It seems fear has escaped most Congolese,
especially those in government and holding powerful posts, posts they were
offered, thanks to the magnanimity of Denis Sassou Nguesso or members of his
large and extensive family, who are present in all spheres of life of the West
African state. Why are some of his allies
now loquacious ? An
attempt is given below.
Family business
It is no hidden secret that, in Congo, members
of the ruling Sassou Nguesso family are
either in government or have help appoint a government minister, member of
parliament or mayor of a city or town.
It is a show of their manifest grip over the government. Three of Denis
Sassou Nguesso’s children, namely: Denis
Christel Sassou Nguesso, Claudia
Sassou Nguesso and Stella
Sassou Nguesso Mensah, are members of parliament under the banner of the
ruling PCT or Congolese Workers Party. His niece, Arlette
Soudan-Nonault is minister of Tourism and Environment. His nephews: Jean
Jacques Bouya and Jean
Dominique Okemba are respectively: minister of Spatial Planning and Major
projects and Member of Parliament, while Jean Dominique Okemba is head of
Congo’s national Security Council. Rear
Admiral Jean Dominique Okemba is de facto, the head of the intelligence service
and national security. Another nephew of
Denis Sassou Nguesso, Colonel Edgard Nguesso, is the head of Presidential domains.
In business, they are in oil, media, transport and construction, directly or
through surrogates. Congo is therefore
in a country tightly controlled by one man and his family, where there is no
free speech and wanton arrest of political opponent is prevalent. According to
the local NGO, OCDH, there are officially 133 political prisoners held at the
Brazzaville central prison and amongst which are two Presidential candidates: Jean
Marie Michel Mokoko and Andre
Okombi Salissa. And according to
Reporters without Borders or RSF Congo is ranked 114 on 180 in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index.
That people have started speaking out
not only against corruption, but pointing accusing fingers at the President and
his clan is not only a revolution but raises questions.
Why is it happening
now?
According to Mrs. Olga Patricia Ndinga Somboko,
who is a political analyst based in Cergy on the outskirts of the French
capital, Paris: “Sassou Nguesso, his clan and government are showing signs of
vulnerability seldom seen from a man who has been governing the country with an
iron fist. They are manifesting their vulnerability by reacting to anything or
news that pains them negatively. Look
at the way the pro-government privately owned daily, Les Depeches de
Brazzaville has reacted to the recent novel of Alain Mabanckou. They reacted by
writing three virulent anti Mabanckou editorials”. “The vulnerability also
stems from the fact that, the family is not united”. She continues: “They are divided in two main
camps: those supporting Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso’s plans to succeed his
father and those who are supporting Rear Admiral Jean Dominique Okemba’s covert
ambitions to succeed his uncle as President of the Republic. It is the first
time since he violent seized power in 1997 from Pascal Lissouba the only post
independent democratically elected president that he is being challenged this
frontally”. She adds: “The primary
reason is the economic crisis caused by the crashed in oil prices. Those he
bought their loyalties have seen their pockets dried up or considerably reduced.
The daily lives of people are not improving in spite recent appreciations of
the price of oil at the world market”. She went on: “The other reason is the inability
of the government to reach a bailout agreement with the IMF and which most
Congolese think; the principal obstacles are absence of transparency in debts
Congo contracted from China and other countries and also the endemic corruption”.
She concluded: “While most Congolese live in abject poverty, the families of
the President live in ostentatious opulence, characterized by the celebrations
of sumptuous wedding like that of his nephew Cyr Nguesso that was celebrated
yesterday. People are angry and those now speaking are those who saw him lost
power in 1992 in similar conditions”.
Corruption
Mrs. Olga Patricia Ndinga’s observations on the
internal feud which makes the government and the President appear weak and
vulnerable could be correct. On September 27th, Cyr Ebina, an MP of
the ruling PCT and also a son in law to the President, in a telephone
conversation, accused the President albeit in a veiled manner of covering
corruption of members of government and his family. He added: “for any
meaningful result in the fight against corruption to be visible, members of the
Nguesso family and government ministers must be arrested and prosecuted. Sadly
it is not the case”. He continued: “How do we think the IMF and the
international community are going to take us seriously if we don’t genuinely
fight corruption?” He concluded: “the current economic crisis is partly caused
by the poor governance of Denis Sassou Nguesso. It is also true that, the fall
in the price of commodity, principally oil has a fair share of the blame, but
we are the architects of our current economic travails. If there was
accountability and the rule of law, I don’t think we would have been where we
current are economically. We would have been better. Why is Nigeria out of
recession and we are not, while we are all exporters of oil? Do we think we
will ever be able to sign any bailout agreement with the IMF in such
circumstances of corruption and opaque financial transactions? I doubt”.
Mr Pierre Ngolo, Senate President and secretary
general of the ruling Congolese Workers Party or PCT, in a press conference
jointly organized with the Jean Pierre Thystère Tchikaya, minister of
Hydrocarbons, who is accused of corruption, said publicly that, corruption was
the cause of the economic difficulties that the country was undergoing. He
openly accused Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso of not only being corrupt but also
of nursing presidential ambitions. He concluded by calling on all MPs belonging
to the ruling party and who are supporting Denis Christel via his association:
“the Congo that we desire” or in French: “Le Congo que nous Voulon”, to stop
because, they don’t have his support or that of the party. Paradoxically,
Pierre Ngolo and Denis Christel are members of the same party, but are washing
their dirty linen in public.
In a
telephone conversation on the 24th of September, Joseph Kignoumbi
Kia-Mbongou, an MP and second secretary at the Congolese national assembly, accused President Denis Sassou Nguesso and his
family of corruption. He said: “the ruling family has used the National Oil Company,
SNPC as a corruption conduit”. He added: “in November 2001, a French bank, BNP
loaned out FCFA 6.5 billion to SNPC based on collateral of 12.5 billion worth of
crude oil barges”. He went on: “this sum disappeared in thin air”. Joseph
Kignoumbi Kia-Mbongou was simply confirming a press release that he had made
public in which he gave details of all the financial impropriates allegedly
carried out by Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso at the SNPC. He concluded: “I want
to be at peace with myself. I will make more revelations that I discovered when
I was member of the finance commission at the national assembly. The Nguesso
family has destroyed Congo”.
Rejection of
corruption accusations
In reaction by phone from Brazzaville today
Friday, Guy Marius Okana, a municipal councilor at the Brazzaville Greater city
council and an aide to Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso said: “attacks from Joseph
Kignoumbi Kia-Mbongou, Pascal Tsaty Mabiala or Pierre Ngolo who are accusing
Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso of corruption and by extension his father, are
campaigns of calumny from a group of people who are not themselves paragons of
probity. Pierre Ngolo is a member of the PCT and as such, I would have expected
that, any differences that, he has with Denis Christel should be ironed out
internally and not publicly, this, in respect of recommendation from the 6th
ordinary congress of the PCT. Sadly he is washing the dirty linen of the PCT in public. It is unfortunate”. He added: “Pierre Ngolo is Senate President and
secretary general of the PCT, why didn’t he resign from the post of SG of the
PCT and allow his deputy, Andre Massamba to continue with the running of the
party? Why are they thinking that Denis
Christel Sassou Nguesso has presidential ambition while his father is still
president of the Republic? Is it a bad thing for Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso
to come in support of patients and staff of the Brazzaville University Teaching
Hospital that have been on strike and without pay for several months? When it
was time to remove Gabriel Oba Aponou as head of the ruling party in
Brazzaville because he was the head of the senate subcommittee on foreign
relations or having the dual casket of Senator and regional party head, it was
not normal, but when it is Pierre Ngolo, who is Senate President and SG of the
ruling party, with doubtful management it is normal”. He concluded: “Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso does what he
does under the aegis of his foundation, Perspective Avenir. He is not corrupt
as his enemies are claiming. Let his accusers bring proves and not rumours”.
Pierre Ngolo’s accusations were a bold one from one whose meteoric rise
politically, is thanks to Sassou Nguesso but was also another indication that,
fear has deserted most.
Endorsement of Denis
Sassou Nguesso
On the 22nd of September, in an
exclusive interview granted via phone
from the Nairobi international airport, where she was on transit to New York to
attend the UN general assembly and UN sponsored international conference on
environment, Arlette Soudan-Nonault, who is Congo’s minister of Environment and
Tourism and who was representing President Sassou Nguesso, said: “I am happy to
announce that, the German organisation, GTZ
has offered the Congo Basin Forest that Congo is leading, the sum of €
15 million or FCFA 10 billion to help improve the Congo Basin Rain Forest
management, a forest which absorbs 15% of the global greenhouse
emissions”. She added: “Soon, it will be the French Agency for International
Development or ADF that will grant my ministry, the sum of € 2 million or FCFA
1.2 billion. She went on: “those grants are
an endorsement of President Denis Sassou Nguesso and his government’s
determination to fight against corruption”. She concluded: “the IMF should
follow the examples of both organisations and countries and sign the bailout
agreement with Congo that has been postponed a record six times because of
among other reasons: corruption or ideological divergences. But I know that
most of my ministerial colleagues are corrupt and I am today a subject of
attack from them because they are jealous of grants that, my ministry is
receiving and would have wanted that, it should be diverted to other purpose
which weren’t designated for or misappropriated as they have done with other
assistance from donor countries and organisations. But President Sassou Nguesso
is determined to weed out corruption in governance. Hence he has created a new
organisation to fight against corruption with more powers and equally be independent”.
Imminent arrest of
corrupt persons
She added: “It explains why some of my
colleagues are in panic mood right now. Those who stole money and kept them
abroad or who are corrupt because they are close to the President will be
arrested. But she didn’t give any names or when the arrest will start. She however said: “her ministry plans to
create at least 10 thousand jobs and will develop historical or memorial
tourism and ecotourism with the objective of making Congo become the first
tourism destination within the central African region. Toward that, information
offices displaying or providing the tourism potentials of the country have been
opened at the Brazzaville and Pointe Noire International airports and obtaining
of visas for tourism have been facilitated”.
Why is Arlette
Soudan-Nonault openly accusing some of her colleagues of corruption?
Professor Elanga Christophe Ndongo Gilles, a
political analyst based in Brazzaville seems to have an answer: “the current
declaration from Members of parliament belonging to ruling and even government
ministers accusing their colleagues and the President of the Republic of
corruption is the result of the current infighting within various clans joggling
for power. Arlette is the niece of the President and he has used her as a
bulldozer or dispenser of bad news in pass, so it is not fortuitous that she
speaks the way she has by not showing solidarity with her colleagues. There's also the rumour of an imminent cabinet
change, hence exposing each other increases the chance of either forcing Sassou
Nguesso to drop long standing ministers accused of corruption or attempt to
bringing rebels or opposition element on board in a bid to forestall any kind
of uprising as economic crisis digs deep and discontents rises. But when Pierre
Ngolo, Senate President and secretary general of the ruling party openly
accuses Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso of corruption, it shows that, the
President wants to show the world, especially the IMF that, he really means
business in his fight against corruption and he is ready to sacrifice his son.
It could also be a political tactics from the President who has not yielded to
the recommendation of the IMF to audit the SNPC or the major public works
ministry both accused of monumental corruption” he concluded.
