The issue of corruption is dear to ordinary Cameroonians and they await enquiry results in understandable anxiety.

Ten years ago, the President of the Republic started a much-acclaimed effort to rid the country of graft, especially in high places. The initiative got the people’s overwhelming accolades with the fits arrests of high-profile governmental officials including heads of para-statals or companies in which government had a huge stake, ministers – serving or out of office – and even former Prime Minister and heads of government.

Ordinary people could not have had a better day as in their reckoning the government was now attacking one of the nation’s greatest ills, corruption! The same very watchful population has had several opportunities over the management of what they had considered a determined government policy to rid the public sector of graft as it was observed that some people, perceived by the population to be corrupt officials, went about their government business virtually scot-free.

So one could readily understand the excitement with which the population received the report of the National Anti-Corruption Commission released last Monday. The results of the Corruption watchdog are simply hair-raising and many Cameroonians are even wondering if the commission had such rights; because many had written it off as another toothless bulldog. But this is the commission which has gone very long distances to denounce corruption at areas which had, for a very long time, remained virtually inaccessible for investigation even of the most official nature.

Without knowing it, the commission has given itself a lot of credibility and this should serve as a lesson to many such bodies which are set up but only believe that was done on the whims and caprices of the public authorities and in so doing avoiding embarrassing the President of the Republic. But on countless occasions, the same President of the Republic has spoken of his resolve to rid the country of corrupt practices and in several public speeches, has even spoken of the necessity to bring faulting people to book.

How can those claiming to serve government be so rapacious to the extent of robbing ordinary poor citizens of their basic rights? The report of the National Anti-Corruption Commission comes at a time the nation is watching. And it is from the way that the powers that be react to the revelations in the report that will determine the real desire of the public authorities to address the throbbing problem of corruption in our country. The people are watching!