Paul Biya is still away, hasn’t returned to Yaoundé ⁰

Cameroon is battling devastating floods as the country’s President Paul Biya, still broad on a trip he began two weeks ago, tasked officials to address the dire humanitarian crisis.

Some 20 people have died and 236,000 others displaced in the Far North region, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

They are among 2.30 million people in West and Central Africa so far affected severe flooding in 2024.

This region has been experiencing flooding since the start of the rainy season, which began in the second half of July with an average rainfall frequency of one day out of four.

There has been an increasing significant damage to infrastructure, farmland, and disruption of essential services in three of the six administrative divisions of the floods-prone region including Mayo Tsanaga, Mayo Danay, and Logone-and-Chari.

The peak of the floods was recorded on August 28 with the breaking of water retention dikes in Mayo Danay, causing the town of Yagoua and other villages to be flooded, OCHA said on Friday.

Several schools have been forced to shut, destroyed, or are being used to provide shelter for affected communities since the 2024/2025 academic year started on Monday September 9 leaving schoolchildren in the region in limbo.

The mostly agrarian and pastoralist population has seen its and farmland and herds of cattle and sheep; main source of livelihood and vital for local economies and food security washed away by floodwaters. The lifestyle of the people in this part of the country is nomadic.

This week, authorities moved students to schools that are still functioning using mainly heavy duty trucks and canoes, signaling a possible overcrowding for the time being.

Cameroon’s floods aren’t the only source of crisis. While the students in this part of the country are suffering from an environmental disaster, those in most parts of the Anglophone region of the country have also been at home because of conflict.

The English speaking regions of South West and North West in Cameroon have seen school disrupted for fear of being attacked as armed separatists have imposed a lockdown and are reinforcing tactics to prevent children from schooling.

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya is still away after he first left the country for Beijing on September 8 for the Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), at the invitation of President Xi Jinping.

State television reported with footages of a plane carrying the president and wife that the ageing leader had left the Chinese capital. But ten days later, he hasn’t returned to Yaounde.

Biya routinely travels to Europe for “brief private stays” and sometimes detours from foreign trips. He has been absent before from national crises although his officials often argue they are delegated to deal with the issues while he is away.

In October 2016, when an overloaded train derailed in the small town of Eseka, killing over 75 people, Biya was on a “brief private visit to Europe” which is how his office refered to his regular jaunts to Geneva.

A year later, the president was again on another “private” visit to Switzerland when protests broke out in the Anglophone western part of the country over perceived and real marginalisation of the English-speaking minority population. The protests ballooned into today’s armed struggle that has kept many schools closed.

Though again absent, the 91-years-old President was touched by news of the devastating floods in the Far North Region of the country, according to the Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, who conveyed the Cameroonian leader’s heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families at a press conference in Yaounde on Friday.

As part of a wide range of emergence response measures, Minister Atanga Nji announced that the president had ordered the disbursement of an emergency aid of $594,000 (FCFA 350 million) to the flood victims.

“We will provide beds, matrasses, food items and other health facilities to the victims,” said Atanga Nji. He supervised the departure of some truckloads of part of the assistance from Yaounde on Tuesday.

Blaming the floods on climate change, Atanga Nji said the floods, and droughts, will not be unique to Cameroon. He said neighboring Lake Chad Basin countries like Chad and Nigeria have also been hit by floods, landslide and mudslide resulting from scattered downpours and thunderstorms. The same countries have been pummeled by droughts recently.

In Chad, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reports at least 341 fatalities, at least 1,495,969 people affected and 265,590 damaged houses by devastating floods in the central and south-western part of the country as at Tuesday. Local media including Chadinfos.com have reported a higher tool.

In Nigeria, at least 30 people have died and several hundred thousand others forced from their homes by floodwaters in Maiduguri, capital of northeastern Borno state that borders Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Already burdened by violence and insecurity brought about by the Boko Haram insurgency, the recent floods have exacerbated the sorry story of the Far North Region one of Cameroon’s most populous and least developed of the ten semi-autonomous administrative regions.

According to OCHA, the floods have struck vulnerable communities already facing challenges due to climate change, pockets of drought, locust invasions, bird invasions, pachyderm invasions and a highly volatile security context since 2014, “not to mention the structural poverty of the Region”, it said in a report on Friday, September 13.

Cameroon is just one of several countries so far hit by floods this year in West and Central Africa.

Torrential rains and severe flooding have affected more than 2.30 million people in West and Central Africa in 2024, according to statistics by OCHA. The most affected countries are Chad, Nigeria, Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali.

Culled from the East African