How La République du Cameroun Destroyed the Southern Cameroons Marketing Board

The 1987 Census makes out that the contentious geographic expression called the North-West and Southwest provinces had a population of about 2 millions people with a 3.2 % growth rate the current population would be 2.8 millions.

Various activists for Southern Cameroons determinism contest these figures and charge that the various Francophone-led regimes in Cameroon downplayed the population of Southern Cameroons for political expedience. Their arguments are buttressed by the empirical observation that in 1960, the first five year development plan said Cameroon had a population of 5.610.832 with Southern Cameroons having 1.890.000. According to the 1960 West Cameroon Documents there were 1.055.000 Souls in the North-West and 845.000 people in the South-West. The voting population that participated in the Plebiscite was 465. Were the growth rates to be placed at a minimal 3% then there will be a total of 2.800.000 people in the North-West province and 2.4 millions people in the SW province by the year 2007; 47 years after independence. We all know that the general growth rate for post-independence Africa is up-wards of 5% and 7% in some cases. Hence the figures can simply not "age backwards" as it were. Ageing backward by 500.000 people may be more.

 

Colonialism skewed production and income generation in Southern Cameroons towards subsistence farming and exports of cash crops. Primary products like coffee (Arabica especially) in the Northern Zone   and Robusta Coffee and cocoa (especially in the Southern Zone), tea and bananas were recommended as foreign exchange earners.

Although it had become en vogue for Francophone Cameroonians to claim that Southern Cameroonians brought nothing to Reunification the truth is that Southern Cameroons did not need anything from anybody either.

If the main source of foreign exchange earner was cocoa, coffee, Bananas, tea, the facts produced by the French Ministry of Cooperation at Independence in 1960 show that Southern Cameroons brought was producing more of these items than French Cameroons.

We all know that the inheritor Francophone-led post-colonial regime scuttled institutions like the Santa Coffee Estate, which albeit Artisanal, were projected to be the foundation of a full-fledge industrial base. This happened while the indigenous leadership that became the compradors of this local "indigenous colonial masters" looked on.

To call a spade a spade statements from Mr. Ian Macleod the last British Secretary of State for the Colonies to Foncha that: "The golden keys of the Bank of England will not be given to Southern Cameroons if they decide to be on their own" was of grotesque superficiality: For one thing Mr. Macleod never knew what was hidden beneath the soils of Southern Cameroons. Neither did he know that the head start of Southern Cameroons in cash crops production would be subverted by re-unification.

The Origin and Glories of SCMB

While the colonial wisdom of suggesting the cultivation of local crops for what Ali Mazrui describes as "Europe's sweet tooth" had already been questioned, the foresighted Southern Cameroon Administration set up the Southern Cameroons Marketing Board (SCMB) in 1954 to facilitate the marketing of its raw materials: Cocoa, coffee, sugar cane, tea with a view to obtaining precious foreign exchange for this theatre.

In 1955, thanks to its partnership with the Nigerian Marketing Board, the SCMB received one million pounds from the Nigerian Marketing Board reserves. This became a tradition and the SCMB became a regular clearing-house for individual and collective development of the Southern and Northern regions.

The SCMB not only stabilized cash crop prices for farmers but its surplus was stowed away into a reserve fund for a rainy day while a smaller portion was used for "development projects that immediately profited the farmers and improved his "well being." The SCMB funded farm to market roads, rural schools, dispensaries, fertilizers, etc. the tacit agreement was that the SCMB belonged to the people and the government only came in to ensure a stable and profitable price for the farmers' sweat. At independence the SCMB became the West Cameroon Marketing Board.

 

With the contentious albeit gradualist tendency of infiltrating so as to eventually destroy typical of the Ahidjo regime, the West Cameroon Marketing Board became the simplistic Produce Marketing Organisation (PMO)

Funds from the PMO were channeled to the Colonial masters cum governors of the province who after taking a cut sometimes put a speckistan into what they thought were "important development projects in the province."

In Francophone Cameroon private businessmen collected cash crops, traded it off to the World Market and then government intervened through the "Caisse de Stabilisation" to create a buffer fund for its activities. The difference was that projects funded by the Stabilization Fund had nothing to do with the farmers.

Statistics

Table of food and cash Crops Export

Crop	West Cameroon	%	East Cameroon	%	Total
Cocoa	68.000	92	6.000	8	74.000
Coffee	40.000	95	2.200	5	42.200
Bananas	52.000	37	85.000	63	137.000
Rubber	3.600	55	2.900	45	6.500
Palm oil	1.100	20	4.200	80	5.300
Palm Nuts	13.800	86	2.200	14	16.000
Tobacco	1.300	100	-	0	1.300
Tea	-	-		34	100
Pepper	-	-	18	100	34
Wood	208.000	62	125.000	38	333.000`
Cotton	11.000	100	-	-	11.000
Groundnuts	10.000	100	-	-	10.000
Food crops	2.616.000	98.4	508/000	1.6	3.118.000

The Descent to Hell of SCMB

And, in 1975, Ahidjo finally decided to "Nationalise" the Produce Marketing Organization, renaming it the National Produce Marketing Board. At the time of the takeover the PMO had reserve funds of 48 billion FCFA and assets (officers, warehouses, vehicles, etc.) evaluated at over 20 billions FCFA. The tidy sum was immediately used up to build an exotic NPMB headquarters in Douala and various Francophone institutions like SODECOTON grabbed one billion from the PMO steal. Appeals by North West farmers for seeds, fertilizers, etc. to sustain the golden goose, at it were fell on deaf ears. Cash crops production this stagnated.

 

The PMO reserves were held in high esteem by the West Cameroon Government. In 1964/66 when Ahidjo decided to starve the Jua administration of funds, the 48 billion was never tampered with. If this fund of 48 million had stayed in any banking system its 5% interest per annum should have in the year 2000 left the West Cameroon farmer with a tidy 75 billion profits and total capital of 123 billion FCFA. And if it is taken into account that the PMO only had to compensate farmers in Southern Cameroons for some 52.000 tons of produce (30.000 tons of cocoa from the South West and about 7000 tons of Arabica coffee from the North West) the PMO only had to pay something like 15 billion FCFA. The NPMB should say where the money is at.

With the takeover of the PMO, the mayhem started. The always Francophone General manager of NPMB proceeded to commence the apartheid in the treatment of Anglophone farmers. While Francophone farmers received ALL proceeds from the sale of their produce, Anglophones had to leave a portion on the table for the "Master."

The Rape of the Bota Wharf

The Bota Wharf as the point of export was scuttled and, despite its more expensive warehousing nature the Douala Port benefited.

In 1982 before Admadou Ahidjo resigned as President of Cameroon the NPMB had saving of 240 billion FCFA. This money was squandered between 1983-1984 inside one year as cash handouts to CENEEMA, FONADER, CAMAIR, etc. Today, NPMB is no more. CENEEMA machines ended up in the farms of the elite especially in the Mvomeka plantation of the President.

Getting the Cooperatives

From SCMB to NPMB...From frying pan to fire!

A 1987 memorandum from the North-West Cooperative Association tells the gory tale of how the NPMB single-handedly destroyed eleven cooperatives affiliated to the NWCA and forty other affiliate primary societies in the North-West. Recall that the NWCA was the sole license buyer of farmers' produce. Income from its transactions from Cocoa and Coffee was supposed to be for the following:

 

For starters, the NPMB unilaterally decided on the amount it paid per kilogramme of Arabica coffee. NPMB paid the NWCA 132 FCFA flat while it made over 800FCFA per kilo. Consequently between the 1978-82 periods the NWCA received only 50.000.000FCFA annually for its 7000 tons of Arabica coffee. The NPMB also refused to pre-finance the production of Coffee (transportation, handling and seed distribution) claiming that these functions were the exclusive preserve of FONADER of course UCCAO was not only getting pre-financing but even with the creation of NPMB, UCCAO continued to run its affairs, making proceeds of 520FCFA and paying only 150FCFA to the Stabilization Fund.

The NPMB even proceeded to sell un-graded cocoa: "triage" behind the back of the North West Cooperatives. Between 1978-1983, NPMB made the astronomical 1.300.000.000 from some 1.839.833 kgs of un-graded coffee. Of course the NWCA never got a franc from these transactions.

Document from the NWCA and confirmed by other Anglophone sources show that in fiscal 1992/1993, the Technical Adviser to the Director General of NPMB, who was in charge of marketing operations, and residing in Victoria personally marketed that years' Arabica coffee from the North West for a profit of 2.309.620.360 FCFA. That year the NWCA got only 600.00.000 FCFA from the NPMB after bullying the Marketing Board.

The NPMB thus ripped off 1.7 billion FCFA from the sweat of North West farmers. The direct payment to the NWCA suddenly proved to the NCWA that there had never been any stabilization Fund. Naturally the NPMB remained very secretive about transactions taken even on behalf of the NWCA.