In new book: Haman Mana tears Biya regime into pieces.

Germaine Ahidjo was situating how her husband settled for Paul Biya to succeed him at the helm of State, from among several other big names in 1982.

This is on page 28 of his 720-page latest book, titled: “The Biya Regime; Chronicle of the Shipwreck of the Cameroonian Nation”. 

With over 35 years of solid and inviting journalism practice in Cameroon, Haman Mana, also Publisher of the authoritative Le Jour daily newspaper, paints graphic details of where Cameroon was, before 1982 and what has it has become in 43 years and still counting of Biya’s leadership.

The author paints what he sees as a mismatch of the qualities Germaine Ahidjo said her husband saw in Biya, while picking him as his successor in 1982.

In the book, Haman Mana refuses to caress the Biya regime. He delves into the most difficult-to-talk about topics, aggregating happenings across all sectors of national life, to assert that Biya and his regime have ruined Cameroon.

Haman shreds the regime, describing it as having taken the country from the pedestal of what the world was hailing during Ahidjo’s era as “one of the most dynamic countries in Africa”, to a nation with an uncertain future!

The author argues along the lines of what he persists are irrefutable facts, figures, reports, incidents and lived happenings that tell the story of a burgeoning country that had a promising future, but now caught in a vicious cycle.

Ruling by suspension, isolation, divide & rule…

With a focus on the captain of the ship, Paul Biya, the author writes that for 43 years and still counting, the regime in place has worked its way through the strings of unconventional means.

He captures President Biya as a leader who has thrived by living in isolation, far from the realities and issues affecting citizens, sometimes, acting in his own time.

When he finally, acts, Haman writes, the President’s collaborators would have injected more chaos and confusion into matters without ever addressing the issues at stake.

Biya’s Cameroon in the last 43 years, Haman avers, sharply contradicts the niceties he started off with, barely 10 days in office in 1982. 

The author recounts that Biya’s ascension to power ignited hope as he had announced a 13-percent salary increase for civil servants and the recruitment of 1,500 varsity graduates, among others. 

Yet, looking back today, the journalist and journalism trainer, in his latest book, weeps for the nation. Haman Mana removes the country from among countries qualified to be a democracy. He catalogues Cameroon among dictatorial regimes that pass for democratic nations, simply to deceive the world.

He decries that everything in the country is in disarray, indicating that what he reads as Biya’s failures are just everywhere with his cronies and loyalists, most preoccupied only with their personal interests. 

These, he documents, are the patches of the everyday life of citizens choking under a shrinking political space and other governance calamities that have befallen Cameroon in the last 43 years and still counting.

Corruption in fight against corruption

Revealing details of how Biya managed to emerge from a cold war with Ahidjo, after he had relinquished power, to the creation of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM party, in Bamenda, on March 24, 1985, Haman Mana takes readers to what followed within the decade after.

While Biya, he details, gained firmness on leadership, the ugly seed of corruption was sown. This, he says, has ballooned to the extent where Cameroonians live with corruption while there is a fight against the vice within the vice.

He cites the September 21, 1998 Corruption Perception Index, published by Berlin-based International Non-Governmental Organisation, Transparency International, which put the nation as the most corrupt worldwide. Haman Mana says this was just a “great revealer” of more to come.

“Cameroonians live with corruption; it permeates daily life at every level. While people denounce it, they also accommodate it. Corruption has become a social norm embedded in interpersonal transactions…,” the journalist writes further.

Stating that the ranking of that year was national and global humiliation, Haman Mana says 43 years on, the legacy of the Biya regime building up is still along the same lines of disrepute. 

This, he affirms in his book, explains why Cameroon retained the global corruption trophy again in 1999.

Despite modest attempts to reverse the situation, such as instituting the Anti-corruption Observatory in 2000, the author writes that the move yielded no fruits, forcing government to create the National Anti-corruption Commission, CONAC. 

Haman says CONAC and other such institutions are “paper tigers” and window-dressing to deceive the international community.

He adds to this, he writes, is the Operation Sparrow Hawk, which has seen several high-profile persons arrested for embezzlement of public funds. He, however, holds that such drives have lost significance as everyone considers it as throwing dust into the eyes of the pubic

AFCON hosting scandals 

Revisiting the hosting of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON, in 2022, Haman Mana claims the regime reached a deal to bribe the former President of the Confederation of African Football, CAF, Ahmad Ahmad. 

This, he pens, was a transaction initiated to retain the hosting rights of the country that was hanging in the balance due to uncompleted projects.

He shames the regime for uncompleted projects abandoned till date. Besides mentioning the Olembe Stadium, the author reveals that government pumped in 700 billion FCFA, representing about two percent of Cameroon’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP, to host the tournament with no real gains.

Investigations into alleged embezzlement of money meant for the tourney till date, he says, remains inconclusive.

COVIDgate 

Still in revising what he claims are scandals of the Biya regime, Haman Mana revisits the COVID-19 pandemic scandal. He writes that billions of FCFA, borrowed from the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and other partners, ended up in private pockets through fictitious means.

Citing findings of the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court and the Supreme State Audit Office, Haman argues in his book that political interferences continue to delay the punishment of those who tempered with public money during a time of national health distress.

Looting of subsoil, forest resources…

In the book, Haman Mana also scores the current regime low in managing the country’s natural resources. He puts on the list of his elements just every natural resource that Cameroon has, questioning where money from the sector goes to.  

Haman cites resources from crude oil, the timber sector and poor mining deals as mired in shady deals with no information to citizens on what is happening.

Annually, the veteran journalist indicates in his book, Cameroon loses at least 33 billion FCFA to corruption in the forestry sector.

Wars, insecurity make nonsense of peace…

The author paints Cameroon under President Biya, as having shifted from an era of peace, to conflicts that are pressing on every site. 

He mentions the terrorists Boko Haram incursions in the Northern Regions, kidnapping of citizens for ransom, attacks on security posts, use of Improved Explosive Devices, IED, shrinking Lake Chad Basin, among others, as scars the Biya regime has inflicted on the Cameroonian society.

Condemns gov’t on Anglophone crisis, armed conflict

On the Anglophone crisis that has spanned more than eight years, Haman takes a more critical look, indicating that Biya and his men in leadership looked away for decades while the people of the two English-speaking Regions were being treated as secondhand citizens in a country they considered theirs.

He chronicles government’s measures to bury the crisis, which long turned into an armed conflict, declaring that such actions have been insufficient.

“Bloody repression…”

The publication, in some sections, carries the names and estimated number of persons whom the author documents as Anglophone crisis detainees. It also has another list of over 700 persons arrested between 2018 and 2020, said to be supporters of the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC.

He also mentions persons arrested after the February 2008 hunger riots that almost swept the Biya regime from its feet.

Life presidency, immunity

Biya is shaded in Haman’s book in the contours and maneuvers that surrounded the tinkering of the Constitution to remove term limits. 

The act, he also documents, gave Biya immunity from prosecution while his life presidency project is on course.

‘Forced disappearances, mysterious deaths’

Archiving what he terms “disappearances and suspicious deaths”, the author cites names such as: Bishop Jean Marie Benoit Mballa, Simon Pondo, Dippah Priso, Barrister Mbobda, Ngongo Ottou, Rev Fr Engelbert Mveng, Emmanuel Boum, the General Manager of Cameroon Bank,Vincent Dikoum Minyem; Germaine Marie and Marie Leone, Rev Fr Joseph Mbassi, Bishop Yves Plumey, Captain Guerandi Mbara and onetime Private Secretary of imprisoned Minister Marafa Hamidou Yaya, Christaine Soppo.

“Nation ruled through falsehood…”

The author depicts Biya as having failed in making Cameroon a functional State. Those in power, he details, are obsessed with serving and protecting Biya, leaving the entire nation to ruin with glaring failures across all strata of national life such as road, education, healthcare, access to electricity and water.

Haman Mana captures in his latest book that these things are playing out, despite billions of FCFA borrowed continually to address such concerns. The author argues that under Biya’s leadership, wealth circulates only within those in power while the majority of the population lives in penury. 

Those in power and around the corridors of power, the author informs readers, are adept consumers of expensive and exotic wine, imported from Europe and other parts of the world, while the population lacks the basics that make life livable.

“Incompetent people eating the future”

According to Haman, “rather than invest in the future, Cameroon is devouring it, fiscally, structurally and spiritually. Public funds serve primarily consumption purpose and are divided among cronies, across Regions, ethnicity or personal networks”.

Under Biya’s leadership, he documents the view that greedy and incompetent people see the opportunity to govern as a feast, rather than as a responsibility.

In the book, The Biya Regime…, Haman Mana’s ink flows, leaving a message that rules are violated, while mediocrity is elevated. He paints the realities of Biya’s country as a place where complicity is rewarded, instead of excellence and conformity celebrated at the expense of competence.

He documents further that what he sees “…is decades of political conditioning, rooted in colonial and post-colonial model of governance that replaced foreign rulers with “self-serving oligarchic elite”.

‘Youths condemned to suffer’

Haman sees Cameroon as a country that Biya has mismanaged, leaving the youth to be perishing through commercial motorbike riding, taxi driving. At least 40 percent, according to Haman, prefer to flee the country.

The situation, he says, adds to a diaspora not willing to invest back home, plus a handful of persons going on self-exile.

‘I have a dream’

Despite touching every fabric of the Cameroonian society, mentioning a rise in fermicide and other social incongruences to the perceived temptation of Biya transferring power to his son, Franck Emmanuel Olivier Biya, Haman Mana says he has a dream.

With examples of other Heads of State who have transferred power to their kids and transforming their countries into dynasties, the author rather believes there is hope for Cameroon.

Haman Mana writes that in the not-too-distant future, “…Cameroon would finally by led by honest leaders…”.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3575 of Thursday September 25, 2025