These Bulu Secretaries General Bossing Over Anglo-Bamis

(NewsWatch Cameroon)--Louis Paul Motaze and Michel Meva’a Meboutu are referred to as the big bosses both at the PM’s office and Senate respectively.
The Bamilikes know they have the senate, Cameroon’s upper house of parliament,  since their son Marcel Niat Njifenji is the president of the new institution. The Anglophones know they have the PM’s office since their own Philemon Yang is Prime Minister.
Observations sadly indicate that the two are but figure heads at the helm of both institutions. They are not in total control. At both institutions we gathered, real power lies in the hands of the two secretaries general.
President Paul Biya did not appoint them by mistake. Through them Biya is controlling both institutions, a source told this reporter. They meet Biya at least twice a week and they report regularly on all that is happening at both institutions.
Their bosses do not have the same opportunity to meet the Head of State.  It is alleged that the presidency by-passes their bosses and deals directly with them regarding certain major issues. How do you give somebody a goat and then keep the rope tied to the goat’s neck?
At the senate, some members who begged not to be named are making daily prayers that God should touch the heart of the Head of State so that he should replace his cousin Michel Meva’a  Meboutou. The latter, the senators complained, is too slow to act on case files of crucial issues submitted to him, possibly due to age.
Access to the septuagenarian the senators added, is too difficult. Senators are vexed that they have to wait for days to be received by Meva’a Meboutou to discuss crucial state matters.
This reporter has seen the president of the senate climbing down from his office to see Meva’a over a case file he had been keeping for too long. It said at the senate that it is easier to get water from a stone than to get money from Meva’a.
He hardly disburses funds on time, senators told us. They also claim he pays out senators’ dues as if he was doing them a favour. This reporter saw how Senators nearly protested with Meva’a’s delayed payment of a seminar per diem.
 At the PM’s office, Louis Paul Motaze is the boss, though Yang is PM.
At the National Assembly, another Beti man, Victor Yene Ossomba is Secretary General, but he finds it difficult to lord it over a northerner, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril as the latter we learnt is frustrating all his attempts to do so.
We could not confirm allegations that current flows epileptically between the three SGs and the heads of the three institutions as our efforts of getting their own side of the story yielded no fruits.
This article was first published in NewsWatch N°008 of April 14, 2014