MIKI HANS ABIA, Who are you?

Before you took over as Moderator, we had understood this as the primitive attitude of a leadership that was tone-deaf to the voice of decency, and attentive only to one man’s bloated ego. Though you were part of that administration, we thought we knew you better. We trusted that with you, there would be an ultimate return to sensitive Christian leadership marked by humility and dialogue, if nothing else.

Now we are dumbfounded that you have continued to snub the well-meaning concerns of over 2000 Presbyterians, who are seeking not favours for themselves but the restoration Church.

When we started raising our concerns over the past decade, zealots in the administration were quick to question our locus standi and to criticize us for resorting to social media instead of following established procedure.

TH has locus standi

Some of these fanatics painted us as frustrated and disgruntled people looking for relevance or vengeance after falling out of favour with the system. But either these people are misinformed, or they are intentionally trying to mislead the Christians. Mr. Moderator, we think you know almost every one of us – all self-sufficient people who have given devoted service to the Church without asking for anything in return. Not one of us has anything personal to benefit from running down the Church, and we challenge whoever can to prove the contrary.

Three among us served in what ought to be one of the most iconic institutions of any Church – the Board of Trustees. According to the lies being bandied about, these three, Chief Ada Kessi, Barrister Nico Halle and Ba Nkom Raymond Gwanyala, were ‘sacked’ from the Board. Coming from people who call themselves pastors, these abject lies are a big disgrace to the Church.

These three people resigned from the Board of Trustees in protest of the Fonki administration’s gangsterlike behavior towards that Board, and its wanton mutilation of the PCC Constitution. This was when Fonki abused the Constitution to disqualify a rival whose popularity was a threat to his ambition. For those who did not know, a little history may be necessary. Fonki was the first-ever Moderator of the PCC to have acceded to that office without having passed through the position of Synod Clerk.

But after his first mandate, he was so desperate for a second that he had to invent some subterfuge to eliminate a potent rival in the person of Rev. Babila Fochang – the then Synod Clerk. Without conscience, without shame, and the fear of God or respect for the Church, he rallied his acolytes and imposed an amendment of the Constitution to rule out anybody running for the post of Moderator without having served two terms as Synod Clerk. This was unqualifiable malice, coming from someone who became Moderator without serving even for one day as Synod Clerk! The Constitution, with this amendment, was never adopted, but a cowardly or compromised Synod allowed the amendment to be implemented, ignoring the protests from these three members of the Board of Trustees. Result: Rev Babila Fochang was unjustly disqualified to run for Moderator. The amendment was later declared void, after it had served Fonki’s designs. In non-Christian circles, this is legally actionable electoral fraud. By the way, this being election year in Cameroon, can any PCC pastor who was complicit to these malpractices still have the moral authority to mount a pulpit and preach against election rigging?

It is in concerning these miscarriages of justice that these three people decided to withdraw their participation. They were not sacked.

By the way, when, in a serious organization, three out of five members of such an important institution resign over an issue, that promptly warrants two recovery measures:

1. The contentious issue is reviewed by a higher body, if there is one.

2. If the members cannot be brought back, they are replaced by the same procedure that had made them members. In our case, they were simply replaced by appointees of the same person whose actions had triggered their protest.

Still talking about locus standi, all core members of Truth House are bona fide stakeholders of the PCC and have every right to make their voices heard when things are going out of hand in the Church. When the leadership of any Church takes the liberty to violate the precepts on which that Church is founded, and to indulge in practices that hurt the faith and bring the Church to disrepute; and when the statutory organs that should call such a leadership to order fail to do their work, it becomes not just a right but a duty for any bona fide member(s) to step up in any reasonable action that will end the impunity and restore sanity. That is the locus standi of Truth House. We would not be doing what we are doing now if the statutory committees of the Church were doing their work faithfully, guided by the fear of God and with due respect for the spirit of the Constitution. So, we are unapologetic about standing up for our Church.

Why do we use social media

As for the accusations about using the social media, what our accusers did not have the honesty to tell the public is that, before going to the social media, we had tried for a long time to initiate polite, constructive dialogue with the leadership, but were arrogantly dismissed as ‘enemies of the Church’. They used the pulpits to paint us black before the gullible masses, in the hope of cowing us into silence or denting our credibility.

Mr. Moderator, before, during and after the election, we tried even more positive engagement with you, rooting for you and trying in every way to help you break free from your predecessor’s stranglehold on the Church as a whole and on your administration in particular.

We believed in you as one who was willing and able to gather the pieces of a broken Church, and to start rebuilding with decency, probity and humility. In over five respectful correspondences, and without any grandstanding, we identified the mines planted around you and pledged to help you sweep them before they exploded.

To our dismay, you did not reciprocate the respect and love we showed you. When we asked for an informal, in-person meeting with you, you made vague promises which you did not keep. Following in your predecessor’s steps, your office, and even your home, declined to receive our correspondences, leaving us with no option but to use bailiffs and courier services – TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE HEAD OF OUR CHURCH!! And even after that, you did not deign to acknowledge the letters.

The present letter, the sixth in the series, will mark the turning point in our attempts to engage with you. Henceforth, we shall no longer be seen as begging to be heard. We shall now make our correspondences with you public, so that the whole Church will bear witness to the spirit and letter of our engagement with you. That will also enable Presbyterians to find out for themselves whether the terrible abuses and miscarriages we have been decrying are real, or just figments of our imagination.

Who are you?

In Matthew 11:3 John’s disciples asked Jesus, “Are you the one we have been expecting, or should we wait for another?” Today, six months after your election, Presbyterians are asking you the same question. Are you the Miki we have been hoping for, or just a Fonki marionette? Are you here to restore the dignity of our Church, or to do window dressing while fostering the agenda of a gang in black robes?

Now is the time for you to choose where your loyalty lies – to Christ and his mission for his Church, or to a bunch of classmates and other fake pastors who have vowed to privatize and exploit that Church for the next four decades.

Meanwhile, it is important for you to note that giving TH correspondences the silent treatment does not speak well of your leadership style. Neither is it in tune with your pastoral mandate. Even imagining that Truth House had gone wrong somehow, does the Moderator of the Church not have a pastoral obligation to leave the 99 sheep in the fold and go in search of the one gone astray? What does it cost you to listen to us? What result do you expect your silence to fetch?

And in case you have opted for a policy of attrition, hoping that if you ignored us long enough, we would get tired and give up, let us burst your bubble. We are in this for the long haul, as long as the abuses and miscarriages we decry are not effectively addressed.

Last Staffing – a timid step

In this respect, last month’s staffing was your litmus test – a gauge of your vision as a leader, your moral courage and your commitment to cleaning out the Augean stable your predecessor has left for you.

With this in mind, and in a bid to inform your staffing decisions, TH sent you some recommendations based on facts and feedback we had gathered from dependable sources, but you brushed most of them aside.

We appreciate, however, that you heeded our advice by dislodging the former Moderator from Synod Hill. Some have said he will use his posting to Yaounde to feather his political nest. If that is so, it is no skin off the nose of the Church. He can canvass to become the Prime Minister or the President for all we care, as long as he no longer speaks for our Church. He has done enough damage to strip himself of that honour which the Church would gladly give to any former Moderator in good standing.

However, by moving him to Nsimeyong, your administration took what Truth House considers a timid toddler’s step. Your staffing carefully avoided dislodging the KPs who still hold positions from which they will continue to pull strings and thwart any clean-up efforts. In so doing, you ignored the very serious violations of PCC ethics, of which many of them were accused. That was not different from the Fonki regime, where punishable offences instead qualified people for promotion, provided they were in the boss’s good books.

If by these timid steps you were testing the waters, we must tell you that the result was very disappointing. What you succeeded in doing was to vindicate those who have contended either that:

1. You are part of the cult, and we should not expect you to be different, or

2. You may mean well but as a leader, you are a weakling, unable to stand up to the KPs and their grandmaster.

How would anyone think otherwise, seeing that:

a. You maintained a Communication Secretary whose husband you have moved to Yaounde, and who occupies multiple positions without doing justice to any? By so doing, you permit her to comfortably continue her husband’s insider trading policy as far as Church contracts are concerned.

b. You maintained a Financial Secretary who co-masterminded the most opaque financial system in the Church’s history, enriching himself fabulously in the process.

c. You kept complicit silence over the cultic manifestations of the KPs? Is it that you are not aware they are a cult, or do you think it is alright for them to be? Or, how do we know you are not one of them, as some people now tend to suspect?

Call to order needed

Mr. Moderator, we know that ten years of damage cannot be undone in one day, but the Church wants to see a meaningful beginning – one that sends the message to the kingpins of decadence that it can no longer be business as usual.

In that regard, after watching the hilarious footage from your pastoral visit to the United States, we are glad to note a departure from the Fonki limousine syndrome. We hope that your visit will seal the big cracks in PCC USA. We also have our ear to the ground for order and probity to be restored in PCC United Kingdom.

Finally, Truth House’s attention has been drawn to a very recent State event which you could not attend because your predecessor had usurped your place as representative of the PCC, conferring some visual authority on himself by wearing a pectoral cross – the exclusive symbol of your office. Why was this man not called to order? It may not be your style to go public with any call to order in such matters, but he went public with his usurpation, so the call to order should be public as well.

Let’s conclude by reiterating our displeasure in having to adopt this way of communicating with the Vicar of Christ in our Church. However, we speak nothing but the truth and seek only to build and not to break. Therefore, no amount of stonewalling will silence our voices. We still believe that dialogue will stand your leadership in better stead than stonewalling, and it is not too late to start doing the right thing.

Epilogue

When you type the name Miki Hans Abia on an AI query prompt, you get the following picture as illustration. We post it here only because it is disturbingly akin to the image your leadership is cutting six months after you were elected the PCC’s seventh Moderator and one in whose watch the Church will soon celebrate its seventieth anniversary. Does that Moderator still need a backseat driver?

MIKI HANS ABIA, Who are you? Open letter to Moderator Miki Hans