Letter from Buea to Yaounde

Dear Ngwa,

Is your man not yet done with his mentors? Or what are they telling him to do this time around. We know it is not what to say, but how to say it. That since the people have called on me to run, “I will run!” Simple!

I hear ghosts are also calling on him to run. Truly, King Saul is the master of sorcerers. If he can cause Prof Louis Paul Ngongo, who died in 2014, to get out of his grave and come and tell him to run, then, he is an expert in necromancy. Other politicians are mere apprentices in sorcery as he once declared.

He can do magic, because if people like Achidi Achu, who can barely walk, will march for him to run, then he is sorcerer of no little standing. Onlookers simply prayed that the old fox will not crumple like Agbor Tabi did and also be rushed to a maternity.

If it is no magic, how would Double Mola, whom we were looking forward to being the President of the Senate and second highest personality in the country and represent us as Anglicans, instead chose Pa Niat? If it is not witchcraft, how can people who are younger, more rational, more intelligent including the intelligentsia, come down to the streets and march for an 84-year-old man to run for re-election?

My brother, either these guys are wizards, or they are just wicked. I hope they would account for that when the time of reckoning comes. When they march like that, for those who come from Ako, Mesaje, Wum, Nkambe, Ndu, Jakiri; when they travel back on the very rugged and dusty roads, what do they tell their people that they want Biya to stay on for? Those from Santa and, in fact, the entire Northwest, what do they tell their people: that Biya has been unable to repair the road from Mbouda to Bamenda, for almost 34 years, only to tar it now? What a shame?

It is also a nightmare travelling from Kumba to Mundemba in Ndian from where they are tapping petroleum. You are either buried in dust or mud, depending on the season. Unemployment is making the youth in the Far North fertile ground for recruitment by terrorists. Government workers have not stopped pilfering the commonweal. Yet the man running this entire circus is out there now and then.

The fact that he is listening to his mentors, as the best pupil of the French, in order to come back and call the election earlier than its due date, is no news to us? Whether you call it an early election, snap election or precipitated election, it is the same thing. If you want to kill people, just kill them. Delaying makes it more painful.

I asked you last time if health was one of the reasons he was travelling at this crucial moment. It is his right to be sick or not. It is his right to see his physician. But it is the right of the tax payers whose money he is using, to know that he is sick and using their money for treatment. If it is enjoyment, the people must know that he is using their money for his and his family’s enjoyment.

I hear you guys are mobilising to celebrate the Cunning Pals Drinking Movement’s anniversary. But one day, one day, will be the day of reckoning.

Happy anniversary!

Sincerely yours

Mbella