Constitutional amendment: Anglophones cheated again!.

While what is left now is for the Head of State, Paul Biya, to sign the modified Constitution into law, constitutional experts are screaming for the records that Anglophones have been cheated again.

They are arguing that what has happened is a constitutional coup d’Etat against Anglophones, in the most brutal of political maneuvers in history.

With President Biya now having been empowered to appoint whosoever he chooses to, as Vice President, analysts are saying that Anglophones have been robbed of any iota of belonging to the Cameroonian project.

They are lamenting that instead of correcting the misnomers, which Anglophones have been decrying for decades, Bill No. 2094/PJL/P, to amend the January 18, 1996, is yet another slap on the face of indigenes of the North West and South West Regions.

What many say remains most vexing and potentially sowing seeds of future problems is that the amendment approved in Congress last Saturday refuses to inscribe that when the President is a Francophone as is the case, the Vice President should be of Anglophone extraction and vice versa.

Article 10 of the amended Constitution simply empowers the Head of State to appoint a Vice President! 

Observers are analysing that Yaounde has continued to walk on the same path of deception, and battling to ensure that Anglophones don’t rise to the highest office of the land, or come close to shaping the country’s future.

The window in the same amendment for the Head of State to hire and fire a Vice President, many are saying, could be used to throw dust in the eyes of Anglophones. 

They are positing that even if Biya offers himself the luxury of appointing an Anglophone as Vice President, for a start, he could decide and fire such a person whenever he wishes to retire from politics and appoints a Francophone.

Those who worded the amendments are said to have carefully crafted it to ensure that Anglophones are technically kept a distance from where power really lies. 

They argue that if the intention of the amendment was genuine, it would have been clearly stated that where the President is a Francophone, the Vice President should be an Anglophone and Vice Versa.

This, political analysts posit, should have, at least given Anglophones hope and a sense of belonging. 

Given that President Paul Biya is of Francophone extraction, critics are lampooning the executive for forcing through amendments which are silent on the country’s reality of two countries that came together to form today’s Cameroon.

President Biya, observers are saying, has been handed a blank cheque to appoint any person of his choice; who could probably be another Francophone, further burying Anglophone presence in the country’s power structure.

Pattern of cheating Anglophones

Unlike the 1961 Federal Constitution, which had guaranteed Anglophone and Francophone presence at the top of the State, many are recalling that what happened at the Paul Biya’s Glass House last Saturday April 4, 2026, rather solidified a pattern that has been working against the interest of Anglophones; generally considered as second class citizens in a country they call theirs.

Article 9 (1) of the 1961 Constitution was clear that: “The President and Vice President of the Federal Republic shall be elected together on the same list, both candidates, on which may not come from the same Federated State, by universal suffrage and direct and secret ballot”.

Still in line with readings of keeping Anglophones millions of miles away from occupying the country’s top job, observers say the real intention of the May 20, 1972, referendum, that ended the Federal Republic of Cameroon, was to keep Anglophones at bay.

Though the Constitution clearly stated that the Speaker of the National Assembly was the Constitutional successor of the Head of State, the rules of the game immediately changed, when an Anglophone, the late Solomon Tandeng Muna, became Speaker!

The agenda, they are now saying, played out in 1975, when the post of Prime Minister saw the light of day, with perfections fashioned out in 1979, shifting the succession rule from an Anglophone, Tandeng Muna to Paul Biya, a Francophone then serving as Prime Minister.

The changes to the Constitution in 2026, many Anglophones are saying, have pushed them to recall the technical knockouts they have suffered across decades in the country’ succession equation. 

Changes like what happened last Saturday, historians are saying, is what gave Biya, a Francophone, the easy right to power, which he has continued to enjoy for the past 43 years.

After taking power on November 6, 1982, Biya instituted changes, stripping the Prime Minister’s Office occupant of the powers of succession. The rule now left back to the legislative chamber, where an Anglophone was no longer at the helm.

History now holds that since 1992, Biya has consecutively appointed Anglophones as Prime Ministers. 

Critics argue that if the laws in place where still like those that catapulted him to the Presidency, the Head of State might not have entrusted the Star Building to Anglophones, from 1992 till date.

Anglophone, Francophone not about administrative units

To perpetuate what those who refuse to reason with the Biya regime say is a wrong narrative, analysts say those trying to drown the Anglophone feeling of having been cheated again are simply being dishonest.

They are recalling that in Cameroon’s unique and volatile history, it is about the former East and West Cameroons that reunited and not 10 Regions and 58 Divisions existing in one country as is the case now.

To those holding strong to the country’s history, say any power sharing arrangement which fails to balance the Anglophone-Francophone equation is being erected on shaky grounds; and is destined for doomsday. 

We’ve learnt nothing from crisis in NW, SW

The new-old Constitution in place as fixed last Saturday, some are now insisting, carries with it a clear message that Yaounde has learnt nothing from the bloodletting in the English-speaking Regions, nine years on.

To them, any quest to guarantee continuity at the helm of State without also positioning Anglophones in line of succession is provocation of the first order.

Those who say the only reading they have made of the Constitutional amendment is daylight robbery of Anglophones, are quipping that it rather sustains the strong belief of marginalisation and a deliberate attempt to continuously subjugate the aborigines of the former West Cameroon in an abusive marriage.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3752 of Monday April 06, 2026