Looking Back at the Messi Messi Affair (3): Monga Returns, the Biya Regime Goes on the Offensive

By Dibussi Tande

Celestin Monga was still in Paris when the May issue of Jeune Afrique Economie made it to the newsstands and started an international firestorm thanks to the Messi Messi Interview. As soon as the story broke, the Biya regime allegedly decided to arrest Monga upon his return to Cameroon (Le Messager, no. 262 du 14 mai 1992).

In an interview granted to the Douala-based Challege Hebdo (No. 69 du 6 mai 1992) from Paris, Monga declared that he was unfazed by the threats of the Biya regime and insisted that he would return to Cameroon, come what may: “ Je n’ai  pas peur d’être arrêté et je ne redoute aucun procès”, he declared. Nonetheless, in an interview with Martin Jumbam in Cameroon Life (Vol. II No. 6 July 1992) a few months later, Monga confessed that,

“Coming back home was a very difficult decision to take. Many friends of mine here in Cameroon had called me in Paris urging me not to come back. The said it was too dangerous, that I’d been earmarked for elimination. But I had no intention of spending my life in exile.”

On May 15th Monga called a press conference in Paris to inform journalists that he would be return to Cameroon the next day: “My aim was that if I was arrested at the airport at least a few people would be in the know,” Monga later recalled in the same interview with Jumbam.

However, unbeknownst to Monga, a “Committee to Support Celestin Monga” had been created by sympathizers who had embarked on a massive sensitization and mobilization campaign reminiscent of the early days of the Villes Mortes. Douala was inundated with thousands of pamphlets calling on all “freedom fighters” to be at the Douala International Airport to save Monga from the “claws of these bandits”. The memory of Filipino opposition leader, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, being gunned down by Government agents in August 1983 as he stepped off a plane at the Manila International Airport was fresh on the minds of many.

On Saturday May 16, 1992, thousands of militants from the “radical opposition” – SDF, UFDC, UDC, UPC, MP, PSD, RAP, including members of the University of Yaounde students’ “Parliament” (led by Senfo Tonkam, who had just been released from jail after 5 months of detention) – thronged to the Douala International Airport in a formidable show of defiance and force. Security forces were nowhere in sight. They had made a “tactical retreat” in a bid to avoid possible confrontation with the mammoth crowd which chanted the famous Villes Mortes slogan “Zero Mbéré, Zero Casse” (No police, no destruction).

The event was crowned by the spectacular appearance of SDF Chairman, John Fru Ndi, then at the apex of his popularity, and of Severin Tchounkeu, publisher of La Nouvelle Expression, who had been in hiding since his newspaper republished the Messi Messi interview. As the crowd waited for Monga’s arrival, it also launched into chants of “ABC wonderful, small Paul Biya big big tif man wonderful” -  another famous refrain from the Villes Mortes days. 

By six pm the happy-go-lucky mood of the crowd began to change as the plane which was supposed to arrive an hour earlier was nowhere in sight. Rumors began to spread that the plane had been diverted to the Nsimalen International airport in Yaounde.  Only the assurance from CAMAIR officials the plane had simply been delayed, along with appeals for calm by the opposition leaders, stopped the crowd from going on the rampage.

Shortly thereafter, the Boeing 747 carrying Celestin Monga landed. A few minutes later, Monga alighted from the plane and “was enveloped by a boisterous crowd” in the throes of indescribable frenzy. “Me voici donc à Douala!” Monga mockingly declared, to the delight of the crowd which recalled that Paul Biya had uttered the same sentence a year earlier in Douala as a challenge to those who had dared him to visit the opposition stronghold at the height of the Villes Mortes. Monga’s motorcade then drove off to his residence under the “protective canopy” hundreds of taxis and bend skins. For the second time in a little over a year, the streets of Douala had risen to save Monga from the clutches of the Biya regime...

Although Monga was never detained because of the Messi Messi interview, the regime subsequently used more subtle tools of coercion to harass and frustrate him professionally. Eventually Monga went into exile. Today he works for the World Bank where he is the lead economist for Europe and Central Asia.

Monga’s triumphant return and President Biya’s stubborn silence did not mark the end of the Messi Messi scandal which still had one final chapter.

La Gazette’s cleansing campaign
The dust had partially settled on the Messi Messi affair when it was resurrected in July 1992 by pioneer Cameroonian journalist Abodel karimou in his tabloid, “La Gazette” (no. 653 of July 6, 1992). Karimou claimed that a thorough investigation carried out in Cameroon and Brussels by his tabloid had confirmed that the Messi Messi affair was a “clear case of political manipulation”. Although Karimou failed to present any evidence to back his assertions, the main theme in his report was that Messi Messi had not told the whole truth because “the 3000 million FCFA which Mrs. Biya supposedly borrowed from the SCB could not alone account for the collapse of the bank.” He argued that this sum was small change compared to the hundreds of billions of FCFA owed the bank by thousands of Cameroonians who had refused to repay their debt.

In what seemed like a concerted “Kilav campaign” (Kilav is a popular detergent in Cameroon), the government-controlled media, which had been virtually gone underground when the Messi Messi story broke, picked up on the story and went on the offensive. A special issue of Cameroon Tribune claiming to focus on “facts and only facts” sought to discredit Messi Messi’s version of the events (no. 1462 of July 6, 1992)”.

According Cameroon Tribune, Messi Messi’s got his facts all wrong:

• The President had a “country home” in Mvomeka’a and not a Palace as Messi Messi claimed;
• The President had only one elder brother who is still alive, therefore claims that cash was withdrawn from SCB coffers to pay for his funeral were absurd;
• Mr. Albert Mva’s account was not in the red and he had paid off the 624 million FCFA debt to the SCB. In fact, the newspaper claimed that his account had a huge surplus which is what was used to pay Olivier Cacoub the architect. All the SCB did was facilitate the transfer of funds from Mva’s account to Cacoub’s;
• Money from the SCB was not used to finance the Mvomeka’a farms or build the presidential guards’ quarters in the President’s “country home”;
• Regarding the loans that Messi Messi claimed to have given to members of the Presidential Couple’s family and entourage under duress, the newspaper placed the responsibility squarely on Messi Messi’s shoulders: “Any citizen who fulfills the conditions for obtaining a loan can get one. It is up to the bank to ensure that the borrower is capable of repaying the loan”. The paper nonetheless insisted that one of the presidential protégés, Maitre Kack Kack, had fully repaid the money that was given to him to construct his villa;
• The newspaper also argued that the document giving Aze’e Jeremie unrestricted access to SCB funds was a fake because the signature on the certified document did not belong to either the President or his wife.

Taking part in the Kilav campaign was a certain Peter Mansion, said to be an American lawyer from Maryland, hired to defend client Paul Biya. Mansion described the allegations against the first couple as “a misrepresentation of the facts and a miscarriage of justice.” He argued that Messi Messi’s allegations and accusations had no value “from a legal standpoint”, and that they were simply intended “to divert attention from real issues in this time of political uncertainty.”

Mansion claimed that the “facts” at his disposal showed that Messi Messi had simply been manipulated by President Biya’s detractors who had worked on their plan from January 1990 to May 1992. Mansion alleged that Messi Messi became an ideal target for the enemies of the regime because they realized that accusations of presidential embezzlement by a fellow Beti would carry more weight.

La Nouvelle Expression’s Rebuttal
The private press was quick to challenge the “facts” from the official media, and highlight the contradictory, incomplete and misleading information in the official version of events. One of the most detailed and credible rebuttals was in La Nouvelle Expression (no. 58 du 14-20 Juillet 1992) which lashed out at the “incoherence” of the attempts to clean up Presidential couple’s tarnished reputation, and at the “amateurism” of the Biya fire brigade (“le couple Biya s’enforce – incohérence d’un blanchiment – l’amateurisme des sapeurs pompiers”):

• For starters, La Nouvelle Expression showed that Mr. Mva Albert had not repaid his loan to the SCB, and that he never had enough money in his personal account to pay Olivier Caboub for the work done at the Mvomeka’a “country home”;
• While it was true that Biya had an elder brother, Benoit Mvondo, who was still alive, the President nonetheless had a younger brother who had died sometime after he came to power. Messi Messi did not therefore create a “fake dead brother” as the official version intimated;
• The newspaper also showed that the document giving Aze’e Jeremie unrestricted access to SCB funds was an authentic document which had been duly certified by a police officer whose signature was actually on the document.

Truth Stranger than Fiction
14 years after the Minister of Finance asked the Judiciary to initiate criminal proceedings against Messi Messi for embezzlement, no formal charges have ever been brought against him. It is not difficult to conclude that this affair has been buried this long because of the the story’s potential to destabilize the Biya regime. Was Messi Messi the corrupt “scoundrel” that he was originally portrayed to be, or was he simply the fall guy in a mind-boggling tale of Presidential greed and financial impropriety? If Cameroon’s anti-corruption drive is to be taken seriously, then the truth about the Messi Messi affair must be unearthed and told without fear or favor.

The End

Comments

[mesumbe]

Thanks for a great narrative! I have never been this enthralled by a non-fiction story before.

I urge you should write a book on the great events in Cameroon history. I will buy it in a beat!! Thanks again!!

[Margory]

The Messi Messi affair turned out to be a messy messy business with the potopoto all over the beloved head of state and his better half. Yeah approach Messi and the economics professor for a book.

[FONJONG]

Mr Dibussi Tande: You deserve a medal.

I actually lack words to appreciate your intelligence and good style of placing facts.

We need just 10 guys like you in Cameroon to make Cameroon a better place.

Keep it up. A job well done will always be rewarded.

[Nkosi Jacob]

Dibussi
Now that you have come to the end of this fine narrative; now that you have put the present government-trumpted fight against corruption into perspective, I think it is now time for us [who visit your weblog] to comment. The Messi Messi Affair should indeed be the beginning point of the fight agianst corruption. Messi Messi would have to explain what happened to SCB. And if he has to do that the Presidency of the republic [Biya] would have to be investigated. And so the chain continues. What caused the death of Jeanne Irene Biya?

[Margory]

I think Messi Messi should be approached wherever he is on exile to make a sworn statement or afidavit, with his recollection of the facts and documents in the presence of judicial persons and the auspices of a court. He does not need to go back to get himself killed. Lawyers, this is possible, is it not?

[agbor balla]

Dibussi,
Wonderful job. You bring back nostalgia during your days at Cameroon Life and Cameroon post. Keep up the wonderful job