their “auditioning” of the Delegate, they were nabbed and handed over to the appropriate judicial police services.

Many people in Cameroon today blame the rise in white-collar crime to the difficult job situation as many intelligent youths easily turn to all sources of make-money-quickly initiatives and would never hesitate to hit naïve citizens with very attractive proposals. Many are also using all sorts of subterfuges to draw the best benefits from the current government anti-graft campaigns through the numerous initiatives as the anti-corruption commission, the national agency for financial investigations and even the courts. These “fast guys” carefully study the functioning of these bodies and best know when to strike. For all the good intentions of the state, one cannot but observe the rise in the same crimes the government wants to fight and it will actually not be necessary to create new bodies with each new situation created. Rather, the state and other actors should be more watchful and attentive lest crooks and impostors continue to inflict their kind of deceitful ways on a government desirous of delivering for the prosperity of its citizens as well as depriving innocent citizens of their hard-earned money through fraud.