THE ABSENTEE PRESIDENT AND THE PRICE OF SELF – DETERMINATION.
By Electa M. Shalo
Since the President of French Cameroon Paul Biya,declared war on the Southern Cameroon people in 2016,the President has been virtually invisible. This has had devastating consequences on the self determination on The Southern Cameroon people to be Independent.
Mr. Biya, is hardly in the Parliament, invisible on the campaign path nor make himself available for interviews with any of Cameroon dozen of private media outlets. He even avoids interview with the state owned media, the CRTV which is his private propaganda tool. Not even the Covid 19 pandemic that brought the world to a standstill. Every Head of state had addressed its people and are still addressing its people, but Mr. Biya had never addressed the nation as regards The pandemic.
Mr. Biya had only held just one Cabinet meeting between 2015 and 2018. Mr. Biya views campaign rallies too lowly for his elevated status
Mr. Biya rules the nation of Cameroon as its personal property. Even your personal property will need some surveillance from you. He rules from a distance. Mr. Biya spent most of his time in Geneva in Switzerland at the most luxurious intercontinental hotel occupying the top floor of the suit were he spends many months using tax payers money while his people lacks the basic life necessities like safe drinking water, electricity, schools, infrastructure and hospitals. In fact, it was home for Mr. Biya the Hitler of the 21st century. Thanks to the ‘Anti Sardiner’, Mr. Biya was chased out of Geneva in 2019. This episode led to Mr. Biya longest stay in Cameroon mostly in his native village Mvomeka since becoming president in November, 6th1982.
Even when Mr. Biya is in Cameroon, he remains out of sight. He shuns the Unity Palace at Etoudi, his official residence in the capital of Yaoundé preferring to spend months at his private residence in Mvomeka.
When Cameroon was hit by the Covid19 pandemic earlier this year, Mr. Biya stayed out of public view for two months. He finally made a televised address to the nation in May, 2020.
More recently it took the aging and unfit President over 48Hrs to tweet his condemnation of the deadly kumba school shooting in October, 2020,
Human Rights groups has widely condemned Cameroon military for extrajudicial killings in the Southern Cameroon Region. Yet the aging President, the commander in chief of the arm forces has claimed that soldiers acted on their own.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3891944870850061&id=1927380740639827&sfnsn=scwspwa
As a result of this conflict in Ambazonia BokoHarram in the northern region of Cameroon, the dilapidated institutions, Cameroon economy has been left in ruins.
Biya views himself as a demi god. Mr. Biya enthusiastic and his party supporters believe that Biya is a demi god. Mr. Biya’s inner circle has adopted practices of praising singing and worshipping of the President to remain in his good books. Yes, this is the case, a very glaring example is when Biya was likened to Jesus in an astounding report on Cameroon’s state owned broadcasting station the CRTV. When the broadcaster likened Mr. Biya’s returned to Cameroon after the 2019 protest in Geneva by ‘the Anti Sardiner’ to the triumphant entry to Jerusalem by Jesus. Another instance was when AtangaNji, the minister of territorial administration likewise in February quoted bible verse to back the idea that Biya is the Head of state because he was chosen by God.
The quicker way to ascend to power under this regime is to utter the not very secret password WE THANK THE HEAD OF STATE OR THANKS TO THE HEAD OF STATE, which fall without fail from the lips of party politicians all the time. Perhaps Biya has something in common with “Jesus “After all for decades rumors of Biya’s death have swept periodically through the media more recently social media. Only to have Mr. Biya miraculously reappears sometime later. The last rumor of his death was in April 2020, when Mr. Biya failed to address Cameroonians over the covid 19 pandemic. Each time such rumors emerge I question myself what difference does the demise of an ABSENTEE PRESIDENT would make to ordinary Cameroonian. Perhaps it will allow the ordinary Cameroonian to speak their minds or move about freely especially those living in Yaoundé without worrying about a visit from the Cameroon Police or other security operatives in the dead of the night. Uttering a word against the President in the taxi, bars or on the streets can land the speaker among the inmates at Kondengui prison or exile, like me and my daughters. If thrown in kondengui prison you will never be judged like in the cases of ; Emmanuel Kom, Long Solo Wala, Abang Modest, Ebbe Allan, Foam Marcel Michele, Zo Kingsley, Nestor Mbang, Ako Javier, Kom Gerald. NgongAlloysius, KotiNjie Franklin, NesahFontoh.
We still have thousands of Southern Cameroonians in the Kondengui maximum prison. .
Another example was the musician Longue Longue who criticized the outcome of the 2018 elections. His passport was sized and only returned after he spent nearly a year publicly begging for forgiveness.
As a result of actions like these, it has become a taboo to criticize the president in any way.
Investigative Journalists are branded as enemies of the state as terrorists and rebels. They are tried in military court and held in inhumane conditions and some killed like in the cases of Samuel Wazizi. (https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1471652276378126&id=821568421386518&sfnsn=scwspwa} who was arrested in August 2019, for criticizing the Yaounde regime handling the Anglophone crises and a host of others who have gone on self-exile. Like Mimi Mefo, John Mba Akuru, Buh Herbert, Ntemfack Ofege just to mention a few.
Hundreds of independent journalist have either been arrested, jailed or gone into exile or, have to toe the line and become songbirds of the regime, or prisons become their new homes.
As an activist, It is my duty to make the whole world aware of these atrocities. As an “Ambazonian” is time to free my people from this bondage.
The most recent case is Anye, who was arrested on Thursday, the10th of December, as he was walking along the road side around street 5 Mukong
Bamenda. The military killed him and drop his corpse in the river.
These government scares its population by deliberately
Killing innocent civilians, women and children.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1471652276378126&id=821568421386518&sfnsn=scwspwa
Which government kills the very people it’s meant to be protecting?
Members of the Rapid intervention battalion massacred the people of Ngarbu, Bali, Pinying, Babanki, Ekonaetc. This is to punish them for either supporting, collaborating and sheltering separatists. This government try to excite civil war by putting the people against each other as in the case of the Mbororos and the farmers in Wum, and the current Northwest and Southwest divide. What a shame.
The Cameroon government want to rule and conquer the Southern Cameroon people alias Ambazonia, whereas we can live separately and happily. That is what human beings are meant to live for.
We have to live by everyone’s happiness and not to hate and despise one another the way Mr. Biya’s regime hate the Ambazonians because of their self determination to live as free people which is a fundamental human right.
The good world is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life is free and beautiful. Greed has poisoned the minds of Mr. Biya and his cohorts. He has barricaded the country with hate misery and blood shed,
Mr. Biya and his cohorts think too much and feel little.
We need humanity more than machinery. We need humanity more than cleverness. Without this qualities life will be violent.
Millions of despairing men, women and children are victims of the system. The government of Mr. Biya torture men, women and children and also imprison innocent people .The misery that we are passing through now is as a result of the bitterness of men, greed who fear the way of Southern Cameroons progress..
Mr. Biya has the power to fix things, he has the power to create happiness and have the power to make life free and beautiful for everyone. To make this life a wonderful adventure. But Mr. Biya have chosen to make life unbearable for the common Southern Cameroonian and for this generation in general who sees no hope. Youths loiter the street in desperation.
In the name of SELF-DETERMINATION let us all use the power to UNITE. Let us all fight for OUR FREEDOM For AMBAZONIA THAT WILL GIVE ALL MEN AND WOMEN ACHANCE TO WORK. That will give YOUTHS a future and serenity.
I remember when Mr. Biya took over power from Ahidjo, he had this wonderful program of RIGOUR AND MORALISATION. BUT HE WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO ASKED FOR PROOFS WHERAS MINISTERS WHERE EMBEZZLING PUBLIC FUNDS IN A LIVE TELEVISED PROGRAMM WITH ERIC CHINJIE ON CRTV.
PROMISING THIS THINGS MR. BIYA HAS BECOME A BRUT. HE HAS BECOME A DICTATOR. MR. BIYA LIVES LARGE. HIS FAMILY LEAVES FREELY AND ALL THOSE WHO HAIL HIM AS A GOD LEAVES FREELY but enslave the people.
Ambazonians let us fight now to free ourselves.
To do away with greed with hate and intolerance.
Let us fight for an AMBAZONIA OF REASON WHERE SCIENCE AND PROGRESS WILL LEAD TO HAPPINESS OF ALL.
LA REPUBLIC SOLDIERS stop killing innocent people ,You know the truth. In the name of this truth stop killing the very people you are meant to be protecting. Stop defending dictator Paul Biya. Paul Biya will die one day and you and only you will be held to pay for the crimes you are committing in Ambazonia. So long as men die liberty will surely come one-day. Liberty will never perish.
SO soldiers do not give yourself to brut like Paul Biya who despise you, enslave you, regiment your lives, tell you what to think and feel. Who drill you, treat you like cattle and use you as ’Canon fodder’. DON’T give yourselves to this unnatural man, machine man with machine mind and machine heart .
You soldiers have the love of humanity in your heart. You don’t hate .Only the unloved hate and the unnatural hate. Soldiers do not fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the17th chapter of St Luke, It says, the kingdom of God is within men not one man nor a group of men but in all men. In you the people of Ambazonia.
Ambazonians you are capable. You can do it. We can do it together. Oh yes we can.
SELF – DETERMINATION IS ACHIEVABLE.
Article written by Electa M. Shalo. (SCNC UK)
