It was late on Friday, July 29, 2022 and Biktusi music was pulsating from the residence of a multimillion-FCFA home in Yaoundé owned by a former cabinet minister who orchestrated one of the biggest frauds in Cameroon history.

After four years in the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaoundé, the former Minister of Water and Energy, Basile Atangana Kouna is now a free man.

Basile Kouna’s clemency decision went very fast. The Special Criminal Court ordered his release late on Friday, July 29, 2022 and before it was 9 pm that same Friday, Basile Atangana Kouna was already enjoying life in the nation’s capital.

Annie Noelle Bahounoui Batende, president of the collegiality of judges and also president of the Special Criminal Court pronounced the decision following the restitution of the corpus delicti to the public treasury, an amount of 1.265 billion FCFA.

Interestingly, there was a correspondence from the Minister-Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh to the Minister of Justice, Keeper of the Seals, Laurent Esso, informing him that President Paul Biya has decided to stop the prosecution of Basile Atangana Kouna.

On the same day after being granted clemency by President Biya and released after serving four years at the Kondengui Prison, Minister Basile Atangana Kouna was under a biktusi ball celebrating with his wife, family and supporters from his Beti Ewondo tribal extraction.

Not far away from Yaoundé precisely in Paris, France, Chief Inoni Ephraim former Prime Minister and Head of Government, who had been convicted in a separate scheme to siphon off millions of dollars in fraudulent Albatross payments, was also at a private Cameroon government holiday home instead of in the Kondengui Maximum Security prison. Thanks to several commutations by President Biya, CPDM criminals are being relieved of any “remaining obligation.”

This is not the outcome that judges at the Special Criminal Court expected when they and other top state prosecutors and police investigators set out to expose what these cabinet ministers have done to the state of Cameroon.

After four years of painstaking work including millions of FCFA spent to arrest Minister Kouna Atangana in Nigeria — participants in a type of fraud that costs the Cameroonian taxpayer several millions of FCFA — had been wiped away by the stroke of a Biya-Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh pen.

The so-called presidential rationale did not hold much weight with those who had sought to hold Minister Basile Kouna accountable. Correspondingly, no anger has been elicited among those who spent years pursuing the complex prosecution against the Minister.

President Biya’s tribal clemency decision remains an incredible kick in the teeth to the judges and prosecutors at the Special Criminal Court who work every day under very difficult circumstances to achieve justice and some restitution to the Cameroonian taxpayer from the billions that has literally been stolen.

This frustration is shared by many deep inside the regime including some prominent magistrates who spent two years working on the case.  A senior aide to Minister Laurent Esso has been quoted as saying that the Biya clemency decision is disheartening and demoralizing.

In 2013, President Biya commuted a former Minister of Basic Education; Haman Adama after four years of pre-trial detention for misappropriation of public funds. Like Basile Atangana Kouna, Haman Adama we are told also repaid the embezzled funds.  But those who reportedly considered Minister Haman Adama case to be the most important conviction were outraged at what Mr. Biya did.

Basile Kouna’s presidential pardon so to speak is an insult and slap in the face to Cameroonians. Everyone in the political bureau of the ruling CPDM remains baffled at why Mr. Biya acted in this case. The Head of State supports men and women with ill gotten wealth, supports  rich and well-connected people — really bad people by giving them special treatment when decent people are languishing in the jails.

The festivities at Minister Kouna’s home soon after his release surprised everyone in Yaoundé. But a neighbour contacted by this reporter opined that crime pays in Biya’s Cameroon.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

It is really hard to define who is a Cameroonian, how we see ourselves in the troubled passage towards living together in a multi tribal so-called democracy.

Anticipating the inevitable tumult that would, rightly, encompass an Anglophone presidency after Biya– poverty, diseases, cost of living, complete and total degradation of public services, about the tortuous, denied consequences of joining the Francophonie and the Commonwealth – it is worth dwelling for a moment on an optimistic note.

An Anglophone head of state will not resolve the Southern Cameroons crisis immediately; the Cameroonian political and ethnic divide is another matter. But it would be an event that will guarantee for a long time the existence of the one and indivisible Cameroon or better still the United Republic of Cameroon.

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group believe that a head of state of Anglophone heritage would be something to celebrate.

This is not to say that all is well in Yaoundé, or that all is even well within the ruling CPDM party. Frankly speaking, it is not. The 89-year-old President Biya is still struggling to put up a strong man image, but it is clear that he is running out of time. Like any other common African dictator, he may end up humiliating himself, his family and country if he refuses to exit soonest through the big door.

However, from the look of things, Biya is insisting on dying in power and he might do so in public during one of those events in which he might want to prove that he is physically strong to rule the country.

The late veteran CRTV journalist Epsy Ngum repeatedly said that the CPDM have a problem with Anglophones and, indeed, research from prominent Anglophone media houses showed that the Biya regime is an anti-Anglophone regime.  

Without government incentives and support, the Anglophone community in the so-called one and indivisible Cameroon is, relative to other Francophone groups, educated and well-off.

From all the nonsense coming out of Yaoundé!  Judged on the content of what Francophone political commentators are saying, and how they are saying it, an Anglophone is overwhelmingly the better choice to take over the presidency after Biya. None deep within the ruling CPDM party is a presidential material and none looks like men and women who can cope with being head of state.

An Anglophone head of state will reinstall patriotism that we are all citizens of a country whose institutions matter. Biya’s presidency has been a disgrace principally because he has no respect for the explicit treaties and tacit conventions by which a democracy reproduces itself. An Anglophone head of state will return to the bounds of decency and respect for norms.

It is indeed shameful that there are some few in Yaoundé who are doing their best to steer away from substantive issues with the Franck Biya For President joke. There is nothing they are offering with the Franck Biya joke than simply saying he should succeed his father!  No discourse about the failures of state institutions and corruption, nothing on education, nothing on healthcare and almost nothing on job creation. The Franck Biya stuff is depressingly trivial.

The Southern Cameroons crisis, the dangerous Boko Haram incursions, the deteriorating security situation in the East and the huge political divide in the country has made it more obvious than ever that the job of choosing a head of state after Biya cannot fall to the members of a political party.

A majority of French speaking Cameroonians now believe that having an Anglophone head of state would make things better for them, and that majority says it doesn’t matter whether he or she is a South Westerner or North Westerner.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai