Why MPs must review controversial "line 94" of national budget.

10/02/2023

The cruel murder of Yaounde-based journalist, Martinez Zogo, which is attracting national and international condemnation is said to be related to his disclosure of those who have been reaping from the so-called seemly mysterious "Line 94" of the national budget.

The line allocates money for “miscellaneous expenses” and given the lexicon definition of miscellaneous, it is cash "consisting of a mixture of various things that are not necessarily connected with each other".

The budget line is lodged in the Ministry of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, MINEPAT, which it is said to be managed with the collaboration of the Ministry of Finance.

Those who manage the money have had the freedom to dish it out to individuals and organisations, often allegedly with no set criteria or amount that each beneficiary can get, thus raising issues of suspicion, misappropriation and lack of transparency.

For years, the line has been criticised as a conduit for siphoning state money by those whose godfathers hold the bulky wallet said to be in the region of hundreds of billions FCFA. 

In one of its report, Douala-based daily, Le Messager, raised alarm that some 123 billion 900 million FCFA on line 94 might have been swindled in nine years.

In reaction to such allegations that have been rife, a letter signed on January 18, 2022, by the Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, was sent to the Minister Delegate to the Presidency in charge of Supreme State Audit, Mbah Acha Rose Fomundam.

It was on the instructions from President Paul Biya to "proceed with the audit of the management of resources from budget chapters 65 and 94 over the period from 2010 to 2021".

There were reports that several people were implicated and others said to have been dragged to the Special Criminal Court which handles embezzlement cases of over 50 million FCFA.

The issue of "miscellaneous expenses" and "investment interventions" have resulted allegedly to the murder of a journalist.

The nature of the expenditure covered by budget lines 65 and 94 shows that they involve all institutions and administrations, as well as the private sector and civil society.

To justify this lack of transparency, Finance Minister, Louis Paul Motaze, in December 2021, before the National Assembly, said "certain information" related to these expenses "is of an extremely confidential nature".

“...It may happen that these common expenditure chapters finance operations that relate to national security. These beneficiaries, I don't necessarily want everyone to know that such a beneficiary had this," he added.

During the 2022 budgetary debate before the National Assembly in a reply to a concern raised by Hon Joshua Osih of the SDF regarding a lack of transparency when it comes to beneficiaries of the “miscellaneous expenses” or line 94 of the finance bill, the Finance Minister had explained that: "The government has nothing to hide”.

“...It may happen that the miscellaneous expenses budget finance national security operations. So, not everyone is allowed to know the beneficiaries and the portion of the budget they received,” he said.

For the minister, the first reason there could not be transparency about the use of budget line 94, is the nature of the expenses. The second reason is the limitations on the budget.

As Louis Paul Motaze indicated, since the budget is not unlimited, not everyone can benefit from it. Also, “when the government estimated that an operation is important for the country, it can decide to support that operation even if it is organised by a private actor,” he stressed.

He nevertheless failed to list the criteria to benefit from that budget line. To dismiss the favouritism suspicions in the way that budget is managed, he disclosed that part of the budget was recently used to install a solar energy system for a hospital in the North West Region.

To conclude his stance, the government official indicated that the beneficiaries of the budget line could be published but not those classified as “secret defense”.

The debates about the budget line followed documents leaked on social media which revealed that a university and a private media organization were funded to the tune of nearly 4 billion FCFA from the “line 94”.

There is no quibbling that some security funding are often top secret but should donations to private profit making organisations be secret?

If the government can allocate a paltry 56 million francs as assistance to private media organs, what is the justification that one of the organs and a private university should share four billion from the common treasury?

That is the reason why at this daily newspaper, we urge parliamentarians to review the law concerning Line 94 and separate security expenditure from what the government can dole out for charity.

There should also be laid down guidelines to specify who can benefit from such government largesse at the expense of poor Cameroonians and their names made public.

If such transparency had been exhibited, journalists in the country who are doing an unappreciated job for the interest of the suffering and voiceless majority, would not be operating in fatal peril as they do today.