President Paul Biya
Don’t be surprised to open your social media account tomorrow and find a friend request from Issa Tchiroma or say Mebe Ng’o waiting for your endorsement. President Paul Biya has urged his over 60 cabinet members to aggressively embrace new media by ensuring active presence on social media networks.
The descision we learned is informed by the spiralding number of social network users in Cameroon and the regime’s fear that such a growing trend could lead to a potential threat from young Cameroonians who are fed up with the system.
Biya, had in his 2016 youth day address to the young folks, acknowledged the “highly competitive new information technologies” era they were living in, and called on “large enterprises and other public and private entities” to “…set the example by progressively carrying out their own digital switchover.”
The latest presidential instruction now requires ministers and their ministries as well as other subordinate institutions to have official presence on prominent social networks such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter, the goal – so they can update Cameroonians and the rest of the world on their day-to-day activities.
Explaining the head of state’s directive at a press conference recently, Communication Minister, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, said government can not be indifferent in an era where almost every communication is fuelled by social or new media platforms.
Tchiroma said, the presence of traditional media channels notwithstanding, Biya also expects Cameroonians to be informed of official government business through major social media networks to which a very large number of citizens belong.
The Arab spring that toppled a number of dictatorial regimes across the Middle East and Africa for instance, was largely successful, thanks to social media.
But apart from informing Cameroonians of their day-to-day business, the government spokesman added what many Cameroonians thought is the original intention of the new order – check the activities of Cameroonians online in the guise of preventing the spread of rumour and false information about government.
The latest move by Biya, who is said to have an up-to-date official facebook and twitter accounts, observers think, may have also been prompted by the sad reality of most ministries or para-statals websites going for several months or years without being updated.
“I am very excited to hear this. If the ministers respect the president’s prescription, then it will be a great idea. That means, for example, that I can be able to receive a tweet informing me of the launch of a competitive entrance examination by the public service ministry” Ambe Julienne, a young Yaounde resident told The Cameroon Journal.
For Ngwa Smith, a Yaounde I university student, Biya’s instruction could well just end up as a pipe dream, like has been the case with other aspects of national life. Hear him: “I have doubts if this will work. The social media is mostly used by us of the younger generation. And everyone knows that our government is a gerontocracy (a gov’t made up of very old people). I am sure some ministers cannot even read and print out an e-mail from their e-mail boxes on their own, without the help of an assistant.”
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