Paul Biya: A President Betrayed by the People He Appoints

Nail-er

Paul Biya

In all honesty and fairness to ourselves and nature, no one deserves our sympathy; no one craves more for our empathy than the man known as the President of the Republic, Paul Biya. Whenever I look at the position of a President what comes to mind is the popular saying that “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” but in the case of President Biya, I am not at ease with just the word uneasy, I am of the judgment that a better adjective should be coined out to put a figure on the level of psychological trauma and physical nightmare that his occupation of the seat of presidency has fetched him especially as many of his collaborators, I mean he ends up sending an entire cabinet (ministers and directors to prison) for embezzling public funds.
Without being told, if Mr. Paul Biya had an inkling of how his days at the helm of power would look like, I am very much sure that he would have refused to appoint some of his gullible ministers and directors.  Being the man in the forefront to sail this ship of a nation to its harbor of development, he has no option than to accept all the financial calamities. If he had known that midway into this voyage, pirates out of the blue would spoil his trip by robbing it of the crispy and ecstatic elation that comes with an expedition, he wouldn’t have attempted taking up the gauntlet when it was thrown at him in 1982. But then, just like every other being of nature dispossess, his proficiency to make out or to disentangle what the next day could look like let alone years after was lacking. Eventualities which not even science and the so called futurologists could have pre-empted an answer.  Being a politician, Paul Biya rushed to the occasion in ecstasy thanking God for political elevation not knowing that the journey in no time would go from joy to sorrow. Now that majority of the sorrows are being contributed by his cabinet ministers and directors, there is no gainsaying that he is a President that has been betrayed by those he appointed to mount the most prestigious positions in the country. He forgot the dictum that joy has a slender back that breaks so soon. Not that he is a bad President, but that he appoints Ministers and Directors that would spare no efforts to siphon funds allocated for development is an indisputable fact. The very people who say he should arrest economic thieves are the people saying today the arrests are on drummed up charges and that the personalities in prison are those who were eyeing his seat. Too bad anyway!!!
To some, Paul Biya is nothing more than a weakling, some have seen him as a victim riding on a tiger of circumstances, to some others, he was meant to be the president of this behemoth of a nation and to many more, his persona is disliked by the gods that reigned supreme from the underworld. Paul Biya’s political programmes have been judged from its budding stage as the best in theory but has always been frustrated in implementation by his closest collaborators. Look at the number of SGs at the Presidency arrested. Some say his god is always by him.
Whether true or false, here is a man, whose every attempt to sailing this nation to the harbor of development has neither germinated let alone, yielded a fruit. Creating a bar parlour in Cameroon nowadays is easier than obtaining a birth certificate. Cameroonians are therefore encouraged to drink their sorrows from the bottle of a beer. Yet here is a man who few years ago during his campaign days forced us to pull out our diaries to write down the many dividends of democracy we shall be getting in exchange for our high priced votes at the polls. “OYE!!! Advanced democracy. When Paul Biya announced the New Deal Policy its flames caught admirations. No assessment was done but yet before Greater Ambitions came to daylight, it was prematurely swept  away by Greater Realization policies. At the 21st Century, he finally landed Cameroonians in another ship known as Greater Accomplishments with a vision this time. When he announced the putting into effect of the Greater Accomplishments, saying that the entire country will be transformed into a vast construction site, some of us bought helmets. The vast construction sites are now becoming a vision that will take Cameroonians up to 2035. But Paul Biya is the man who in those days was seen as the ‘messiah” that was to come and take Cameroon to that land flowing with milk and honey. How and why Biya’s nomenclature was all what he needed to earn a landslide victory at every poll remains a myth. Yet it is only in Cameroon that election results are known before the polls! In order words, they call him Paul Biya and we thought the power and marvel attached to his name, would translate to his strides in governance, but years into the social contract Cameroonians entered with him, he has proven not to be a man that is worth contracting with no thanks to the greatest factor that has beleaguered his administration though. The glory in Biya’s name has ended up into an irony of a life time. But why is it that everything about him amounts to have been diverted by the people he appoints? In a single phrase, here is a man who said yes, but his collaborators always say no. Whenever I ponder over it, it makes me lose sleep and forces the tears out of my tear duct.
Everything about his Ministers and Directors has been on the dwindling side, not even a single sector of the economy is exempted from this onslaught of malady in his government I am sorry to say.
The Ugly
Our health facilities have come at their lowest ebb, education have been left crippling, the fight against embezzlement and corruption one need not be told has come down to nothing more than mere fiction,(settling scores) our roads have become as gullible as death traps (Bamenda Ring Road being a perfect example) while the list published by CONAC with cabinet ministers are still singing the song of the CPDM, as for insecurity, do I still have to talk about it? …….The sport sector, we have before now  always used as a consolation prize or something to look back at and dry our tears is a sacred cow in Biya’s of government and sorrows/agony. These and many more are the ugly situations that has wrapped and consumed Cameroon and many years before now, had no shoes. The joy that comes with being the first citizen has been unjustly traded by barter for sorrow. How can a president ever be happy when torrents of sad news keep drumming within the confines of his eardrum every now and then? The oath of office he took upon assumption of office to the effect that he shall protect the lives and welfare of all the citizens has amounted to nothing but a false oath. What could you not say of a president that has been robbed by his closest collaborators? Oh! The only thing Cameroonians are waiting for is a beer name “Biya”.

 Coming Up: 
Moh Sylvester: A Blessing or Poisonous Gift to Anglophones
Balick Awah Fidelis: The Small Quaarrelsome Talking Cricket 

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