The National Assembly is currently the stage for an unprecedented cleanup operation. Under the impetus of Théodore Datouo, the new president of the institution, a rigorous audit of personnel records has just shed light on a systemic practice of embezzling public funds: the existence of 150 fictitious employees.
This revelation is not merely a simple administrative error; it is the symptom of an opaque management that has been draining the state’s coffers for years. The audit has precisely segmented the origin of these fictitious jobs. The breakdown of the eliminated staff reveals a striking concentration of the anomaly at the top of the pyramid: 97 employees were officially attached to the Office of the President of the National Assembly (PAN), Cavayé Yéguié Djibril, while 53 employees were administratively dependent on the General Secretariat. The finding established by the audit commission is unequivocal. These 150 individuals exhibited common characteristics that betrayed their status as ghost employees. They had no assigned office, no identified workstation, and above all, no access badge or valid professional card. Even more serious, no tasks were assigned to them, and no activity reports were produced in recent years. Yet, despite this total invisibility in the corridors of the Assembly, their presence was very real in the grand ledger of public accounting. They received, each month, salaries and bonuses paid by the Public Treasury. The removal of these names from the personnel records is only the first step in a process that could prove explosive. The question now on everyone’s lips is simple: who really benefited from these salaries? It is public knowledge that in networks of fictitious civil servants, the amounts received are often partially or fully returned to administrative patrons. This discovery raises major financial issues, with the cumulative salaries paid over several years potentially representing hundreds of millions of CFA francs. The initiative led by Théodore Datouo marks a clear break with past inaction. By targeting, in particular, the office of the former president of the institution, the audit breaks a taboo and sends a clear message: budgetary transparency must now take precedence. As Cameroon seeks to optimize its public spending in a tense economic context, the cleaning of the National Assembly’s personnel file appears as an essential public health measure that could soon pave the way for judicial proceedings.
