For some time now, there has been a de-escalation in the military violence playing out in the two English-speaking regions of the country where tens of thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Many political analysts thought the government had understood that its collective punitive expedition was counter-productive and images emerging from some towns and villages in the conflict areas where government forces were working with the civilian population gave the impression that the government had understood that it could win this war more by wining hearts and minds than by counting on its questionable military might. 

But yesterday’s images of soldiers burning down entire neighborhoods in the Northwest regional headquarters of Bamenda clearly revealed that government forces were walking back to their old bad ways. Old habits die hard, and the government’s demons are clearly rearing their ugly heads. 

For close to five years, army soldiers have been burning homes in the two English-speaking regions in the hope that the population will submit, but this old and ineffective strategy is not delivering the desired results. Southern Cameroonians are determined to get this problem addressed once and for all and throwing in the towel is not an option. 

As many people get robbed of their dignity and means of livelihood by the brutal military through such devilish ways, so too do these civilians look for ways to get their ‘pound of flesh’ and there is no better way than joining the ranks of the separatists who are only too willing to see their ranks swell.

The burning of homes did work in the early 1960s when the government of Amadou Ahidjo, the country’s first president, was facing a guerrilla warfare against a movement which was fighting the French-imposed government in East Cameroon (French-speaking Cameroon), but that strategy is, without a doubt, the least effective in modern times. 

A lot has changed after more than six decades. Today’s fighters have more means than anybody would have imagined in the 1960s. There are millions of Southern Cameroonians living out of the country because of marginalization and poor governance and this huge Diaspora will continue to support the struggle until the Yaounde regime agrees to come to the negotiating table.

Burning homes and gunning down innocent civilians will only breed bitterness and this will lead to revenge and further killings. Within the Southern Cameroonian community out of the country, it is held that those burning homes and roasting people alive are young boys from the Center and South regions of the country whence the president hails, and this does not augur well for those who hail from these two regions, especially as the country’s president is on life support and his regime is steadfastly heading to a chaotic end. 

There is revenge in the air. Southern Cameroonians will want to make the Betis, people from the dying president’s ethnic group, feel the pain they have gone through for decades. There are also the northerners who are hellbent on teaching the Betis the learns they learned shortly after the April 6, 1984 Coup d’Etat in Cameroon. More than a thousand northerners were summarily executed, and this unfortunate situation has left many northerners very bitter. 

The government needs to ask itself if there is really any wisdom in the way it has conducted its crackdown against the country’s English-speaking minority. More than ten thousand lives have been lost in a war that could been avoided if a more diplomatic approach had been adopted.

The military, for its part, has also lost more than 4,000 soldiers in a senseless war and the burning of homes will only cause separatist fighters to continue killing soldiers. And most of those being killed are young men from the South region who have been deceived into thinking that power belongs to them, and that Southern Cameroonians want to claim what rightfully belongs to the Betis.

Power will always come and go, but human life is irreplaceable. Destroying property and other assets will not deliver the results expected. The only way is to get to the bottom of things and deal with the root cause of the dispute. There is simply no wisdom behind the burning of homes. Dialogue and negotiations will surely deliver better results and lasting peace. 

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The revolution in British Southern Cameroons that broke out five years ago was part of a wider wave of anti French Cameroun sentiments that spread across the whole of English speaking Cameroon territory. The Cameroon Anglophone diaspora supported the revolution without reservations in spite of its shortcomings and ever since the arrest of the Ambazonia leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides in Abuja, Nigeria, revolutionary leadership became a very scarce commodity and what was a genuine expression of the Southern Cameroons masses in both Ground Zero and in the West, was now hijacked by reactionary elements that had a very different agenda.

Although clearly prompted by the actions of the failed CPDM leadership in Yaoundé, the seeds of the Ambazonia uprising were to be found in the social and economic conditions that existed in Southern Cameroons itself.  What allowed the Biya French Cameroun regime to maintain its presence in Anglophone Cameroon in spite of the rampant political marginalization and growing economic difficulties was the fact that it had a sizeable military presence in the territory.   The atrocities committed on a regular basis by Francophone gendarmes, army soldiers and the police led to a growing social polarization, which is at the very heart of the revolutionary upheavals.

Initially there was a genuine revolution that was evident in the early days of the uprising against La Republique du Cameroun. And it was the duty of all Southern Cameroonians to support that movement. However, once the revolutionary content of that movement ebbed and Yaoundé and Abuja helped passed the Ambazonia initiative to various reactionary elements in the USA, there was an impasse in the situation and the patriotic Ambazonia revolutionary elements were overwhelmed by all kinds of opportunist and counter-revolutionary elements that came to the fore seeking to promote their own reactionary interests. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group think that this is a tragedy which has come about because of the lack of a revolutionary leadership with roots among the masses in either Ground Zero or Ground 1.

Faced with the initial revolutionary upsurge before the Abuja incident, attempts were made by the Biya Francophone regime to divide the Southern Cameroons population along the North West and South West lines. The ill-prepared Dr. Samuel Ikome Sako, Cho Ayaba Lucas, Boh Herbert and one John Mbah Akuro also fomented such divisions when they realized that they could not mobilize the Ambazonian diaspora in the way Sisiku Ayuk Tabe had done. The actions of these so-called Southern Cameroons front line leaders successfully cut across the genuine revolution that had begun and provoke conflict between the different groups that make up Southern Cameroons.

This was done in the classic manner of pinpointing particular persons and tribes and carrying out brutal indiscriminate social media attacks against them. On the other side of the Ambazonia divide, reactionary fundamentalist groups such as the AGovC/ADF saw the divisions as a means of promoting their own agenda. And that is what has led to the present impasse. In this process the voice of the genuine revolutionaries in the Southern Cameroons Interim Government led by Dabney Yerima has been drowned out by the forces of reaction.

This factor explains also why the French Cameroun regime under Biya abandoned the peace talks it initiated with the Southern Cameroons jailed leaders in Yaoundé. Had the Maryland cabal read from the same script with the NERA 10 in Kondengui, the story would have been completely different. Unfortunately, Elvis Kumeta, Sako Ikome, Chris Anu and Irene Ngwa failed to look at the bigger picture and it opened up more space for Biya and his Southern Cameroons CPDM political elites. The main message expressed by the Maryland cabal via its spokesman Chris Anu was for the downfall of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and more financial donations to keep ABC TV on air. But their message has not been sufficient to mobilize the people of Southern Cameroons. It must be combined with an answer to why Ambazonia university dons had to be arrested in Nigeria and handed over to Yaoundé.

Apart from the Maryland cabal, very dubious and reactionary fundamentalist elements such as Cho Ayaba Lucas entered the struggle and are working tirelessly to divert it down a different road, giving the Biya French Cameroun regime precisely the resources it required for the purchase of international sympathy. The idea Yaoundé has built up among pro federalism Southern Cameroonians is that the Ambazonia revolution is merely made up of separatists who want to drag the Southern Cameroons society backwards and not forward. This has undoubtedly had an effect in at least neutralizing some layers of the Southern Cameroons population, who cling on to the Yaoundé regime, not because they support Biya or love the union with La Republique du Cameroun, but for fear that something worse could take its place like in South Sudan.

There is another factor that explains the stalling and derailing of the Ambazonia struggle. The reading culture! Southern Cameroonians do not read and many rely on social media postings that only tells them what they want to hear—we are winning!! There too, although the revolution saw the mass participation of teachers and lawyers, once the NERA 10 were arrested, unfortunately, Southern Cameroonians were pushed away from the Interim Government to rally behind smaller groups. A vacuum appeared and it was filled with what was available name them: AGovC/ADF, Sako-IG, Morisc,Ikata, SCNC, Restoration Council and an untrained motor mechanic, Capo Daniel became one of the most important spokesperson of the revolution.

The recent situation deep within the so-called Sako IG and the kidnappings being staged by the AGovC/ADF militiamen in Ground Zero have further added to the confusion. Sako Ikome’s IG has eventually collapsed and he and Chris Anu are no longer an item. But what has replaced the Maryland cabal cannot be very attractive to many ordinary Ambazonians who earlier bought the false notion that Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was trying to govern from prison. The departure of Mr. Chris Anu, the breaking up of the ABC TV, the constant attacks on Sisiku Ayuk Tabe coming from AGovC/ADF is not a very attractive happening. But this again explains why La Republique du Cameroun, in spite of its brutality, has been able to hold on in the Ambazonia homeland.

Having said all this, it is clear that every Southern Cameroonian will sooner or later stand behind the Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government, Dabney Yerima. For over five years now, the sea of front line leaders have left Southern Cameroonians with nothing than empty slogans. Sako, Chris Anu, Irene Ngwa, Elvis Kumeta, Cho Ayaba have no revolutionary tendencies, rooted within the Southern Cameroons masses and therefore, they cannot win the ear of the masses and lead them in a class struggle.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group developed interest in Mr. Cho Ayaba Lucas when we got intelligence that he had an inappropriate relationship with one Emerald Johnson living in Nigeria. Emerald Johnson had hosted Cho Ayaba Lucas (now with a PhD attached to his name) in her motel while he visited Dadi in Manyu on November 2017, to tour a camp he claimed his ADF boys were being trained.

Lady Emerald Johnson didn’t only host Dr. Ayaba, she accompanied him, sitting in the back seat in the car with him to Dadi. Cameroon Concord News and Cameroon Intelligence Report told the world that it wasn’t a coincidence that Dr. Ayaba Cho chose Emerald Johnson and her hotel facilities to host the meeting in Calabar that saw the arrest of innocent needy Southern Cameroons refugees who had gone there hoping they would get some money after Ayaba addresses them.

Unfortunately for those who ignored the signals we incessantly flashed out and went to the meeting, they were picked up right at their hotel locations before the meeting even started. News began to filter out immediately after the arrest from the police station in Calabar as one of them had succeeded to sneak his phone into the cell. From behind bars, he began sending text messages to others who had stayed back in Ikom. He said what happened to the NERA 10 in Abuja has happened to them, that they have all been abducted.

When things took the wrong turn, Cho Ayaba and his criminal gang spun the news, denying knowledge and responsibility for the meeting entirely! First, he accused the Ambazonia Interim Government of calling the meeting, actually naming the then Acting President, Dr. Sako and Homeland Security Secretary, John Egywang as the ones who called for the meeting. He said that the disgraced Sako Ikome set up the meeting purposefully to get his supporters abducted like in the Abuja case. To some other people, he said that the IG had called for the meeting to persuade his ADF members to defect him and join the joint initiative that was being put together by the IG for self-defense. When contacted, both the disgraced Sako Ikome and John Egywang denied ever knowing about the meeting.

Now, it was well past midnight on 29 November 2021 in Bamenda the chief city in the North West when gunmen pulled up in an AK30 car and snatched Mr. Ndopping Roger Ndem and his breastfeeding wife. The spokesman for AGovC/ADF, Capo Daniel went on social media and demanded a ransom payment. Abductions are now common in Southern Cameroons, but the Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government Dabney Yerima called the instance “an attack on the Ambazonia liberation struggle… aimed at helping Biya and French Cameroun”.

While they are yet to be released, the incident has once again raised questions about the threats faced by innocent Southern Cameroons citizens in Ground Zero, as many are seeing the abductions as teleguided by leaders of AGovC/ADF, one of the numerous armed militia groups committing horrible crimes in Southern Cameroons.

Some of the ones kidnapped were initially leading mass protests against La Republique du Cameroun in Ground Zero and had taken the lead, with mass rallies frequently staged amid the heavily fortified streets in Bamenda and Buea.

Southern Cameroonians living in Ground Zero are now being monitored by the Francophone dominated Cameroon government intelligence agencies and armed militants of AGovC/ADF. One Southern Cameroons analyst based in Bamenda who commented on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of this kidnapping matter, told Cameroon Concord News that AGovC/ADF militias were trying to frighten Southern Cameroons civilian activists through kidnappings and assassinations.

The kidnappings currently being carried out by Mr. Cho Ayaba Lucas and his men is a vain attempt at sending a message to Southern Cameroons civilians that the AGovC/ADF militias are the most powerful [force] today in Southern Cameroons. However, it is shining a light on the Cho Ayaba corruption that took him to London for an oil deal.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The Humanitarian Coordinator in Cameroon, Mr. Matthias Z. Naab is deeply saddened and shocked by another attack against a school, leading the death of four children and a teacher in the South-West region.

On 24 November, unidentified gunmen attacked a Government Bilingual High School in Ekondo Titi, South-West region. Four students aged 12 to 17 and a teacher were killed, and an unconfirmed number of students and teachers were injured and are receiving treatment.

“I strongly condemn attacks on schools, teachers, and children. They are a serious violation of international human rights law and of the right to education. The perpetrators of such heinous acts and those supporting them must be held accountable. I urge all parties to respect and promote the right to education,” said Mr. Naab.

The opposition against Government administered education by non-State armed groups and subsequent attacks on education continue to mark the crisis in the North-West and South-West of Cameroon. As a result, over 700,000 students remain out of school. Five years into the crisis, attacks against education continue. Violence against education facilities and personnel as well as kidnapping for ransom of children and teachers by non-State armed groups are reported on a regular basis.

Mr. Naab expressed his deepest condolences on behalf of the United Nations and the wider humanitarian community to the families of the victims.

The media in French Cameroun in craven deference to the criminal Paul Biya regime in Yaoundé is not reporting news of Cameroon government military casualties in Southern Cameroons. In actuality, Cameroon government army soldiers are dying like flies- at least 3000 so far and many more are being wounded and crippled.

Having learned nothing from Sudan and South Sudan and from the current situation now in Ethiopia, the ethno fascist Biya cabal is proceeding pell-mell in its homicidal and doomed campaign to achieve mastery over English speaking Cameroonians.

We of the Cameroon Concord Group are of the opinion that Biya and his gang will not succeed. Southern Cameroonians will no longer accept to be ruled by a French Cameroun tribal, amoral, selfish and corrupt cesspool that is today’s La Republique du Cameroun.

Since all French Cameroonians understand and respond only to force, every Southern Cameroonian must encourage and support Ambazonia Revolutionary Fighters in their campaign to rid the Federal Republic of Ambazonia of the so-called French Cameroun colonial army soldiers. The Igbos and the Calabars of Nigeria including the Efiks that value their independence must be urged to maintain and step up their support for Southern Cameroons Self Defense forces.

It’s only when thousands of coffins arriving Yaoundé and Ebolowa reaches critical mass, when thousands more Francophone families must bury their sons and daughters — killed by Paul Biya — that the message will sink in.

The war in Southern Cameroons is the laboratory for French speaking Cameroonian’s ambition to keep Southern Cameroonians as second citizens forever, which is why Ambazonian fighters must not stop until every Francophone army soldier has fled the Ambazonia homeland or died there.

Beginning January 2022, we of the Cameroon Concord News Group would love to have the following headlines from our Amba fighters:

-Cameroon government soldier killed in roadside bomb attack

-A roadside bomb blast today killed one Francophone soldier and wounded another near Buea

-At least 500 BIR have died since the beginning of 2022

-40 Francophone soldiers were killed on the Bali-Batibo road when a driver swerved to avoid a roadside bomb explosion! The soldier’s death brings the number of Cameroon government military deaths in the Southern Cameroons war to 6000.

-A roadside bomb on the Ekok-Eyumojock highway destroys a Cameroonian military truck

-Attack on a Cameroon military convoy injures a sea of Cameroon government troops on a highway linking Kumba to Ekondo Titi.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Intended to be an honorary award since 1999, the people chosen to be the most significant in Cameroon and deep within the African continent have predominantly been men and women of English expression, indicative of either Commonwealth political and cultural clout, or simply English speaking parochialism. By routine Anglophone Prime Ministers in Cameroon get selected immediately after their appointments, regardless if they ever did any significant thing beyond sitting in the so-called Star Building and pretending to be running government business.

Just as prime movers and shakers like the late Cardinal Tumi, Simon Achidi Achu, John Fru Ndi, Tataw Eta Stephen, V.E. Mukete  missed being winners of the award, the title of Cameroon Concord Person of the Year has however been awarded to people the world remembers.

In December every year Cameroon Concord News and Cameroon Intelligence Report decide on persons who generate the most news in the past 12 months and our readers vote to get the winner.

Cameroonian football legend Samuel Eto’o, Bishop Emeritus Francis Teke Lisinge, the Southern Cameroons leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, and former Nigerian Head of State, Goodluck Jonathan including  Cameroonian dictator Paul Biya have all won the award.

Last year Judith Nwana a strong advocate for human rights and a Steering Committee member of CHRI (Cameroon Humanitarian Relief Initiative) emerged winner.

Our editorial team recently shortlisted 5 persons for this year’s award and the winner shall be made public on Decemeber 1, 2021 at midnight.

The list include Barrister Amungwa Tanyi Nicodemus, one of the lawyers representing President Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, the jailed leader of the Ambazonia Interim Government, and several other people arrested in connection with the Southern Cameroons crisis, Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, Enow Ngashu, Director General of the National Football Academy, Prof Maurice Kamto of the MRC party and Archbishop Andrew Nkea of the Bamenda Eclessiastical Province.

SO, who will be Cameroon Concord Person Of The Year 2021?

Voting is only by email via: Cameroonconcordnews@gmail.com

By Isong Asu

London Bureau Chief

The Guardian post of Nigeria lost credibility for attempting to cover the evils of Macron,Biya and Buhari on the people of Southern Cameroons and Taraba.

The ongoing armed conflict in the territory of the Southern Cameroons has finally redefined itself. It has redefined itself from a war simply of self-defense against the predatory onslaught of France through its vassal state of French Cameroun, to a decolonization war. It is a decolonization war against France, French Cameroun and its hawkish Bulu-Beti minority tribe. That tribe dominates and controls the government, the legislature, the judiciary, and the military in French Cameroun. It believes the people of the Southern Cameroons and their territory must remain imprisoned under French Cameroun colonization, spoliation, and occupation.

Macron and Biya unleashed the war on the Southern Cameroons under the subterfuge of maintaining a so-called “one and indivisible Republique du Cameroun.” But the territory of the Southern Cameroons, separate and distinct from the territory of French Cameroun, is firmly secured by international boundary treaties and is well delimited and demarcated. It is not, and has never at any time been, part of the territory of French Cameroun.

Nigeria a friendly neighbor is being used by France to serve their interest in the Cameroons. On the 10th of November 2020, Buhari was in Paris with Macron shortly after French Cameroun soldiers illegally entered into Taraba State (Nigeria) for unknown reasons and caused havoc on the people living in that community. This shameful heinouscrime perpetuated by Paul Biya’s military Junta on part of another sovereign country was reported by the Daily post of Nigeria on the 22nd of October 2021. It is believed Paris invited Buhari to cool down the tension and influence him to come up with a whitewash story through another news tabloid in Nigeria so as to continue to manipulate the people of Taraba and the world.

Following dubious reports received, as published in the  Guardian Post of Nigeria that Ambazonian fighters invaded Taraba and caused havoc, killing 11 people, your Interim government wants to make the following remarks.

1.)           We have not taken this war to La Republique du Cameroun, there is no reason whatsoever for our Liberation fighters to take it to a friendly neighboring country. Our liberation fighters have no motive or interest to invade another friendly Anglo-Saxon country.

2.)           If such invasion took place, indeed the Daily Post of Nigeria has earlier reported the invasion of Taraba by LRC military (Nigerian activists on social media have also accused Cameroun of invading Taraba),it  is clearly a well thought out plan from France with a supporting role formBuhari’s regime, and firmly executed by the French Cameroun military so asto get the Nigerian government directly involved in the ongoing genocidal war in Ambazonia.

As of October 2021, about forty thousand civilians have lost their lives in this war. More than a million persons have fled to Nigeria and other countries as refugees, and millions have been made IDPs. More that 600 towns and villages and countless homes have been burnt down by French Cameroun troops. Hundreds of females have been raped (a good number deliberately infected with HIV and other STDs), scores of children killed in targeted killings, food and food crops and livestock destroyed to impose conditions of famine, water sources defiled and polluted to provoke a pestilence, and mass graves punctuate the landscape. Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed in the Southern Cameroons by French Cameroun military which systematically continues to kill women, teenagers, and even babies, the elderly, the infirm. Presidents Emmanuel Macron, Paul Biya and Buhari bears direct responsibility for these heinous crimes.

The UN Security Council has so far failed to assume its responsibility under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations to deal with French Cameroun’s colonial war in the Southern Cameroons. In the circumstances, it is not inconceivable that the Southern Cameroons abandons the self-defence posture to which it has so far restrained itself, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. It may eventually go on the offensive and broaden its offensive posture by targeting economic and social infrastructure in French Cameroun that support that country’s war effort, in the same way social and economic infrastructure in the Southern Cameroons continues to be targeted by the French Cameroun army. The objective of this new offensive would be to bring it home to Macron and Biya that their fanciful claim that “l’Ambazonieestcamerounaise” (Ambazonia belongs to Cameroun) is a pipe dream and that pursuing it will be very painful for French Cameroun in 2022 in the same way as the French claim that “l’Algerieestfranaise” (Algeria belongs to France) was for France in 1962.  The people of the Southern Cameroons strongly reject any idea or suggestion, explicit or implicit, that the Southern Cameroons is an area under French influence given that the Southern Cameroons does not have and has never had any ties, colonial or otherwise, with France.  

Dabney Yerima

Vice President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

Southern Cameroons Interim Government Statement on the Assassination of Tataw Brandy in Bamenda

Yesterday, Friday 12 November 2021, an armed rogue, Fagha Alain, employed by the crime syndicate in Yaoundé, opened fire on a vehicle at New Road Nkwen Bamenda, Northern Zone of Ambazonia, killing a seven-year-old toddler, Tataw Brandy. Brandy was on her way from school at about 1 pm local time, and she had a long and abundant life ahead of her. At this challenging time, the thoughts, and prayers of the Ambazonian people are with young Brandy’s family.

French Cameroun has a well-attested history, returning to the 1970s of assassinating children in the Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia). Yesterday’s shocking murder follows a long line of other cowardly assassinations by Biya’s hired assassins going around in army fatigues. This latest execution comes barely one month after a Gendarme shot dead 5-year-old Caro Ndialle in Buea.

Yesterday’s shooting has brought to light the truth about last year’s assassination of school children in Kumba and several other cases of the slaying of children in our Homeland by Mr Biya’s terrorist colonial troops. Biya and his tribal regime lack the courage to take responsibility for their cruel crimes in each case, and deception is their stock in trade.

The Interim Government of Ambazonian condemns these war crimes in the strongest terms possible. We extend profound gratitude to the people of Bamenda who came out in their numbers and protested forcefully in the face of this barbarism and intimidation. When writing this statement, three other Southern Cameroonians were attacked by trigger-happy La Republique du Cameroun forces as they marched to the colonial governor’s office with the lifeless body of Tataw Brandy. The Interim Government of Ambazonia is calling on the people of the Northern Zone of Ambazonia to continue with demonstrations and protests over the coming days.

As a government, our position on schools has not changed. We have publicly observed that only parents can determine if the conditions are conducive for Southern Cameroons children to go to school. The Interim Government wants children to study in a safe and peaceful environment, not where Biya’s marauding assassins put children in harm’s way.

French Cameroun is a nation that has no respect for human lives and international norms. But we must continue our fight for freedom and justice with the belief that we shall overcome. We must remain bold and not succumb to intimidation or fear.

Thank you, God bless the little soul of Brandy Tataw. God Bless You All.

Dabney Yerima

Vice President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

Millions of both French and Southern Cameroonians have known no other president than Mr. Paul Biya. More than half of Cameroon’s population were born or raised under Biya’s nearly 40-year authoritarian rule, and they have been hit hardest by the nation’s ever growing poverty and corruption and faltering education system.

Today, millions of Cameroonians are deeply worried about what could happen if Biya passes from the scene. That possibility was on every dinner table in Cameroon when the 88-year-old Biya underwent a major surgery in Geneva, Switzerland and was gone for a month and he has now spent several months in Yaoundé out of the public eye after returning home.

Interestingly, even with Biya in Yaoundé, Cameroonians still feel that they are a hair’s breadth away from complete and total chaos as many embittered by what they say is the Biya regime’s constant denial of democracy.

Now, many fear the unknown could be worse.  The senseless war in Southern Cameroons that has claimed the lives of some 10,000 Cameroonians, with army soldiers accounting for close to 35% of the deaths, a divided nation, numerous Boko Haram incursions, high rates of poverty and criminality in all major towns and cities, but with Biya gone there will be looting and killing on the streets.

Fear of the unknown is a safeguard that the Biya regime and his ruling CPDM party have intentionally cultivated. Biya has long prevented any political figure in the country (even from within his own party) from gaining enough prominence to stand as an alternative and he has rejected calls to name a vice president who could be seen as a successor.

Correspondingly, his ruling CPDM crime syndicate regularly dishes out warnings that without Biya, the way is open to power for political adventurism.

Biya reportedly told one of his top aides recently that only Jesus Christ knows who will be his successor confirming claims at home and abroad that democracy would never determine who comes after him.

Since his return from Geneva and with age greatly telling on him, Biya has not said whether he will run for a new term in presidential elections due in 2025 — but top CPDM officials said recently that they want him to and they will be appealing for a national consensus for Biya to seek a new term in 2025.

But Cameroonians’ uncertainty over the future only underscores how deeply Biya and his ruling CPDM party are entrenched in their lives.

The former prime minister, who became president when his predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo resigned in 1982, has significantly destroyed every developmental structure that he inherited and he has auctioned the country to corrupt French investors. The result in recent years has been high rates of poverty, criminality and homosexuality.

To be sure, wealth in Cameroon has gone only to a small group of Francophone political elite from Biya’s Beti Ewondo tribe, while the Cameroonian middle class has been crushed under high inflation and other woes.

Frankly speaking, the generation raised under Mr. Biya has had a tough time even entering the economy. Unemployment has hovered for more than three decades pushing many young people to migrate to Europe and North America.  Democratic practices and freedoms have regressed and opposition parties are little more than figureheads set up by the Biya regime.

In Biya’s 39 years as head of state, elections are routinely rigged or fraught with irregularities and gendarmerie brutality is common. Security agencies hold wide powers and top military officials in the police, gendarmerie and the army also have considerable political influence. The result is a generation that is deeply frustrated, and while millions of Cameroonian young men and women will grumble about Biya, at the same time Biya is the only one they can turn to.

Over the last decade, the politically docile French speaking Cameroonians have been protesting in Douala and Yaoundé camping out to press demands for jobs and to air personal grievances. However, many of these protests don’t criticize Biya, but rather appeal to him for help. Some of the suffering Francophone protesters shout slogans accusing Biya’s close aides within the regime and the ruling CPDM party of stripping authority from Biya amid his illness and old age.

Indeed, Biya is the only one who can save the Cameroonian youth from their predicaments. But he’s own family is crumbling right in front of him! He has all along been isolated from the Cameroonian people and at 88, he can no longer make a difference.

Isolation from their leaders is something French speaking Cameroonians have never complained about but have always blamed Southern Cameroonians for raising the issue about Biya’s prolonged absence in the country.  Today, the growing sense of an administration out of touch with people’s problems is eroding Biya’s image. If economic and social reforms don’t reach the people, then those policies have not succeeded. The Beti media gurus on Vision 4 are very much unaware of this assertion.

In Biya’s Cameroon, you can bang your head against the door for years seeking a government job, and still lose out to an ill-equipped rival who has better CPDM connections.  We of the Concord Group understand that this is the widespread feeling among the young in Cameroon that a job depends on who you know, not what you know.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai