A bad example!

A running imbroglio is currently tearing apart members of the national executive of the National Youth Council, a government sponsored apex consultative body which serves as a link between the public authorities and the nation’s youth.

The Council’s statutes were adopted in 2009 and in the short five –odd years of the body’s existence there have been two serious crises always linked to financial issues.

Poor handling of finances which has become a veritable national malady and which many have blamed for some of the country’s developmental setbacks, has invaded the Council house, taking disturbing proportions to the extent that a national president of the body got deposed over the weekend, virtually under the same circumstances as his predecessor some two years earlier.

An unverified national belief holds that the current political and economic leadership of the country has functioned so badly that corruption is almost a way of life in Cameroon, with devastating consequences which have long-standing negative effects on the future of the nation’s youth.

The youths of the country have been so bitter with management that they quickly refer to themselves as a sacrificed lot.Little wonder, the creation of the national youth council at all levels of the administrative hierarchy – from sub-division, division, region to national level – was expected to serve as a discussion platform to address all problems faced by the youth and that any solutions for their problems were expected to be initiated by the youths themselves.

So far so good! But the going got sour when money began to flow into the coffers of the council. One would have expected disagreement over some policy or strategic issue; but that such violent disagreement came over money, calls for some questions about the capacity of the youths to do things differently from their elders they hold responsible for their woes.

One would have expected them to show the good example by staying detached from money and, in so doing, prove to their faulted elders that the Cameroon of tomorrow will be in good hands. If it were a simple problem of management, it could be understandable. But that regular business of the youth council be reduced, virtually on a daily basis, to wrangling over who takes what of the financial allocations provided by government, is disgraceful.

It is definitely a very bad example members of the national youth council have set and it will require face-lifting initiatives to win back the confidence, not only of those who provide the funds, but also of the entire nation which continues to believe that a turnaround from bad ways can only come from the youth.

The National Youth Council has betrayed public trust and these repeated incidents over money are worrying because they set a bad example and tarnish the image of youths as supposed redeemers of a national demeaning socio-economic situation. The scandal also denudes the complexity of the role played by money in running public office.