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85 14 Cameroonians are Unshockable1 T he late seventies and early eighties were a period of remarkable relative prosperity and optimism in Cameroon. The Cameroon economy looked so buoyant and so promising that it attracted the favourable critical appraisal of the usually highly sceptical Western economic experts. Cameroon was the show-piece of Africa, an oasis of stability, security, peace and tranquillity in a desert of instability, insecurity, turbulence, famine, draught, pestilence and economic chaos. This peculiar situation of Cameroon, of which the peasant farmers were the unrecognized creators, contributed in no small measure to make the one-party dictatorship look plausible. Ahidjo, who in retrospect, can be credited with a certain modicum of economic prudence, political wisdom and personal integrity, rode on the crest of this happy situation as an unchallenged and unquestioned potentate, to the extent that no one raised an eyebrow when he singled-handedly selected his own personal successor-in-dictatorship in the person of the then Mr. (now Dr.) Biya in 1982. Cameroonians were a content people to the extent that most of them spent most of their time drinking, dancing and coupling, if not copulating. I remember coming home on holidays in 1982 from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, O.A.U), Nigeria, where I was teaching and researching for a Ph.D. of the University of Ibadan. I was so impressed by the contrasts between Cameroon and Nigeria then that I nearly abandoned my Ph.D. research project by not returning again to Nigeria. By that time Nigeria was already fast becoming a hell on earth. Misgovernment and kleptocracy, tribalism and sectionalism etc. had taken their toll on a once very promising country which was now heading straight for the abyss. The insecurity in Nigeria in those days was such that once you crossed the Mfum still alive, you usually sat down to breathe a long sigh of relief and you could literally hear your nerves and muscles relaxing. The contrasts in road infrastructure and transportation facilities were, 86 Road Companion to Democracy and Meritocracy of course, breath-taking in the reverse direction. But if you did manage to reach within, say, five kilometres of your village, you could confidently leave all your luggage by the road-side and go on by foot to ask relatives to go and help carry the luggage. In the early eighties I used to refer to Nigeria as “the ugly giant of Africa.” It looked to me like the country beyond all others where death had a hundred hands and walked by a thousand pathways (road accidents, armed robberies, riots, lynchings, arsons, kill-ajid-goes, ritual murders, etc.) I remember following some friends to a night club in Bamenda during my 1982 visit. They just parked their car by the road without locking it and we went into the night club. When I remarked that if you did a thing like that in Nigeria the car would surely have disappeared before you came out, my friends shouted incredulously: “Ah-ah Massa, how person fit steal a whole motor! ?” That was Cameroon barely ten years ago. Today the situation in Cameroon is much worse than anything Nigeria has ever known. Both armed robbery and car thefts, spearheaded by members of the armed forces, have become daily occurrences in Cameroon. Ordinary murders are so rampant that you are taking your life into your hands each time you step out of your house after dark, whether you are going ‘cumpe’ (cum pedibus) or by taxi. Not long ago, the wife of a SOBAN was brutally murdered in a taxi she boarded around 8.00 p.m., here in Yaounde. Looking at her severely mangled body lying in state, one could hardly believe that this had happened in Cameroon. Today, even Churches are raided by robbers on a nearly daily basis, a thing unheard of in our recent or remote past. Arson has become the order of the day everywhere. Talk less of burglaries, pick-pocketing and ordinary stealing. What all this clearly shows is that the pilots of our national ship are no longer in control and should, if they were wise, hand over the steering, in their own as much as the interest of the nation as a whole. A government which can no longer guarantee ordinary everyday peace and security for its citizens has no more right to continue clinging onto the reins of power, especially in a situation where several credible “shadow governments” are...

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