Editorial

8, August 2025

Cameroon’s Constitutional Council: a government that crushes ballots will eventually meet bullets ⁰

In the long, bloodstained ledger of Africa’s democratic betrayals, few chapters are as pungently shameful, or spectacularly tragic, as the travesty recently staged by Cameroon’s Constitutional Council; a body that now stands as a consecrated altar and mausoleum of cowardice and injustice, where the will of the people is ritually sacrificed. The unconstitutional and cowardly exclusion of Maurice Kamto, the most credible opposition leader and MANIDEM’s rightful candidate for the 2025 presidential election, is not only naked provocation and an insult to voters; it is state-sponsored electoral banditry – a daylight mugging of democracy itself. Let’s be clear: this Council is not a legal institution – it is a shriveled coven of Beti tribal jingoists and partisan cronies, comprising one menopausal matriarch and a cabal of tired old men tottering between senility and servility. Lacking spine, vision, or honor, these Judas-hearted charlatans, traded principle for privilege, betraying their solemn oaths with the audacity of sycophants groveling for scraps and crumbs of power. These soulless merchants of betrayal are not judges; they are scribes of a dying regime, dressing Paul Biya’s dictatorship in the robes of law and stamping tyranny with the seal of legitimacy. Their loyalty lies not with the constitution they swore to uphold, but with the decrepit throne of an aging autocrat. Drunken on greed and self-centered pedestrianism, they bent over backwards to crawl where conviction and character demanded they stand tall. The arbitrary rejection of Kamto is shameful, pathetic, disgraceful and devoid of any perfunctory exaggeration. History will brand those traitors as footnotes in the annals of treason and judicial brigandage.

In rejecting Kamto’s candidacy amid the overwhelming evidence of conspiracy and fraud by ELECAM and MINAT, the Council did not just err in law – its members defecated on democracy; trading jurisprudence for sycophancy, and law for lèse-majesté; while reinforcing its image as an uncircumcised appendage and spineless puppet of the ruling CPDM party. What manner of justice crawls on its belly to serve the whims of power? What kind of court builds its rulings not on precedent, but on illegality and political expediency? The Council has now become what every dictatorship requires: a rubber-stamp chorus of cowards, cloaked in legality, but reeking of fear. With counterfeit authority, they mutilated the voters’ right to choose. These court-jesters are not guardians of the republic; they are the undertakers of the republic’s dying breath. This decision will be remembered as a national curse; a scar gouged into the face of Cameroonian democracy.

History Will Name Them

History has never been kind to those who mortgage the future of nations for the fleeting comfort of a tyrant’s approval. The names of these traitors- Clément Atangana, Florence Rita Arrey, Émile Essombe,

Paul Nchoji Nkwi, Jean Baptiste Baskouda, Sanda Bah Oumarou, Charles Étienne Lekene Donfack, Ahmadou Tidjani, Adolphe Minkoa She, Aaron Logmo Beleck, Monique Ouli Ndongo – shall be recorded, not with honor, but with the indelible ink of shame. Their legacy will not be that of learned jurists, but of accomplices to repression, the assassins of a people’s dream. Let them know: robes rot, titles fade, power expires, but betrayal is immortal. No amount of legal contortion will erase the truth. The Council did not interpret the law; they strangled it. They did not deliver judgment; they delivered complacency. They did not uphold the constitution; they cremated it, and then danced around its ashes like jesters in a haunted palace.

The ossified Biya regime is terrified – not of Kamto’s politics, but of his popularity -his ability to mobilize the nation, articulate the frustrations of a destitute people, and to present a vision of a new Cameroon. Instead of defeating him at the ballot box, they have chosen the path of the despot: eliminate the challenger, muzzle dissent, and rig the race before it begins. This is the logic of tyrants. Cameroon today is ruled not by law, but by fear dressed in constitutional disguise. Let us be absolutely clear: Kamto did not lose the 2018 presidential election – he was robbed like Fru Ndi in 1992. And now, the regime is ensuring that he does not even get a chance to contest. This is not just an electoral hold-up. This is a premeditated assassination of Cameroon’s already battered democratic system.

With Kamto removed from the ballot, October 12 is not an election – it is an anointing. A theatrical coronation of an already-entrenched regime, cloaked in the illusion of popular choice. This insult to democracy will not go unnoticed. Cameroonians are not blind. They see the charade and know what is happening. They smell the rot. They feel the betrayal. From Maroua to Bamenda, from Yaoundé to the Diaspora, they know that without a credible challenger like Kamto, the upcoming election is a pageant, not a poll – a coronation masquerading as choice. The message is clear: there is no ballot in Biya’s Cameroon; only bullets, bans, and betrayal.

In a country already buckling under multiple crises, from armed conflict in the Anglophone regions, to spiraling poverty, to corruption so rampant it is practically government policy; this decision is a match tossed onto a powder keg. Already, tensions are rising. Protests are breaking out. People are boiling with rage. The authorities are pushing the country dangerously close to the edge of chaos, and when the violence comes, let no one feign surprise. A government that crushes ballots will eventually meet bullets. Kamto has long stood for peaceful resistance and dialogue. But even his patience cannot pacify a generation that sees no future under a regime that treats their dreams with scorn and arrogance.

Where is the international community that claims to defend democracy and human rights? To remain silent in the face of such blatant democratic sabotage is to be complicit. To accept this travesty is to betray every Cameroonian who still believes in a better tomorrow. Sanctions must be considered. Visa bans on members of ELECAM and the Constitutional Council should follow. And international election observers must not lend legitimacy to a charade they know is rigged.

This Is Not Over

There is a river swelling in the hearts of Cameroonians. It is fed by anger, suffering, and stolen choices. When that river bursts its banks, it will wash away not only the symbols of oppression but those who enabled them with gavel and gown. The Constitutional Council may think itself safe within the marble chambers of privilege. But marble cracks, and chambers echo. When the people rise – and rise they will – no robe will be thick enough to shield them from the storm they helped sow. Kamto may be off the ballot, but he remains the face of the resistance, the voice of a silenced majority, and the nightmare of a regime on life support.

To the Constitutional Council: You have traded truth for tyranny, justice for a bowl of stale porridge, and history will not forgive you. You may silence one man. but you cannot silence a nation that has awakened to its own power. To Biya and his clique: you may block Kamto from the race, but you cannot block the tide of history. The hour is late. The mask has fallen. Every tyrant believes they can cheat time. But every regime that silences its people will, eventually, be silenced by them. The fight for Cameroon’s democracy is not over – it has just begun.

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai

5, August 2025

Cameroonian Passport – A Symbol of Shame and Global Embarrassment ⁰

Cameroon’s passport, once a symbol of national identity and pride, has become a glaring emblem of institutional failure. Ranked a dismal 92nd in the 2025 Henley Passport Index (HPI) – unchanged from 2020 and only slightly improved from 2023 – Cameroon’s passport is among the least powerful in the world, trailing behind even some war-torn nations, and granting visa-free access to a paltry 50 countries; most of them obscure, tin pot shithole countries on the world stage. This places it below dozens of African peers with far fewer resources. The miserable ranking is not just a number. In an era when global mobility defines economic opportunity, diplomatic prestige, and national credibility, this is a public indictment of the government’s chronic inability to project global trust, reform immigration systems, and restore dignity to its citizens.

The HPI ranks 199 passports against 227 travel destinations; based on the number of destinations a passport holder can access without a visa. The data used comes from the International Air Transport Association (IATA). For the past five years, Cameroon has hovered in the 90th to 93rd position globally, offering little to no improvement in mobility for its citizens. Despite the fanfare over the biometric CEMAC passport, this so-called modernization has done next to nothing to bolster Cameroon’s global standing. Instead, it has become part of a corrupt and opaque system riddled with bribery, delays, and inefficiencies. The production of these biometric passports; outsourced to a foreign outfit with a deeply tainted reputation, has only deepened public mistrust. The pipeline from birth certificate issuance to national ID cards to the final passport has become a minefield of graft, where foreigners with the right bribes can acquire Cameroonian nationality, while actual citizens languish in bureaucratic limbo for months or even years. The result? A passport system so compromised that it is no longer trusted by the international community – and rightly so.

Today, the Cameroon passport stands as a bitter reminder of how far a nation can fall when leaders abdicate their responsibility. This is more than a domestic shame; it is a diplomatic liability that has contributed to Cameroon’s failure to negotiate meaningful visa waiver agreements, and to its citizens being treated as second-class travelers across the globe – detained, denied, and humiliated at foreign ports of entry. The implications are staggering. Students miss academic opportunities. Entrepreneurs are cut off from global markets. Families are separated by borders they cannot cross. And the country’s already battered international image sinks further into the mud. How did a nation of such rich resources, vast potential, and proud people become shackled by a passport that increasingly resembles a scarlet letter on the world stage? The answer lies in years of neglect, corruption, mismanagement, and a complete lack of ambition from those entrusted with Cameroon’s image management abroad.

For too long, Cameroonian authorities have buried their heads in the sand, oblivious to the humiliation their citizens face daily at airports, embassies, and border crossings. Students, professionals, and families are forced to jump through endless hoops and endure degrading scrutiny because the Cameroon passport carries little weight. The root cause? The state’s failure to uphold even basic standards of passport security, transparency in issuance, and international diplomatic engagement.

In a globalized world, a passport is not merely a travel document – it is a declaration of a nation’s credibility. And Cameroon’s declaration is loud and damning: we are not trusted. We are not taken seriously. We do not protect the integrity of our identity.

Compare this to African peers. Seychelles, still leading the continent despite a slight dip to 24th globally, enjoys visa-free access to 156 countries – more than three times what Cameroon offers. Even nations with fewer resources –Botswana, Rwanda, and Benin consistently outperform Cameroon in passport mobility, reflecting their relative success in investing in passport security, tightening internal controls, building strong international partnerships and trust with foreign governments, strengthening domestic institutions, and enhancing global engagement. Cameroon, by contrast, has stagnated; content to let its citizens be treated like pariahs abroad while those in power jet across continents on diplomatic or special passports. This is unacceptable.

The global passport rankings are not about printing fancy passport booklets; or reducing passport application wait times; or electronic visa applications. They reflect how the world sees Cameroon – its internal security, governance, diplomatic capital, economic reputation, and respect for human rights. Cameroon’s low mobility score is not a clerical error. It’s a direct result of persistent security challenges, from insurgency, terrorism to kidnapping and banditry. Also, weak identity management systems, raises doubts abroad about passport authenticity. Besides, corruption in immigration processes, fuel visa fraud and human trafficking. In addition, limited diplomatic outreach undermines the ability to forge bilateral or multilateral visa waiver agreements.

Passport power matters; and this is not just a matter of national prestige. A weak passport constrains everything from business and academic exchange, to emergency travel, to diaspora engagement, and tourism development. When Cameroonian professionals, students, or artists are repeatedly denied access to international opportunities due to onerous visa restrictions, the entire nation loses. It also exacts a financial toll. Visa applications for Cameroonians often come with high fees, lengthy processing times, and humiliating scrutiny. Meanwhile, potential foreign investors and partners take note of these signals: a country whose citizens struggle to move freely often seems closed for business.

Cameroon remains entrenched in dysfunction, with its passport system becoming a microcosm of the broader rot in its public institutions. But why has the government failed to act? Why are fraudulent passport rings still operating with impunity? Why are international partners reluctant to extend visa waivers or bilateral travel agreements to Cameroonians? The answers are as obvious as they are painful – a reputation for corruption, weak governance, and little interest in reciprocal diplomacy. Let’s be clear: this failure is deliberate. It is the product of apathy, corruption, and a systemic disregard for the rights and aspirations of Cameroonians. And it must end.

If the ossified Biya regime is serious about transforming Cameroon’s global standing, passport power must become a national priority. The government should, as a matter of urgency, strengthen diplomatic outreach and engage in serious diplomatic efforts to negotiate visa waivers and reciprocal travel agreements, particularly with strategic trade and education partners. Secondly, audit and overhaul the entire passport issuance pipeline, terminate contracts with corrupt vendors, digitize and secure the process to ensure the integrity of records, and cleanse the system of corruption. Third, invest in national security and governance, which boosts global confidence and opens doors for mobility. Fourth, engage the diaspora, whose positive contributions abroad can help rebrand Cameroon and build goodwill. And finally, restore trust in the Cameroon passport by tackling fraud and prosecute passport racketeering. The government must recognize that global mobility is not a luxury; it is a basic element of national development, human capital strategy, and international influence.

The passport is more than just a travel document. It is a symbol of how the world sees Cameroon; and how Cameroonians see themselves. The biometric CEMAC passport is merely a reminder of how far Cameroon still has to go; hence Cameroonians should not settle for mediocrity masked as progress. Cameroonians deserve a passport that speaks of honor, not suspicion. They deserve access to the world, not its locked gates. A nation is only as respected as the value of its documents. Until Cameroon wakes up to this reality, the Cameroonian passport will remain what it has become – a symbol of corruption, a source of shame, and a lock on the aspirations of millions of Cameroonians. It is time to secure the Cameroonian passport; anything less is betrayal.

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai

29, July 2025

Cameroon hails health cooperation with China for half a century ⁰

As early as six in the morning, Marceline Mbo had already taken her seat in a makeshift but comprehensive Chinese clinic outside Saint Brigitte Health Center in Afanoya, a village on the outskirts of Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital.

The mother of three came to seek treatment for a toothache and an eye problem that had lasted for three years. She was accompanied by her two children, who are also suffering from ailments.

“I’m waiting for the Chinese doctors … to treat the eye pain and the toothache, and for the children, they can treat them for malaria,” said the 40-year-old.

Sitting beside Mbo were Essomba Messomo and his wife, Onana Josephine Messomo.

“We arrived early. At 5:30, we were already on our way here. I came for my eyes. My vision is blurry. I have a severe headache,” said Josephine Messomo, 60.

As the sun rose over Afanoya, patients began to register and then see doctors in various specialties. The doctors are members of the 24th batch of the Chinese medical team in Cameroon.

Mbo was among the first patients seen by Chinese doctors for the day in the hospital, at the ophthalmology section.

“There were letters I had to read, and after that, they prescribed eye drops. I feel reassured and confident that my problem will be resolved,” Mbo said.

Josephine Messomo said she was well received. “They are real professionals, these Chinese doctors.”

Her 82-year-old husband felt relieved after seeing Chinese doctors and taking medication given by them, she said.

The three-day free treatment camp, which ended over the weekend, was part of a series of activities commemorating the 50th anniversary of health cooperation between China and Cameroon.

The first Chinese medical team arrived in Cameroon, in the town of Mbalmayo, in 1975.

“Since then, they have continued to provide care, share skills, and address dashed hopes in the most isolated regions,” said Cameroonian Minister of Public Health Manaouda Malachie. “Through these missions, medicine has become a fraternity, and the impact of Chinese action in Cameroon has become more perceptible and tangible.”

For 50 years, China has dispatched 24 medical teams, comprising 786 personnel, to Cameroon, said Kang Yijiong, head of the current Chinese medical team in Cameroon.

“The medical team has branches in the capital city of Yaounde and the small town of Mbalmayo,” he said. “For half a century, we have provided outpatient and emergency services to over 3.3 million patients, performed over 160,000 surgeries, and treated over 49,000 critically ill patients. We have also organized nearly 200 free medical camps.”

Among the people who have benefited from Chinese medical largess is Liliane Mfoumou, who lives in Ngat-Bane, a village in southern Cameroon.

Mfoumou, now 72, had endured pain for years from a severe back injury. When the Chinese medical team visited Ngat-Bane in 2022, she received treatment from a Chinese acupuncturist, who inserted fine needles into her skin at “acupoints.”

“The magic performed by the Chinese doctor healed me. Today, I go to the farm regularly and do other activities. I feel no pain. I am so thankful to the Chinese doctors,” Mfoumou told Xinhua by phone.

Recently, the Chinese medical team in Mbalmayo provided free medical services at the SOS Children’s Village.

In a letter addressed to the team after the services, SOS Children’s Village expressed “immense joy and deep gratitude.”

“You showed exemplary commitment to the well-being of the most vulnerable,” the letter read.

For 50 years, China has also funded major medical facilities in Cameroon, including two gynecologic-obstetric and pediatric hospitals in Yaounde and the commercial hub of Douala.

“These hospitals, which have long carried the very significant designation of Chinese Reference Hospitals, are true healthcare flagships that symbolize medical excellence,” said Manaouda, the health minister.

The actions of Chinese medical teams in Cameroon represented a shared vision of a fairer world, where access to health care and services is a right, not a luxury, he said.

“Through these actions, China does not simply give; it shares. It does not dictate; it proposes. It does not impose itself; it cooperates,” the minister said.

“This 50th anniversary is not just a celebration. It is a call to aim further, higher, and stronger,” he said.

Eunice Nchang, a senior nurse at Yaounde Gyneco-Obstetrics and Pediatric Hospital, said Cameroonian and Chinese doctors worked shoulder-to-shoulder in treating patients and offering much-needed medical services.

“The biggest gain for Cameroon these 50 years is the experience we have gained from Chinese doctors,” she said. “Chinese medical teams share their expertise for the well-being of many Cameroonians. This is real support in a context where Cameroonian hospitals lack qualified personnel and equipment.”

Culled from Xinhuanet

26, July 2025

2025 Presidential Elections: CPDM regime puts Cameroon on a war path! ⁰

Elections Cameroon known as ELECAM has released the list of approved presidential candidates for the upcoming presidential elections and it is clear that Prof. Maurice Kamto, the man who has the entire nation behind him and the only opposition candidate who strikes fear in the CPDM corrupt regime has been cut out.

The news has hit Cameroonians like a ton of bricks and many are so disappointed with the CPDM regime which has held the country hostage for forty-three years.

Cameroon has witnessed significant decline in all sectors over the last four decades and it will take a different mindset for the country to walk away from the destructive mentality that has sent many innocent souls to an early grave.

Besides cutting out Prof. Maurice Kamto from the race, Anicet Ekane, the president of MANIDEM, the political party which has nominated Prof. Kamto, has been put under arrest.

The question is: Why is Anicet Ekane under house arrest? Is it by practicing violence on Cameroonians that the beleaguered Biya regime will perpetuate itself in power?

Cutting out Prof. Kamto from the 2025 presidential election is one mistake the government might regret in a few days. Tensions are high in the country and Cameroonians living abroad are already talking about financing a civil war. The Yaoundé regime has clearly demonstrated that political change in Cameroon will never come through the ballot box and this implies that Cameroonians should pick up arms and start killing each other.

ELECAM has decided to destroy Cameroon. It must be held accountable and its members have simply opened themselves up for personal attacks. There are discussions currently underway on how to eliminate those ELECAM officials who succumbed to the pressure from the country’s territorial administration minister, Atanga Nji. Cameroonians are frustrated. They are hungry and the pain is beyond measure. It should not be a surprise when bombs start going off in Cameroon in the coming days.

This act by the government and ELECAM, which is a government political tool, demonstrates that the CPDM cannot genuinely win an election. The CPDM cannot destroy itself by always resorting to actions which discredit it.

The CPDM can run a successful election without resorting to this barbarism that has become its hallmark. The CPDM simply needs to fill in the right candidates in every election and it will post impressive results. The CPDM is the only political party in Cameroon with a national reach. Why the fear!

What is the rationale behind imposing a 93 year old man on Cameroonians? The CPDM has many youthful and strategic brains which can lead the country to a new and prosperous era. President Biya whose health and age are already a handicap is not the only person who can rule Cameroon. The CPDM should understand that some of its acts like the decision to cut Prof. Maurice Kamto out only make violent change inevitable.

There is surely going to be violence in the coming days. If what has been playing out in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon has not taught the Yaoundé regime any lessons, then the government was never designed to learn.

If an armed conflict erupts in East Cameroon, it will certainly find a rear base in Southern Cameroons where armed groups are still creating havoc.

Cameroon’s future is bleak. The CPDM must understand that old tricks cannot always work. This is the era of cutting edge technology and with the Internet; the world can easily understand the mess that is playing out. Would it not have been a lot wiser to beat Prof. Kamto in the ballot box?

Why put the country on a war path when everyone understands that the CPDM regime is on its last leg? President Biya is dying, that is, if he is not already dead. Why push the country to a bloody civil war because of a man who had the opportunity to transform Cameroon into an El-dorado but spent most of his time sleeping at the switch?

Cameroon must change and it will change this year. The CPDM regime has chosen its side. It wants to plunge the country into a bitter civil war and this will surely happen sooner rather than later.

There are many young unemployed men who constitute a huge pool of fighters. All they need now is weapons and a few dollars bills for them to transform that country into another Democratic Republic of Congo. Is the Yaoundé regime really prepared for such a doomsday scenario?

The ball is in court of those young men whose future has been mortgaged by a regime that is inimical to development and economic prosperity. Cameroonian youths must take their responsibility. Prayers and wishes will never address unemployment, despondency, desperation and poverty. Sometimes, real freedom comes through the barrel of the gun. The government has thrown down the gauntlet. It is up to the youths of that country to demonstrate that they can bring about real change by taking to the streets and changing a regime that has been insensitive to the plight of the people.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-In-Chief

15, July 2025

October 2025 Presidential Election: the country’s youths hold the key ⁰

Over the last couple of months, Cameroonians have been very busy discussing the country’s presidential elections scheduled for October 2025, with many focusing on the incumbent believed to be 92 years old.

Focusing on Mr. Biya who has ruled the country for 43 years is a huge mistake on the part of Cameroonians, especially young Cameroonians who hold the solutions to the problems facing the country.

At 92, it is impossible for anyone to change their ways and focusing on Mr. Paul Biya’s age instead on the issues hurting most Cameroonians is the wrong way out of the political and economic issues which have lingered and festered for 43 years.

Biya’s has the right to run like any other Cameroonian who is eligible. The issue should be if he will be able to address those tough and challenging issues such as insecurity, unemployment, poor housing, a declining economy, lack of infrastructure, tribalism and corruption which have stubbornly refused to set Cameroonians free.

Even those on the opposition need to be carefully examined and scanned through some of the best political analysis to determine if they are capable of delivering the goods as they are promising.

While Biya has already proven his incompetence or competence depending on who is evaluating him, many on the opposition have never really been tested, with some having worked with Mr. Biya for decades, making it hard for anyone to dissociate them from the Biya era which has hurt many Cameroonians.

One of those who have collaborated with Mr. Biya for decades is Bouba Bello Maigari, the UNDP chairperson. Bello has served under the country’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, and Paul Biya. Though he has been in the corridors of power for decades, he has not posted any impressive results in any ministry he has headed.

He has led the ministry of tourism for a long time and that ministry clearly needs an extreme makeover. No tourism facilities have been developed during Mr. Bouba Bello’s time at the ministry of tourism and even those developed long before he became the minister of tourism have crumbled and are in need of rehabilitation.

These are some of the issues young Cameroonians should be considering when choosing the person who will be their country’s next president. Choosing a leader is not about emotions and tribe. It is about who has a great development agenda that will liberate young Cameroonians from their damnation. Cameroonians are hurting and they need a savior who will be selfless, dynamic and determined to change the development script which has left many Cameroonians in abject and humiliating poverty.

Another candidate who needs to be x-rayed is Mr. Issa Tchiroma Bakari who served under Paul Biya as the minister of communication and minister of vocational education. As the minister of communication, Issa Tchiroma spent his time antagonizing Cameroonians and openly telling them that he was appointed by Mr. Biya and not by Cameroonians. The Internet is awash with videos of him declaring that there was no Anglophone problem in Cameroon and even stressing that asking for federalism was a crime punishable by the country’s laws.

Today, he has walked away from his famous alliance with the ruling party, the CPDM, and he is telling all sorts of stories about a system he loyally and proudly served. He now claims to be a federalist who can solve a problem he once said was non-existent. Is this the man who can change a country that is in dire need of an extreme political makeover? It is up to Cameroonians, especially the youths who are in the majority, to make a determination as to whether Mr. Tchiroma is the man who can serve their interest.

If Mr. Tchiroma claims that Mr. Biya is not the person to engineer the type of change Cameroonians need, how qualified and different is he when he has served Mr. Biya for decades?

There is also the chairperson of the Social Democratic Front, Joshua Osih, who has been in parliament for a long time. He has some experience under his belt. His knowledge of the legislative process is commendable but there are doubts about his ability to steer a country like Cameroon which is mired in challenging issues in a different direction.

Joshua Osih is a likeable person but he lacks the charisma and presidential presence which can galvanize the country’s youths. Cameroonian youths are those who will determine the future of the country. That is, if they have their voter’s cards and have developed a different mindset. They can either settle for old ways or seek new paths which will bring about sustainable development in the country.

The choice is theirs and the future belongs to them. They can either make the future attractive by making wise choices or they can be stuck in their old ways which have robbed them of their happiness and dignity. There will always be alcohol and food but will they be able to live a dignified life?

Another player in Cameroon’s political game is Prof. Maurice Kamto who seems to have a huge following, especially out of the country where many of those rooting for him will not vote. Elections get won when party supporters vote and not when they spend their time on social media riling up virtual crowds, many of whom do not have voter’s cards.

Prof. Kamto is presidential, he has sound knowledge of the law, but he has made massive political blunders which might result in his expulsion from the 2025 presidential elections in Cameroon. Keeping his party, MRC, from the last municipal and parliamentary elections is turning out to be his greatest undoing.

Even if he succeeds to have alliances with other parties which may give him a chance to run, there are still many issues he has to address. His party, MRC, seems to be more regional than national and there are huge accusations against his party being a tribal outfit which might hurt him in a big and bad way.

Cameroon is at the crossroads. The country’s future is really bleak. This year’s presidential elections might steer the country in a new and different direction.

Many analysts hold that the ruling CPDM led by the incumbent, Paul Biya, will still win the elections, especially as the party has the resources to conduct a real national campaign.

In all fairness, the CPDM is the only real national party as it has served as a state party for decades, but given the internal divisions which are tearing the party apart, its edge over other parties will surely be eroded.

Today, the party’s chairman, Paul Biya, is nowhere to be found, with many CPDM insiders insinuating that he has been worn down by age and ill health.

The public disagreements between the Secretary General at the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and Rene Sadi, the government’s spokesperson speak to the power tussle that is signaling the end of a reign that has been marked by dictatorship, intimidation, corruption and nepotism.

Rene Sadi is not only fighting the secretary general, he also has a bone to pick with Prof. Fame Ndongo, the country’s higher education minister who is a staunch supporter of President Biya and his wife, Chantal Biya, who is currently being accused of pulling the strings behind the scenes as her husband struggles with poor health and old bones.

There is also Laurent Esso, the country’s justice minister who is struggling with poor health. Years of stress and the burden of power have reduced Mr. Esso to a colony of diseases. He too has an axe to grind with Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh-a pawn of Chantal Biya who wants to keep Mr. Biya alive for her to continue enjoying the benefits of a first lady.

While the games are taking place behind the scenes, the country’s youths must not forget about the critical role they have to play in this year’s presidential elections. They must understand that in Cameroon, those who vote are not those who count the votes. They must therefore be very vigilant to ensure that their votes count. Cameroon’s future is in their hands and they must not open themselves up for exploitation.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-In-Chief

14, July 2025

Paul Biya: A requiem for the mummified despot of a dying nation ⁰

After 43 years of zombified rule, Biya’s candidacy at 93 years, is a declaration of war on Democracy

There are tyrants – and then, there is Paul Biya, the nonagenarian necromancer of Yaoundé, who has shamelessly decided to plunge the grotesque theatre of Cameroonian politics into yet another farcical act of brigandage-the world’s oldest head(ache) of state has announced his intent to cling to the presidency once more, seeking an eighth term at the antediluvian age of 93; when most men kneel before memory and prepare for judgment. There are tyrants – and then there is Paul Biya, the decomposing sun-king of Mvomeka’a; who has made a mausoleum of the Cameroonian presidency, embalmed in arrogance, hubris and mummified in deceit. Like a moth drawn to the flame of self-deification, Biya stumbles forward, blind to the rot he has sown across 43 years of zombified rule. Biya’s candidacy is not courage. It is not continuity. It is not service. It is vanity wrapped in delusion; a final insult hurled at a people he long ceased to care about. Let no one be fooled by his empty phrases and digital proclamations. The emperor has no vigor, no mandate, no soul. Only a seat he refuses to vacate. He rules not as a leader, but as a fossil clinging to the illusion of motion, while the nation stumbles from one avoidable tragedy to the next. It is not only time for Biya to step down. It is time for his memory to be expunged from the pantheon of history. Let future generations learn of him only as a political poltergeist, who mistook a nation for his armchair, and ruled until time itself rejected him. And let the Cameroonian people, especially the youth, rise up at last, to bury this era of gerontocratic tyranny and claim the national rebirth and new dawn they have long been denied.

This is no longer governance. It is taxidermy in motion – the marionette-like twitching of a regime so old, so ossified; it has forgotten the difference between life and performance. And yet, the frail, aged despot shamelessly dares to whisper on social media: “Rest assured that my determination to serve you matches the urgency of the challenges we face,” adding sarcastically that: “…The best is still to come.” No, Mr. Biya. You are now the challenge; you have nothing more to offer. This latest insult to national dignity – a 93-year-old autocrat seeking an eight extension of his personal kingdom – is not an act of ambition. It is a declaration of war on youth, on democracy, on the very idea of national renewal. The justification is laughable: “numerous and insistent” calls by people from all regions in Cameroon and the diaspora. Which people? The hungry, poor and destitute masses who are scavenging for survival? The displaced IDPs and victims of Boko Haram? The war-orphaned Anglophone children? Or the cabal of sycophants fattened on patronage and corruption; the same parasites,greedy for another drop of the poisonous nectar the regime offers them? Which people? He dares to call it “service.”But his service is not to the nation; it is to the great altar of self-preservation, where he burns time, dignity, and present and future generations for the sake of his own shadow.

The Cadaver in Chief

There is a cruel poetry to the sight of a man who has become a waxwork of his former self; a living corpse and walking relic presiding over the funeral of a nation, under the guise of leadership. Paul Biya, has mutated from president to pharaoh entombed in the presidential palace, ruling through silence, absence, and “on-high instructions” whispered decrees. He governs not from Yaoundé but from his Mvomeka’a palace, or the marbled suites of Geneva’s Intercontinental Hotel, while Cameroonians sleep in darkness, choke on dust, and bleed in the streets of Buea and Bamenda. His rare public addresses are relics, his political instincts reduced to mechanical repressions. If governance is an act of presence, of listening, of sacrifice; then Biya has not ruled Cameroon in decades. He has haunted it. Under Biya’s gaze, Cameroon has not lived. It has endured. The country has become a mausoleum of squandered opportunities, shattered dreams, and broken promises – a land where roads dissolve like sugar in rain;

where hospitals resemble war zones; where students graduate into despair; where the Anglophone regions smolder in genocidal silence, and innocent blood is the mother tongue. Forty-three years of corruption, embezzlement, tribalism, nepotism, poverty, bad governance, and fatalism – and now he is asking for seven more?

Biya’s governance is an entrenched dictatorship kept alive by bureaucracy, brutality, and ritualized elections and nourished by apathy, silence, and the poisoned loyalty of cowards in tailored suits and agbada. He has never truly led; only loitered. He has not presided; only sat, slept, and signed useless decrees, appointing his Beti kith and kin to all commanding heights of authority positions in the army and public service. What began in 1982 as a hopeful transition from Ahidjo has festered into a monarchical parody, where term limits were abolished, institutions hollowed out, and elections turned into ceremonial endorsements of despotism. In Biya’s Cameroon, ballots do not measure the peoples’ will. Biya imagines himself eternal, and sees the presidency as his personal inheritance, not a trust of the people. He has turned Cameroon into a caricature of post-colonial failure; a textbook example of how a nation dies – not by war, but by the glacial tyranny of tired old men who mistake power for purpose.

A Dynasty of Decay: this Is Necrophilia

Biya’s 2025 re-election bid is not an act of patriotism. It is a necromantic spectacle – the dead ruling the living; a grotesque attempt to stitch eternity into the skin of one man, while 27 million Cameroonians decay under the weight of his denial. What man seeks to rule until he is a centenarian corpse propped up by protocol and improvisation lies and official deception? Which country of sound minded people will allow such a mockery to continue? This is no longer tyranny; it is senile theocracy, with Biya as its high priest, chanting decrepit slogans over a nation in chains.

Biya’s legacy is a nation betrayed with abusive patronage and ethnic-inspired clientelism as the official currency of governance. A bilingual state fractured into violent conflict due to his lethargic indifference to Anglophone grievances; a youth majority strangled by unemployment and hopelessness; a judiciary in chains, a legislature emasculated, a cabinet neutered, a press gagged. Over $300 million in public funds looted annually, according to various watchdogs, while hospitals rot and schools crumble. He has not merely misruled; he has institutionalized failure. Cameroon under Biya is a living contradiction: rich in resources, poor in purpose; blessed in geography, cursed in leadership. His CPDM co-travelers have also perfected the art of doing nothing, besides looting the public treasury. This is not stagnation. This is national asphyxiation.

The End of the Farce

Biya fancies himself immune to the fate of Ali Bongo, toppled next door by a fed-up military after a fraudulent election propped up another decrepit dynasty. He believes his regime is eternal. But power decays faster than flesh, and no throne lasts forever. Paul Biya is not the president of Cameroon; he is its plague, its undertaker, its oldest curse, which doesn’t deserve to be eulogized. Let his statues fall like ash, let his portrait rot in moldy government offices, let history remember him not as a statesman and father of the nation, but as a human vampire.

So, let his 2025 re-election bid be the final insult. Enough is enough! Let the youths, awakened from forty-three years of coma, rise like rivers after drought, and nail the coffin of this regime shut. Let the bell toll not for Biya, but for the rebirth of a republic that was never allowed to breathe, never allowed to dream, because one man refused to die – or quit the stage even after the curtains were down. The sword of history is unsparing. And when it falls, it does not ask for clarifications. To the elites of CPDM, to the doddering politburo of geriatrics who toast champagne while the people drink from dry taps -take heed. There comes a day when even the most docile nation remembers how to roar. Even termites know when to abandon a collapsing pillar. And so, we say: Go, Paul Biya. Go – not with thanks, not with fanfare, but with the full weight of our rage, our grief, and our judgment. Go before the wind of history blows you away like the dust of all failed emperors. Your time is not just over. It is damned.

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai

9, July 2025

Political paralysis has gripped Yaoundé and it is now at a dangerous crossroads ⁰

It is difficult to say where the political chaos in Yaoundé will lead us to after very powerful political leaders from the North announced they were no longer with President Biya. It is hard to predict.

Some of Biya’s men in government are still protesting against the North and struggling to handle pressure coming from Barrister Akere Muna and Professor Maurice Kamto.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Ministers Issa Tchiroma, Bello Bouba and Mey have told loyalists to leave Yaoundé and head back to the North.

Political paralysis has gripped Cameroon and the October presidential election is fast approaching.

Biya and his Beti-Ewondo political elites have been in control for 42-years and now there are extraordinarily deep fissures with rival Fulani and Hausa parties – loyal to the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo.

The Minister-Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh with no experience of the Cameroon political story is trying to form a new coalition and breaking with the tradition that government formation and electioneering is simply the prerogative of the head of state.

Southern Cameroonians have already told Francophones to get out of their land and anger is now rising in the West and in the North.

Ngoh Ngoh is taking the last kicks of a dying horse and in doing so; he is attempting to justify the unjustifiable!

Followers of influential Minister Issa Tchiroma were not faced with tear gas and stun grenades during their political rally in Garoua recently but there’s nervousness about where this issue could lead.

The Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia crisis continues to ravage the country but the threats coming from the North and the Bamilekes seems to be intra-sectarian. The spectre of further violence hangs heavy.

In many ways, what is presently going on in Cameroon is really a power play for the spoils that come from the levers of government. It’s not a spontaneous people’s uprising.

National Assembly speaker Cavaye Djibril is appealing for restraint and de-escalation but what is happening in La Republique du Cameroun reflects the profound instability of a political system of government that was set up to serve one man-92-year-old President Biya.

Cameroon is at a dangerous crossroads.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

9, July 2025

October Presidential Election: Yaoundé has a Paul Biya problem ⁰

It began when the 92-year-old leader peed on his trousers, including on his shoes on the May 20 Boulevard in Yaoundé, the nation’s capital. Biya had refused to make the trip to Yaoundé from Mvomeka’a for the celebration but was forced to do so by his wife Chantal Biya and her acolytes in government.

Biya, the political disaster that has been around for forty-two years has recorded an excellent backward trend performance during his tenure as chief executive.

The ruling CPDM Chairman and his men set fire to every profitable government corporation that was established by the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo and corruption and dwindling profits became their hallmark.

Recent efforts led by Minister Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh to run a tribal crime syndicate that guarantees his continued stay in power are coming up short. And all this is producing tension. But it is now becoming something more brutal: a cacophony of politicians from the Northern regions outlining the myriad ways in which they dislike the 92-year-old President Biya.

Complaints have come from Minister Issa Tchiroma, who recently told the Cameroonian people that Biya is a finished man and no longer in command. They have also come from Bello Bouba Maigari who complained about the poor running of state affairs.

The mutiny deep within the ruling CPDM crime syndicate has become so open that those grousing no longer even bother to do it in private. According to Cameroon Intelligence Report sources, a group of senior government ministers including Prime Minister Dion Ngute and Justice Minister Laurent Esso are now complaining about President Biya’s shortcomings in the presence of prominent CPDM Central Committee members in Yaoundé.

Even primary school pupils are getting in on the act with several of them saying that they want to see a new head of state.

Biya’s delayed announcement on the October presidential election is now the butt of jokes.

Only Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Paul Atanga Nji and Biya’s wife Chantal still think Cameroon should be run by a living corpse. As I write, it is increasingly embarrassing for everyone in the CPDM including the Southern Cameroons comedians that their boss His Excellency President Paul Biya is being laughed at in rarefied circles, and that even his kinsmen and women now see him unfit for office.

The current situation in Cameroon is evidence of leadership failure. The question now is whether to push the idiot out before October or get a decent man like Barrister Akere Muna to challenge him.

We of the Concord Group think that Biya has no defense because his performance over a 42-year period has been dreadful. It is hard in Cameroon today to ask the question “what is the problem?” because everything is the problem!

Anti Bamileke, anti Tchiroma and anti Bello Bouba ranting is not enough to save Biya! Let him go and go now! It is no longer enough to say the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow and when the young people disagree with the corrupt leadership, they are forced to leave the country. This is exactly what is happening in Cameroon.

All of Biya’s partners in Southern Cameroons, West region and now the North have left saying that he is no longer capable of governing the country. Even more concerning is that the list includes many who were considered die-hard Biya loyalists. Even if the ruling CPDM party decides to oust Mr Biya, they do not have a clear successor. The problem with waiting to see how things develop in Yaoundé is that a young and inexperienced soldier might stage a coup and make things more complicated.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

30, June 2025

Issa Tchiroma cannot lead the future. He must answer to the past ⁰

As Cameroon nears a historic presidential election, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a man whose career has been steeped in the noxious stew of breathtaking hypocrisy and betrayal, has now emerged, astonishingly, as a self-proclaimed savior of Cameroon. Tchiroma, for decades, was Biya’s most shameless apologist, the regime’s voice-box and ideological attack dog, who now seeks to unshackle himself from the very chains he spent years tightening around the Cameroonian people. Tchiroma did not merely serve the despotic Biya regime. He defended it with unmatched zeal, rationalizing repression and denying atrocities with unflinching composure. He wasn’t merely complicit; he was instrumental. He did not seek truth; he spun brazen lies. He did not serve the people; he served power. Now, with Biya’s dynasty on life support -its 93-year-old patriarch facing creeping senility, hidden behind curtains of frailty, health comorbidities, and palace intrigues – Tchiroma seeks to disown the house he helped burn, by rebranding himself before the regime’s final collapse.

After decades as the poster child of Biya’s oppressive regime, Tchiroma resigned his ministerial post in Biya’s ossified government and now seeks the highest office in the land. But make no mistake: this is not repentance – it is repositioning. Tchiroma is not a man who made mistakes. This is a man who made a career out of betrayal and political treachery. So, let history record it plainly: Issa Tchiroma Bakary is not a reformer. He is not a rebel. He is not the antidote to Biyaism. He is Biyaism’s final mutation! He is not the answer to Cameroon’s problems. He is the echo of its betrayal. Most importantly, he is not the man to bury Biya’s legacy. He is Biya incarnate – just seventeen years younger and infinitely more vicious and cynical. He who dined with the devil for decades cannot declare himself a priest at the devil’s funeral.

A Life Built on Betrayal

Tchiroma’s career has been one long performance of vaulting ambition without conscience. In a stunning display of arrogance, rife with irony and audacity, the 75-year-old former Minister of Labor and Vocational Training, began his campaign for the October 2025 presidential elections, cloaked in the language of change. But let us be clear: Tchiroma is the past pretending to be the future. His cynical political metamorphosis is not a profile in courage, speaking truth to power. It is political choreography. This is not a new dawn; it is the desperate rebranding of a loyal architect of repression; the voice of a man choking on the smoke of his own arson. His 24-page manifesto, promising federalism, jobs, and reform, is not a vision. It reads like a national obituary; an epitaph for his long-dead credibility. He calls the regime “broken.” But he was its spine. He says the people were betrayed. But he wielded the dagger. He says Cameroon needs healing. But he poured the poison. To hear Tchiroma speak today is to watch an arsonist lecture on fire safety. The hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling, incomprehensible, and devoid of any perfunctory exaggeration.

Tchiroma was the velvet voice of a brutal state. From 2009 to 2018, he served as Cameroon’s Minister of Communication; a post he wielded not to inform, but to distort. As a spokesman for Biya’s regime, Tchiroma did not merely obscure truth – he rewrote it. He legitimized repression, and glorified tyranny. He trafficked in propaganda with clinical detachment, rationalizing the regime’s failures, human rights abuses, and corrupt excesses. His every press briefing was a master class in sycophancy and state-sponsored deception. This was not ignorance; it was strategy. Tchiroma did it for power; he did it for the money! Yet, in a brazen contempt for the people, Tchiroma has offered no remorse or apologies. Not for the blood-soaked years. And in perhaps the most egregious display of moral bankruptcy, Tchiroma has never explained the embezzlement of the compensation for the victims of the 2008 Kenya Airways Flight 507 crash at Mbanga Pongo. To rob the dead is to lose any claim to the living.

The Grand North Remembers

Strategically, Tchiroma’s pivot to the Grand North – his home turf – is no accident. For decades, the region – battered by poverty, battered by Boko Haram insurgency, battered by deliberate neglect – has been treated not as a constituency, but as a voting reservoir to be drained at will. Among its principal architects of economic ruin and stagnation is none other than Tchiroma. With succession battles simmering within the ruling CPDM, the Grand North, long a loyal CPDM voting bloc, is now splintering and looks ripe for political realignment. Tchiroma hopes to position himself as its new patriarch, displacing Biya loyalists and rival power brokers like Bello Bouba Maigari. Tchiroma seeks to rebrand himself as a savior of the North, even as his legacy there is one of abandonment, elitism, and duplicity. Tchiroma is a man who stood guard while his region was turned into a militarized wasteland. His appeal to the Fulbe and northern electorate is not rooted in love; it is rooted in a cynical calculation, a desperate gamble for political oxygen in a region where his name stinks of political opportunism.

But the Grand North remembers; the Grand North remembers how Garoua, Tchiroma’s hometown, remains underdeveloped while he hobnobbed in Yaoundé. The Grand North remembers Tchiroma’s cold indifference to Boko Haram’s terror and how its youth were left to die in fields of war. It remembers Tchiroma’s silence. It remembers his complicity. Tchiroma did not merely serve under Paul Biya – he bent the truth until it broke for him. He became the regime’s most fluent mouthpiece, defending crimes against the people with a pathological liar’s cadence and a sycophant’s conviction. And where did this defense echo loudest? In the Grand North; where his silence on Boko Haram’s onslaughts and his complicity in Yaoundé’s starvation of the region became thunderously damning.

The Political Math Doesn’t Add Up

So, let the record scream: Tchiroma’s candidacy is not a rupture. It is residue. Tchiroma is not a leader; he is a chameleon, changing colors to survive. Sensing the collapse of Biya’s fortress, he crawls from the ruins, painting himself in the colors of dissent, and whispering to the wind that he has changed – that he now hears the cries he once ignored, sees the suffering he once mocked, and seeks to fix the very nation he helped mutilate. Even if Tchiroma were to secure a fractured northern bloc, it is unlikely to yield enough momentum to push him past more widely accepted opposition figures like Maurice Kamto, although Kamto’s shadow is fossilized in the architecture of Biya’s failed regime.

In truth, even if he fractures the northern vote, he cannot unite it. Even if he utters the language of change, he cannot embody it. You cannot ask for trust from a nation you helped silence. Tchiroma is not the future; and does not represent change. He represents a final, desperate mutation of the old order – a regime ghost draped in the fabric of reform. His candidacy is not a rebirth. It is a warning.

Cameroon Deserves Better Than an Unrepentant Traitor

Let us not mistake opportunism for courage. Tchiroma’s departure from government is not an act of defiance – it is an escape route. The ship is sinking, and the rats are fleeing, out of survival instinct. The youth, the Anglophones, the jobless millions – they are not waiting for a man who defended dictatorship until it became inconvenient. They are not waiting for a fossil of the old regime. Tchiroma’s gambit may inject volatility into the election, but let no one mistake his candidacy for a national rebirth. It is the final act of a consummate political chameleon, who knows only how to adapt to survive, never to serve.

Cameroon must remember, and the Grand North must remind itself: not all who speak the language of change carry its spirit. Tchiroma’s candidacy is a mask stretched over a scarred face. To hand he the presidency would not be to escape the Biya regime. It would be to extend its life by other means. Let the Grand North rise – but let it rise with clean hands and clear vision, not under the banner of a man whose loyalty was always for sale, and whose conscience always arrived too late.

Cameroon is at an inflection point. The imminent end of Biya’s four-decade dictatorship presents a rare opportunity for national renewal. But let us not confuse opportunism with bravery. Let us not confuse Tchiroma’s departure from government with dissent. This is not a man who saw the light. This is a man who felt the heat. Tchiroma does not carry the spirit of change. He is the echo of betrayal seeking redemption. But there is no redemption without reckoning. And there is no reckoning led by traitors. There is no future built by the hands that helped destroy the past. So let it be said in every region, repeated and shouted in every dialect: Cameroon deserves better than an unrepentant recycled political hack and CPDM enabler. Let the nation remember him. Let the Grand North remind him. Let the ballot box reject him. Issa Tchiroma cannot lead the future. He must answer to the past.

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai

27, June 2025

Nyene Mawn Palaver and Ndip Joshua Ako ⁰

On the 29th of December 2024, seven members were suspended from the Manyu Women International Association (Nyene Mawn) after they withdrew £23,500 from the meeting reserves without permission.

Over the last six months, these ladies, now known in the Manyu diaspora community as the dodgy seven, have engaged on a campaign of blackmail against the President General of the association, Dr Mrs Patience Abangma who recommended their suspension.

The Dodgy Seven’s newest stunt is to hire an amateur in social media activism with a Manyu name—- Ndip Joshua Ako. Last week, this publication contested in strong terms misrepresentations by the jester and his pay mistresses. After the write-up, Ndip Joshua Ako released a series of wretched smears against the Chairman and Editor-in-chief of the Concord Group.

The purpose of this flat write up is to refocus the conversation. There are three principal points that Ndip Joshua Ako has so far failed to address or challenge from last week’s post and Cameroon Concord News is calling on him to clarify them forthwith. Firstly, he is a container-loader in Sweden with a pitifully undernourished mind. Second, he is a product of the Mondoni Oil Mill/ CDC Camp, so, although he is in possession of a Manyu name, he retains no Manyu tendencies. Third, he has been paid to orchestrate a campaign of deception and blackmail against a grandmother he knows little about.

Ndip Joshua Ako, a man with a wooden and oily face has been told by his relatives that he is a native of Sumbe, a village in Manyu Division that has produced so many champions. His family migrated and settled in a CDC camp in Fako division where Ndip Joshua Ako was presumably conceived. In CDC Camps, where life as painted by Nsanda Eba in the “The Good Foot” was rotten-down-to-earth, Joshua must have learned to smear seventy-something-year-olds.

After leaving South Africa in 2006, Ndip Joshua relocated to Berlin and was sheltered by a respectable Sumbe business woman for obvious reasons. Unable to obtain residence in Germany, Joshua was shipped by his Sumbe sister to Sweden where he now resides. Instead of representing Sumbe with decency and decorum as laid down by the Sumbe Monarch His Royal Highness Chief Ayuk Hope, he has by some strange happenstance become a joke with a Smartphone whose sole purpose is blackmailing of his superiors.

The decision of the corrupt seven to hire Ndip Joshua, who spends all his time on Face Book counting English, has angered many within the Manyu community at home and in the diaspora. The container loader who is struggling to make ends meet in Sweden says he is searching for truth on a topic he is tragically unqualified to tackle. He claims the attack on the earned reputation of a renowned Manyu elder is in the interest of the community, not a campaign of intimidation. Ndip Joshua and his pay mistresses have crossed the reddest of the reds line and are now walking on broken bottles.

Two things may happen in this defining moment. One is that the loud sounding nothing Joshua Ndip may crack under the strain of this public relation disaster of his making and the other is that he may apologize publicly for his madness and stupidity and desist from ever attacking an elder without hard evidence.

So far, people close to him say there has been little sign of him learning from his moment of madness. However, a family member in the US, who spoke to Cameroon Concord News but sued for anonymity, puts that down to him being a slow learner. Another family member in Cameroon said, “Every family has a black sheep but we are so unfortunate to have two and he is one of them. Instead of working hard to support people in our family like many in Europe are doing, he is there making noise on social media. Our family home has been run down for many years; he has done nothing about it.”

Ndip Joshua Ako, a man who counts English as if English language is a numeracy exercise, claimed to have studied in so many universities around the world. However, research into his background shows that he is a professional student who enrolls at universities with the primary purpose of defrauding the student finance system!

According to his social media profile, he has an MSc in Political Science from the SÖDERTÖRNS HÖGSKOLA and another MSc in Environmental Science at the University of Cape Town. He also has in his academic bank a BSc (Hons) in International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in London and a Master of Arts (MA) in Communication for Development at Malmö University. Finally, he has an MSc in Political Science at Stockholm University. In one of his social media attack on my person, he stated that he has three First Degrees and two Masters Degrees!! But with all of these, Ndip Joshua Ako still possesses the working vocabulary and brain power of a nine-year-old.

Interestingly, there is some good news here and it is that Ndip Joshua is the first Manyu man with three First Degrees, two Master Degrees and no PhD yet! Correspondingly, he is the only Manyu man who thinks football clubs in Europe are NGOs. We all should not be surprised that this intellectual eunuch will pop up over the next few years with those hopeless online PhDs that are the hallmark of Mondoni Oil Mill and CDC Camp children.

His claim that football clubs in Sweden and other European countries are non-profit organizations betrays some ignorance and portrays him as a successful and prominent academic failure or better still an academic Lilliputian! Even the CPDM subsection president for Mondoni Oil Mill where he hails from is very much aware that football clubs are huge businesses generating profits.

No right thinking person can muster the courage to say Joshua Ndip is 100% Manyu. Some deep within his family have attempted to describe him recently and one of them was quoted as saying “in Britain, he is a Postman or Milkman baby”.

Ndip Joshua should concentrate on improving himself; he should focus on his family back home and be responsible. The problem in Nyene Mawn is real. The fact is, however long, the issues will be resolved. One fact remains, Nyene Mawn does not need Ndip Joshua Ako and his social media antics. This August, Nyene Mawn queens will gather in Paris and a greater Nyene Mawn will emerge that will reveal that Mami Patience Abangma is a woman more sinned against than sinning.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai