Cameroon’s February Unrest: Sign of Last Days for Biya Regime?

By Mofor Samuel

Presently, Cameroon’s constitution prohibits Paul Biya, already president for close to 26years, from standing for re-election when his current and final seven-year mandate expires in 2011. What is giving Cameroonians sleepless nights is whether there is some level of performance to another term. Close to 26 years in power punctuated by dismal performance only adds Biya to a long list of African despots. Even his last re-election according to reports was a tainted victory.
One may not be exaggerating to say that Biya’s continuity bid heightened the already-charged socio-political atmosphere in the country. In fact Biya and his team appear to be sailing close to the wind that blew the likes of Mobutu, Habre and Amin out of power.
For a continent heading towards breakdown, the continuity syndrome only adds more salt to the wound. African leaders are glued to power while the people pay a heavy toll. Is it not yet time for African people to crush the sit-tight bug? An assemblage of leaders with so much to hide represents the darkness that has enveloped the continent for too long.
Grassroots disenchantment, especially among millions of unemployed people and the rural and urban poor had reached the point of no return. To the millions of Cameroonians reeling in the sun from the effects of hunger, poverty and destitution, Last February uprising by a compassionate group of young people, served to restore a sense of their own human worth. Their “pragmatic actions” have had a broader dimension in that they have helped Cameroonians to perceive again their dignity and self respect. It is precisely this awareness of the people’s physical suffering and of their mental torment and despair that the young people were encouraged to pave the way for a new social order.
Instead of trying to conceal the extent of the suffering; instead of denying that there actually is a problem, as Biya’s cronies have been doing all this while, they ought to as soon as they are appointed or “elected”, nurture ways and means whose sole and specific purpose was to save the people from the never ending economic woes. An important characteristic of the way forward from inception ought to be ingenuity, level- headedness and humility.
What was required of the Biya government was a sustained long- term commitment to the problem of poverty and underdevelopment. The scenario before the social unrest was a government bent on impoverishing its own people, uninterested in the living conditions and unaffected by the high rate of unemployed young persons.
The first characteristic of a new regime within the context of the new social order is to demonstrate its awareness on the causes of the people’s suffering; and above all, come up with a wide range of reforms in the economic and social domains geared towards alleviating the suffering.
The people’s inability to withstand the rigours of hardship stem directly from the traditional siphoning of their wealth by the “upper class” of the yesteryear. To address the causes of hardship would be to reduce the effects of poverty and the toll taken by the two.
The government must unchain the people from traditional indebtedness. Whatever trials and tribulations the country encounters in the future, the unchaining of the people and the country from erstwhile masters will probably remain the most far-reaching reform in Cameroon’s history. These problems were bequeathed by the imperial past which the lack of accountability has been compounding and rendering ever more difficult.
Despite corruption’s merciless pounding of the Cameroonian economy, the swindling of state funds has become more or less a constant feature of national life, with “pests” in the system exacerbating the already bad situation.
Biya and his ministers just can’t do what they need to the country to save it from disaster until they organize the people. With an almost rubber stamp National Assembly and image problems, president Biya needs a carnival of the country’s prefets, governors and ministers to sing “succeed thy self”.
Unable to continue bearing the brunt of the shortage of foreign exchange, basic consumer goods and services, worsening unemployment situation, and fiscal problems etc, Cameroonian youths are yearning for better days or for the Biya regime to quit the scene if they can no longer deliver .
From the very outset, the government was confronted with a range of obstacles which appeared insurmountable. Obviously it became clear to conscious groups in society that a national crisis was inevitable and that the suffering of the majority of the population was reaching unendurable proportions. The eventual outcome was clear: popular uprising in a disorganized manner and extremely violent in character.
The precipitated adjustment of prices and exoneration of taxes on “certain basic commodities” respectively, coupled with an increase of 15% of civil servants’ salaries and 20%in their housing allowance, to say the least, only breed more trouble for the powers that be in future. They are yet to provide a comprehensive answer to the thousands of young people who took to the streets to vent their anger on their plight and abandonment.
Future leaders should accept only that which lends credence to their claims that they are one with the people. They should present themselves as a new breed who seeks to defy the age old philosophy of African politics- that to be elected into public office is to bid farewell to the ghettos of one’s youth.
Hope may lie in the election or appointment of new brains free from fatigue that has been building up among leaders who have spent decades in power.
Finally unless the new breed of office holders are ready to make elections into political office a vocation, for this implies God’s hand in it therefore endowing one with all those godly virtues, then Cameroonians will be met by the same statistics we saw during the time of Mobutu and others of his type in Africa.