Understanding President Biya's peace and stability epistle.

It is a confession that the country is void of those essential attributes. Cameroonians live without such values in the North West, South West and Far North Regions, where there are lingering bleeding armed conflicts.

In the rest of the country, there are various criminal activities ranging from kidnapping, pervasive corruption and aggravated theft to homicides

It is on that macabre background that we examine President Biya's missive, which is his attachment to peace and national unity. He is conscious that the vast majority of Cameroonians wish to live in a stable and peaceful country.

The Head of State called for collective responsibility and national cohesion, while condemning acts of violence and divisive speeches.

In a pre-presidential election context, marked by hate speech and tribalism, President Biya called on Cameroonians to preserve peace and stability in the country.

For several months, the Head of State has multiplied incessant calls for peace, rejecting any form of conflict. First, what has been the cause of the lack of peace and stability?

Some reputed commentators, reacting to President Biya's social media postings, have attributed them to the change of constitution to remove term limit, resulting in a government by obsolete gerontocracy; not in tandem with the modernity and aspirations of the vast majority of the android generation. 

They "aspire for change, jobs, food self-sufficiency, and the evolution of the country...not still singing the same refrain from the 2000s".

According to the analysts, government does not take the trouble to analyse the sequence of events leading to systematic failure in peace, mass poverty, tribalism and infrastructure in decay.

The Bishops of Cameroon have recommended the attributes of a person who should incarnate change for the better at the October presidential election.

As renowned economist, Prof Dieudonné Essomba, a supporter of President Biya, said recently, Cameroonian politicians are not made of that stuff of rigour and morality.

First, what are the causes of the challenges, which are negatively impacting peace and stability.

A Biya acolyte and reputed economist, Prof Dieudonné Essomba recently attributed the problems to "monopolistic control of resources”.

“...when it comes to peaceful cohabitation, we don’t have a horizontal cohabitation problem. That is, horizontal tribalism. 

In all neighbourhoods, people cohabitate, at school, at church...on the other hand, the problem appears when there is competition over public benefits,” he said on television, and asked: "What are other challenges of Cameroon?

In answer to his question, he said: "It is for example the Anglophone crisis, it is the economic crisis, the social crisis…the issue of Biya’s succession is at an impasse. Deadlocks are everywhere. Because we’ve built an artificial model, which is based on nothing. We have continued with artificial, ill-defined, undefined, impossible-to-measure concepts, but which we talk about as if they were real".

The question is whether there is an articulation in order to solve Cameroon’s problems as they present themselves today in such speeches.

 For a solution, Essomba defines the causes, which he said are based on "competitions which are at the root of my problem…the authorities decreed national unity, with the aim of having monopolistic control of the nation’s resources. What they call national unity is just an ideological instrument to control all resources. In fact, it amounts to nothing. Unfortunately, this monopolistic control of resources is what even generates conflicts”.

While arguing that the Bishops’ prescription for an ideal candidate based on virtues is "a kind of Messianism”, he recommended the "rethinking to conform to a genuine perception" of national unity, peace and stability. 

The current system, he said, has "led us into a series of deadlocks: economic deadlocks, political deadlocks, social deadlocks...”. 

Even if the model is on a blind alley, President Biya certainly knows where Cameroon should be leading to, on a foundation of peace and stability.

The question is, if in over four decades, his regime is still lecturing Cameroonians about the virtue of peace and stability, what is the assurance that Cameroonians shall have them in the next seven years?

Even if the country needs a renaissance in morality and justice as a panacea for peace, stability and development, would there not be the need to change the system?    

In the words of Robert Fulghum, American writer, philosopher, and public speaker, "peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do and something you give away”.

The CPDM regime has not "made peace", especially in the North West and South West Regions, which have become a threat to stability and economic growth.

Regime spinners may be saying normalcy is returning to the two English-speaking Regions, which is indicative of defeating the separatist warlords, but as the great thinker, Aristotle, said: “It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organise the peace”.   

That is what the CPDM regime and its natural presidential candidate should be doing on the eve of a critical election, not social media postings; which with the absence of regular electricity in many parts of the country, the "vast majority" of Cameroonians do not even read.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3458 of Wednesday May 28, 2025