Editorial: 2025 presidentials; Marafa campaigns from prison!.

In an interview with Pan-African news magazine, Jeune Afrique, which has been extensively reported around the world, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, former Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, who is serving a 25-year sentence, said the Cameroon economy has been having a "free fall".

In comparing the country with Côte d'Ivoire, which has some geopolitical and economic similarities, he said Ivorians are far ahead of Cameroonians with the gap increasingly widening.

“The result is that, if we compare ourselves with Côte d'Ivoire, we are on free fall. Between 2011 and 2022, the GDP gap between the two countries has widened by nearly $20 billion, to the disadvantage of Cameroon. Today, the average purchasing power of Ivorians is 40% higher than that of Cameroonians. What makes the slump all the more unbearable is that it corresponds to a fall, to a regression," he claimed.

Responding to Minister Célestine Ketcha Courtes’ famous question of: “What was there before?,” Marafa said:

"Before, there was a national airline serving the country, Africa and Europe, there was a government shipping company with many ships, a refinery, an urban transport company, which allowed one to take the bus for 25 CFA Francs…”.

We at The Guardian Post should add West Cameroon Marketing Board, West Cameroon Electricity Corporation, POWERCAM, Cameroon Bank and the Limbe Deep Seaport.       

Marafa was in 2012 sentenced to 25 years in prison for “intellectual complicity in embezzlement of public funds”.

According to the former Unity Palace scribe, "Cameroonians expect three things from Paul Biya today: that their standards of living improves, that their daily safety be ensured because in the city as in the village, insecurity reigns, that there be an end to the armed conflict in the English-speaking Regions with its bloody results in terms of human lives, including those of our brave soldiers, and may the chaos in the North of the country where the deaths and displacement of populations victims of Boko Haram have gone silent, should cease".

His condemnation of the regime to the applause of the opposition fraternity is seen by political observers as frustration with the regime in which he was a key actor, until his intention to succeed President Biya was divulged by Wikileaks.     

“I am losing my sight,” he told Jeune Afrique, adding that “all the specialists” recommend “a last chance operation” to “prevent me from becoming totally blind”.

However, Marafa said his requests for medical evacuation authorisation addressed to President Biya have not received any response.

Marafa added that he even pleaded for house detention, but his request again remained a dead letter.

Marafa said he does not understand why he is still behind bars, while "the five other people convicted in this case [presidential plane scam] have all been released”.

“My continued detention and the torture that I suffer, in particular, through the refusal of care, because it is indeed torture in legal terms, can therefore only have a political character,” he lamented.

In an article published in the United States journal, Speaking Out, which discusses issues affecting the US Foreign Service and American diplomacy, Niels Marquardt, one-time US Ambassador to Cameroon, said Marafa’s incarceration is "political".

"His only real crime", the Ambassador wrote, "was having told me, in confidence in 2006, that he 'might be interested' in seeking Cameroon’s presidency one day, if ever the incumbent president, Paul Biya, were to leave office".

He wrote further that: "Seven other former US Ambassadors to Cameroon and I have written to successive US administrations for assistance in seeking Mr Marafa’s release, so far without effect. Ambassadors (ret.) Frances Cook, Harriet Isom, Charles Twining, John Yates, George Staples, Janet Garvey, and Robert Jackson all know and respect him and have joined me in formally demanding his release. The Biden administration is fully aware of this situation but, to my knowledge, has not taken any strong action to secure Mr Marafa’s release".

It is not clear if the US Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard R. Verma, during his recent audience at the Unity Palace with Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, standing in for President Biya, discussed the release of Marafa.

What is nonetheless crystal clear is that the government spin machinery has persistently argued that his conviction was not politically motivated.

Marafa was guilty in a scam in which a refurbished plane was sold to the government as a new presidential jet with those involved hacking billions from the illicit deal.

Among the prominent actors were Yves Fotso, former General Manager of Cameroon Airlines and Ephraim Inoni, former Prime Minister, who were also convicted but later evacuated out of the country for ‘medical reasons’ but have since not returned.

Marafa feels he deserves a similar treatment but like others. Political pundits believe his reinvigorated upbeat criticism of the Biya regime, which bolster the opposition, is in the hope that a change in government could offer him amnesty. Only time will tell.