Cameroon: Yaoundé in the grip of an ominous silence ⁰

Many people always think the graveyard is the quietest place on earth, but Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital, is proving that assertion wrong.

Ever since the health situation of the country’s president, Paul Biya, took a turn for the worse, the country’s capital, Yaoundé, has been engulfed by an ominous silence which is worrying to millions.

It has been announced twice that Mr. Biya will be returning to Yaoundé to continue spreading corruption, death and destruction as he has done over the last four decades, but the announcement turned out to be a “stillbirth“.

It is now emerging that Mr. Biya will not be returning to Cameroon anytime soon as his health situation becomes more concerning.

The Cameroon Concord News Group’s correspondent in Geneva has been reliably informed by sources close to the Cameroonian dictator that Cameroonians could be praying for the best, but should be doing more to prepare for the worst, as the news on the horizon is not comforting.

Mr. Biya is terribly sick and he has been pinned down in a Geneva clinic by multiple illnesses which will not be going away anytime soon. His breathing has become heavy, and he is pale and fragile, a source in Geneva told the Cameroon Concord News Group’s correspondent.

His family is counting on prayers, but prayers and medications are simply not delivering the results Swiss medical experts have been hoping for, and in Yaoundé, Mr. Biya’s collaborators are not having a good night’s sleep.

In a few days time, a vacancy will be declared due to Mr. Biya’s inability to run the country. The political opposition is already working with lawyers to come up with a motion both in the Senate and in Parliament, though many political analysts are skeptical about the success of such a motion, given that the president’s ruling party, the CPDM, also known as the crime syndicate occupies a safe majority in both houses.

The mere thought of such a possibility is taking a toll on the health of Mr. Biya’s collaborators who have directly or indirectly participated in the looting of the country’s resources.

A few days ago, there was hope that Mr. Biya could come through, but today’s information clearly points to a deteriorating health situation which may not end well. The old, frail lion has lost a lot of weight and his refusal to eat spells doom for many who have served him blindly. His physical frailty and his toothless mouth make it hard for him to be presented to the public. It will take a very long time for Cameroonians to see the president they love to hate in public.

Mr Biya’s heart is racing and for his age, this is not good news, especially for his family. His age and degree of fragility make it hard for certain treatments to be administered on him.

The Yaoundé strong man is gradually giving up the ghost. He seems to be living his last days and the possibility of power changing hands in Cameroon is growing bigger by the day.

Biya is losing it. His family is really concerned and in Yaoundé, regime insiders are making alternative plans, a source close to the Presidency of the Republic has informed the Cameroon Concord News Group.

Last week, there were concerns at the French Foreign Ministry. Officials at the French Foreign Ministry are already discussing Mr. Biya using the past tense. He is of no use to them. He has simply outlived his usefulness.

They know he is very likely to bow to the inevitable and are hard at work to figure out who will validly replace him and protect French economic and military interest in Cameroon, especially at a time when the country is gradually imploding, as it is in the grip of multiple conflicts.

Mr. Biya has always ruled the country based on instructions from Champs Élysees and he has perpetuated himself in power thanks to his divide-and-rule strategy and the massive tidal wave of corruption and intimidation he has engineered over the last four decades.

He might have succeeded to rule by intimidation, but he has simply pitted other regions of the country against his own region and it is gradually emerging that there will be an orgy of killings that will play out once Cameroonians learn that he is dead and gone.

The other regions are very mad at the Betis. They have aided and abetted the government in enforcing a reign of terror in Cameroon and other Cameroonians are fully aware of this and they have been planning a revenge that might shock the world.

If the international community is not careful, it might deal with another Rwanda in Cameroon. Angers are flaring up. Unemployment has reduced many young men to paupers and corruption has carefully excluded many Cameroonians from many opportunities, even those found in their own regions of the country.

Out of 44 ministries, the Betis occupy 32. They account for more than 70% of Senior Divisional Officers in Cameroon whereas they account for less than 10% of the population. Such flagrant injustice is what might cause the country to go through a long spell of bloodletting.

The Betis also have the highest number of senior military and police officials in the country and this explains why the government’s reaction to the Southern Cameroons crisis has been anything but peaceful.

The Betis hold that only military violence can ensure Cameroon remains one and indivisible, but after four years, it is obvious that their strategy is rather counter-productive.

Many soldiers of Beti extraction have met their death in the killing fields of Southern Cameroons and each family in the Center and South Regions has been affected by a war that was hastily declared by the ailing and senile Biya.

Since the Southern Cameroons crisis started in 2016, some ten thousand Cameroonians have been killed with some 3,000 soldiers dying in battle and more than 3,000 ending up with physical and mental scars that will not be going away anytime soon.

The fighting in the country’s two English-speaking regions which are the richest has hurt the country’s economy, leaving many state corporations operating at half capacity. The unemployment rate due to the fighting is incredibly high and this has triggered a tidal wave of criminality and cruelty in the regions.

Though many Cameroonians hold that death will not be a befitting punishment for Mr. Biya who has ruled the country with an iron fist and robbed them of their dignity and a happy life, millions believe that his death will be a good riddance.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai