The non respect of time which can aptly be described as the African Time Syndrome, particularly by civil administrators and most recently by top government officials, is now gaining grounds.

Some ministers now take late coming, particularly to public events, as a right and not a privilege. Though everyone is entitled to be late for one reason or another, these ministers are increasingly and frequently abusing this privilege.

This is in the likes of the minister of communication and self-acclaimed government spokesman, Issa Tchiroma Bakary.

In one of Tchiroma’s recent press outings, visibly-disturbed pressmen who had waited for over five hours quizzed the minister on his frequent late coming to media outings. Minister Tchiroma in his response at the press conference which ran into the late hours of the night said: “... the minister of communication whom I am does not have an agenda. I can summon you at 2pm and give the press conference at 8pm. You have to accept it. You have to understand it... If you do not accept it...don’t come”.

This outrageous utterance did not surprise me one bit, for hardly have I ever attended a press conference convened by Tchiroma without him beginning with apologies. I just imagine the nature of boycott he would have received if he was in next door Nigeria where there exists a formidable journalists’ union.

Minister Tchiroma and other officials who share the same feature like him, forget to know that one thing one can’t recycle is wasted time. Even Biya who appoints the appointees is not known to suffer from the time syndrome, though he has always given to understanding that he uses the Lunar Calendar rather than the Georgian Calendar.

Laertius Diogenes tells us that time is the most valuable thing a man can spend, yet Tchiroma always pushes journalists to waste precious duty time waiting on him, on grounds that he has to take instructions from his hierarchy. Can’t someone tell him to be prepared before calling such conferences to run his mouth, sorry, run his briefing.

Ministers like Tchiroma suitably fit in what Albert Einstein posited many years ago: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - then it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity!”

The minister seems to forget that delay is dangerous. It is still in mind that one of his predecessors, Ebenezer Njoh Mouelle who was noted for his on-and-off late coming, was caught on the field by ‘Le 17H’ newscast on CRTV. The minister who started presiding late over an event was cut short by protocol officers who hinted him that he had been sent packing.

I want to take side with Thomas Edison who believes that: “Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the only thing he can’t afford to lose”.

Ministers who kill time must know that time is money and those who suffer most are subordinates who are not as rich as the ministers who are amassing money for themselves.

The ministers who seem to have gone hay wire must learn to respect time if they want their master’s 2035 Vision to have a semblance of success.

If my secondary school Geography lessons do not fail me, then I am convinced that Cameroon’s standard time is Greenwich Main Time, GMT+1. So ministers who have not yet adjusted their time to this time zone must do so with immediate effect. They should desist from being two, three, four or even more hours behind schedule when it comes to office work or ceremonies as though they were in a different time zone.

Such ministers should watch out, for the head of state who put them there, faulted them for inertia in an end of year address to the nation. He may just be waiting for the next cabinet reshuffle to send them packing. At that time, they will confirm Albert Einstein’s statement that sitting on a hot stove for a minute is longer than an hour.

Its prayer time, so permit me to end here for now, less I be sanctioned by God Almighty for not being time conscious like Minister Tchiroma.