Cameroonian youths need a leadership miracle

Time has never been on the side of Cameroonian youths. They are born, grow up and grow old in the same places with the same faces forever. As they grow up, they are fed on meals of lies and promises and taboos.

Then, like chicks still fluffy, they are quickly weaned as the mother hen hops off to lay more eggs, and the chicks, barely able to scratch and peck for a living, are left to forage on their own.

The difference between the life of a chick and that of Cameroonian youths is that, for the chick, there is free grit and free fodder. Not so for the Cameroonian youths. The youths have all along been without a leader or a sage willing to mentor them into the future. They have been a poor variable in the convoluted equation of employment, commerce and elections.

Many youths across Cameroon still do far more unpaid work than the old generations who want to work till death do them part. With the most lucrative posts and positions reserved for the favourite cronies and minions of the ruling CPDM party, Cameroonian youths have little choice but to scramble for less than decent black or brown collar jobs, far below their high school level education – taxi driving, riding commercial motorcycles [pompously called bendskin], cart pushing, hawking, petty trading and prostituting.

Cameroonian youths need nothing less than a miracle. A miracle here doesn’t mean the impossible; we have seen miracles happen – penicillin, the computer, Internet. With a little human innovation, the youths can pull off a miracle.

President Biya has done his best for the youths, but his best is not good enough. He does not give five francs what happens to his youths – they can wallow in poverty and misery for all he cares. Over the years, he has made more promises than he can handle. But one promise he has kept jealously for over thirty years is that he does not want to be rotated from the hot seat.

Biya is a stickler for minor protocol details. When the IMF Director, Christine Lagarde and the Italian President Mattarella paid Biya a visit, he guided the tour of the La Cosa Nostra to his desired destinations, leaving out all the squalid locations that could have told the true story of Cameroon; that of planned chaos.

Lagarde and Mattarella should have seen the filthy slums of Ndokoti or Village or Mabanda of the bendskins, ‘bambes’, cart pushers, touts and hawkers and prostitutes and sweaty taxi drivers.

What difference does it make, anyway, whether President Biya makes a promise or not? Life in Cameroon doesn't seem to be for the youths. In 2014, Cameroon spent FCFA 150 billion to import rice and wheat; FCFA 160 billion for frozen fish and FCFA 33 billion for milk and its by products.

In 2015, forecasts for dairy products stood at 431,800 tons expected to increase to 446,913 in 2016. By 2019, Cameroon will be importing nearly half a million tons of dairy products; a good deal for the youths.

Biya is 84; if he wins the next presidential election in 2018 or even earlier, he will rule for seven years until 2024 when he will be 91; then, obviously, since he is addicted to power, he will run again and win and rule for seven years and become 98, 105, 112, 119, 106, 113, 120, 127, 134 and so on and so forth.

The youths who are in their 20s now would have aged, and perhaps died of joblessness and poverty.