CI-NEWS

Right of Reply

2020-06-08

No: 501

Right of Reply.

Dr Chi Asafor Cornelius

Secretary General of the NCPBM

-Yaounde-

The Publisher

The “Horizon Newspaper”

-Yaoundé-

Subject: Sponsoring of an article

in your newspaper no 0496 of Monday

May 11^th 2020.

Sir,

Following accusations that I sponsored publicity on the NCPBM in your newspaper no 0496 of Monday 11^th May 2020 in an article titled: “NCPBM three years on: Successes and challenges”,

I have the honour to request that you give me information on the circumstances under which I ordered an article in the above-mentioned edition.

Furthermore, I would like to have the details of the information I furnished you with and the medium through which this was done.

While expecting a favourable reply from you,

Kindly accept Sir, the expression of my distinguished consideration,

Dr Chi Asafor Cornelius

Editor’s note:

We were served this letter by bailiff on Friday, 29 May in our makeshift Chapelle Obili Office. Our initial thought was to ignore it because our bi-weekly schedule does not provide us ample time for “battles” with institutions which should have more pressing issues to tackle.

But upon second thought, considering the personality involved, and in respect of state institutions, we decided to issue this right of reply.

The Horizon has been a partner to the distinguished institution that NCPBM is for the past three years and felt duty-bound to present a positive image of it when it is under attack.

Taking the cue from a banner headline announced on the front-page of an English tabloid threatening to expose the financial mismanagement rocking an institution we saw as the epitome of transparent management, we sought to project the positive aspects even if issues of management may be haunting it beyond our knowledge.

It was in our findings that we discovered that the time was just ripe to make an assessment of the ground covered so far three years on.

Our contacts with various sources in the house led us to discover that the NCPBM was in three years of operation after the swearing-in of members on a certain 27 April 2017. Further inquiries led us to understand that the SG got his own swearing-in some seven weeks after the board members, that is, 15 June 2017.

We would have waited until the SG clocked a full three years but we gave preference to the members’ mandate. The Horizon or its Publisher has never met with Dr Chi Asafor Cornelius, the scribe of this august institution, and so would not have gone out producing an article to upstage him.

Selfless service

The Horizon is one of those newspapers that seeks to project the positive aspects of its partners. Seeing the image of an institution we consider as the light to shine for Cameroonians at stake, we sought to bring out the achievements it has garnered in spite of the initial skepticism attached to it. We said the towering image of the two persons at the steering wheel of the body must have contributed to moving it from a mere advisory organ to a think-tank group listened to by President Paul Biya.

In other settings, The Horizon would have applied to do a PR for the NCPBM in return for a fee. But given the short notice, considering the determination by detractors to run down the image of the body on the eve of its third anniversary, The Horizon as a partner made contacts with sources in the NCPBM capable of furnishing the right information.

Perhaps the error we made was not to go to the sources capable of complementing the alleged inaccuracies our PR article may contain. The only source quoted in our article is Joseph Enow, rightly or wrongly referred to as the communication officer. But we are proud to say we got to at least five sources, excluding the SG who is the target of alleged sponsorship as indicated by the above request for information by Dr Chi Asafor Cornelius.

The Horizon has been yearning to meet this important personality considered as the engine of the NCPBM to no avail. He was even described as one of our sources as an affable and generous person who would promptly ‘appreciate’ our write-up. We have been waiting for that ‘payment’ for a job well done only to get served with this correspondence from a bailiff requesting the source of our information on the article, “NCPBM three years on: Successes and challenges”.

Disappointed that no such PR fee has since been paid, we make bold to say that we will no longer go for any image-building or cleansing for the NCPBM until we are paid for the initiative we took to upstage the body. It is in this connection that we are publishing in its entirety the article in question for the public to judge where we went wrong (see page 5).

Dr Chi Asafor, whom we have never met, should be praised for using legal means to get the source of our information on the PR article. We are looking forward to meeting him one day if the NCPBM has the humility to own up for its ingratitude to a committed partner.

From the foregoing, we are convinced that the NCPBM, for all its semblance of a house in order, may be plagued by issues of power struggle and ‘clannism’. And so a body set up to reconcile Cameroonians towards peace and living together may just find itself sowing the seeds of conflict, Apartheid and power struggle, like most of the other state corporations.

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