The Chairperson of the National Anti-corruption Commission (NACC), Rev. Dr Dieudonné Massi Gams has recommended the creation of a structure to recover and manage funds from acts of corruption. He has also recommended the creation of NACC branches nationwide in order to consolidate the achievements so far recorded in the fight and foster the development of Cameroon.

He was speaking in Yaounde on December 19, 2019 as he chaired the ceremony to present Cameroon’s 2018 Anti-corruption Status Report. He lauded concrete actions carried out in 2018. “Control institutions, courts, public administrative bodies, the private sector and the civil society were all very active in the fight that concerns us,” he said.   He added that the mechanisms put in place and actions taken encouraged citizens to speak out. Massi Gams illustrated this point by the number of denunciations of acts of corruption. In 2018, he disclosed, NACC received 23,048 denunciations compared to 3,982 in 2017. He further said that 4,498 of them were transmitted through mails and electronic means and added that since the establishment of the Hotline, 18,550 calls came in to denounce acts of corruption between April 23 to December 31, 2018.

With regards to commitment through participation in drawing up of the report, NACC Chairman said 29 ministries excluding   the Supreme State Audit Office out of the existing 35 participated. The report says 10 public institutions, 11 companies, one subsidised structure (the Memve’ele project), one Regional and Local Authority (the Douala II Council) out of the 360 councils in Cameroon contributed to the report. Massi Gams used the occasion to appeal to other ministries, religious bodies and all and sundry to effectively join in the fight against corruption.

Acts of corruption, the report disclosed, have deprived the government from huge sums of money that would have used for development. Just in 2018, a total of FCFA 46 544 443 904 was lost as cases in the various courts indicated.