Cameroon: Still in the hands of unfeeling men

A lot has been said already about the sorry state of our beloved Cameroon and because repetition is so necessary to teach men who refuse to learn quickly, it is right to say again that Cameroon continues to experience its hardest days since God made heaven and earth.

These, indeed, are hard times, even though our leaders spend unthrift the country’s funds on new office cars; stealing and adding onto what they are due. Enforced wrongs committed by Biya and his chief men have left almost all Cameroonians in a disadvantaged spot.

It is not a misconception to say that many Cameroonians now stand like purchased slaves: sadly enough, only a few wish that one day this land be set free, even though we all are beleaguered by the same negation and despair. If this wish ever comes true, there will be no more needless weeping and crying in Cameroon as our palates and plates will be constantly filled with viands.

How can things change for the better, when notwithstanding the apparent cruelty of Biya and his ilk, so many Cameroonians go on faltering him and again, his Ministers and army give him the impression that he is doing well in people’s eyes since he hears applause and universal shout.

Biya knows that he does not deserve these peals of praise that constantly come his way because, even the temporal headway Cameroon has made in terms of infrastructural progress, has no genuine recognisable features. It is slowly but surely becoming clear to all and sundry that Paul Biya, who has ruled Cameroon for over three decades, is wearing and undeserved dignity.

We are experiencing a time in Cameroon when music makes no one happy anymore and when cold water cannot quench the thirst of a dry throat. Our MPs, Senators and Mayors, many of whom have risen from rags to riches, are hardly respective of their vehement oaths; Directors of State Corporations in a show of rapacious greed go on stealing billions and highways and byways are hardly mended in Cameroon, notwithstanding the so much money collected from toll gates and obnoxious taxes.

Again, it is an open secret that today in Cameroon, estates, degrees and offices are gotten corruptly. One can be made to conclude from these manifest proceedings that directly or indirectly, our leaders have contrived against the very life of the whole nation. There are many, in reality, who are leading, but ought to be led and so many more who command and are first, but they ought to be last. Our leaders do not have Cameroon at heart and it now seems that nothing is good in this country anymore.

When will Biya be touched with the warmth of human gentleness and love? As some thinkers have opined, Paul Biya, Cameroon's longest serving President, when he is at his best, is little worse than a man and when he is at his worst, is little better than a beast.

All these time, so many Cameroonians who have false hearts, have been living cowardly and refusing to confront the truth that Biya has failed his people. Many of our politicians, Ministers and Civil Servants are guilty of political hypocrisy and even those of them, who are Christians, have refused to follow the example of Christ, who spoke the truth truly and feared no man since men can only kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

Most of our Christian brothers and sisters who hold key positions in this country have given in to worldly attractions and are distracted from the ultimate goal in this life. Many of them, in their sufficiency, seek more like Oliver Twist and once they hear of a vacancy anywhere, they first think of their relatives, even the ones who are deceased.

If the devil himself can cite scripture for his own purpose, so too an evil soul can produce holy witness that is temporal like a villain who appears with a smiling cheek or a goodly apple that is already rotten at the heart.

Paul Biya has failed Cameroon as a whole and Anglophones particularly. As one Anglophone elder, Amola, who has been praying for the freeing of English Cameroon has said: “We are Anglophones - but don’t we have eyes, senses, hands, organs and dimensions like francophones? They refuse to promote us and give us equal opportunities, but are we not fed with food like them, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same sun and rain like they are?”

We cannot be smiling when our leaders fail; rather we are embittered when we register the crimes and follies of our leading men. Whether we like it or not, we must love one another as Cameroonians or we all shall die and our country will continue to go backward ever and forward never.