To extricate
himself from this debacle of denial, Biya must face the painful truth about the
nation in crisis and be under no illusion that military force can defeat the
Anglophone resistance. And if the president sincerely thinks youths should
assume the mantle of leadership, why, at 85 and after 35 years in power is he
contesting the 2018 presidential election?
By Ekinneh
Agbaw-Ebai*
Across the
world, it is the practice of leaders to address their fellow citizens by means
of national broadcast, wherein they take stock and make visionary statements
about the future direction of the country. President Paul Biya’s traditional
youth-day address was disappointing for failing to accurately capture the state
of the nation. It was obvious the president wanted to paint a rosy picture over
an otherwise gloomy state of affairs, and ended up wasting a golden opportunity
to honestly engage with Cameroonian youths, whose future is being mortgaged on
the altar of empty grand-standing.“In the decades ahead, you will be our
country’s leaders, hence the need for you to be up to the task, by acquiring
the necessary skills and experience. However, first, you must understand that
the "new world” which is unfolding before our very own eyes could be
tougher and more unstable than the old one,” Biya noted. No one is impressed by
the hackneyed mantra that youths are tomorrow’s leaders, or that they hold the
nation’s future. This is trite and sounds like a broken record. The more
serious questions to ask are: what quality of youth? Which future? Biya’s
claims were so hollow; his diagnosis of the problems facing youths was
pedestrian; his proposed solutions were empty platitudes; indicative of
leadership dysfunction and apathetic indifference by the man Cameroonians
elected as their president. Little surprise the speech was roundly dismissed as
empty rhetoric.
It is obvious, Biya doesn’t care
about youths and his promises have lost credibility with each youth day
address. How can youths who have been excluded from any meaningful
participation in the running of public affairs by the greed and primordial
interests of the president’s generation, be ready to face the challenges in
this overly complicated, globalized world? Since this generation of youths are
ill-prepared to be tomorrow’s leaders, on which generation should Cameroonians
now depend for their political destiny? Is it the generation that succeeds two
failed generations? Is it this generation that has been demoralized, abused,
instrumentalised; onto whom has not been bequeathed any values and patriotic
sense of duty to the fatherland?
Few will argue that Cameroon is a
gerontocracy, where a group of tired old men tottering on the borders of senile
decay have taken the country hostage. The four most important personalities of
the nation, together, combine for 317 years - Biya (85); Senate President, Niat
Njifenji (83); House Speaker, Cavayé Djibril (78); PM Philemon Yang (71). At
age 76, Laurent Esso’o has been Minister of Justice, Public Health, Defence,
Foreign Affairs, Secretary General at the presidency and is back as Justice
Minister. The cabinet is full of octogenarians and septuagenarians who continue
to be recycled into different portfolios. Even if their age is no problem, what
about the age of their ideas? In the legislature and judiciary, the median age
of the top brass is above the official retirement age of 55 years. Tired old
men like Nfon Mukete, Achidi Achu, Enow Tanjong, Mafany Musonge, Philemon Yang
and others in their generation, ought to have long quit the stage to become
elder statesmen who, in tricky times like these, would be consulted for their
wisdom and experience. Recently,Biya recycled another bunch of spent forces,
all facing creeping senility, to the Constitutional Council.When will these old
people retire?
The other fundamental point about
the president’s address is the claim that “the situation in the South-West and
North-West Regions is stabilizing.” This is a big, fat lie that fosters
apprehension in public consciousness, and raises questions about Biya’s
sincerity to address the crisis, beyond mere lip-service. Despite the militarization
of Anglophone regions, at least five soldiers were killed in sporadic attacks,
a day after Biya spoke - an indication the Anglophone resistance is not about
to end just yet. Biya should stop putting a bold face on an appalling situation
that has all but passed crisis point.There is no better way to work one’s name
into the book of infamy.
Predictably, Biya blamed falling oil
prices for the parlous state of the economy. The truth is that the economic
trajectory created by low oil prices was compounded by the absence of fiscal
buffers. Instead of saving for the proverbial rainy day when oil prices were
high, Cameroon actually increased its debt portfolio to finance conspicuous
consumption. The national debt has more than tripled since debt relief under
the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative in 2006.Besides,
huge contracted, undisbursed external loans of FCFA 3.7 trillion (21% of GDP)
have become a drainpipe on the treasury. These loan obligations were signed in
2013 but government’s failure to meet the conditionalities stalled
disbursement. Over FCFA 12 billionis wasted annually to pay interest on loans
that are idle in foreign banks. According to the IMF, China holds the largest
share of Cameroon’s undisbursed loans (36%).
These undisbursed loans hang over
the heads of the largely overrated but underachieving economic management team
like an albatross. The country is being denied the benefits of counter-cyclical
fiscal policy tools of budget and capital spending, needed to reflate the
economy; further stifling productivity in real sectors of the economy, like
manufacturing. With over 60% of the populace under age 25, and with poverty
stagnated at 40%; according to the World Bank, Cameroon is sitting on a power
keg, given that the ILO puts youth unemployment at a whopping 75%.The
government must diversify the economy and create the enabling environment for
the private sector -the engine of economic growth - to attract capital and
foreign direct investments and create jobs. The over dependence on dwindling
oil revenues and external borrowing that has bloated the national debt is
unsustainable. Instead of measures taken to boost job creation, Biya said: “As
at 31 December 2017, 473,303 jobs had been identified for youths, exceeding our
set target of 400,000.” Whether he was speaking in metaphor, the ludicrous
assumption that identifying jobs somehow translates into actual job creation
provokes a certain queasiness that betrays Biya and his speech writers as
incapable of creative thinking.
With gallant effrontery, Biya
parodied US President John Kennedy by admonishing the youths to: “Ask not what
your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Hear Biya:
“rather than yielding to the tempting mirage of illegal emigration and
undertaking a hazardous and often doomed trip, I invite you to play an active
part in our great vision to achieve emergence by 2035. I believe I can safely
say that the State has done much in recent years to prepare you for this lofty
task.” Such glib talk is a mea culpa expression of incapacitation, and a very
grave self-indictment that underlines Biya’s defeatist resignation to the fact
that Cameroonian youths will continue to vote with their feet, braving the odds
to seek greener pastures abroad because they see no future in a country,
captured and taken hostage, by a rapacious, vampire elitethat have stolen and
amassed enough wealth even for their unborn generations of children.
It does not require special
intelligence to recognize Cameroon is ailing. The problem is inextricably tied
to poor leadership, linked to a poor recruitment process. No country, after
all, can rise above the level of its workforce, especially at the leadership
level. In consolidating his personal power, Biya relies on patronage networks
of cronies, loyalists and tribesmen. Many youths without connections to these
patronage and ethnic-clientelism networks in the system, must bribe their way
into professional schools like ENAM, which opens avenues for corruption and rent-seeking.
A majority end up frustrated, bitter and disillusioned. The angst and anomie
driving the Anglophone resistance are deeply embedded in the generational
question.The consequences of excluding youths from the commanding heights of
authority in public affairs, is so bad that the best Cameroonian youths are
outside the country or outside government. This tragedy is a vicious cycle:
tired old men who at one time or the other, contributed to the nation’s
downturn continue to be recycled in office giving them the opportunity to
continue perpetuating their failure in the affairs of the nation. More often
than not, they are clueless, inept and ill-equipped for the enormous
responsibility of nation-building. For example, aside his nuisance and
entertainment value, what technocratic capacity has Issa Tchiroma in a
communication landscape driven by information technology and social media? The
nation undoubtedly gets a raw deal when the wrong people get into offices. The
result is widespread ineptitude. Little wonder Cameroon’s fortunes have
continued to plummet just as she diminishes in stature and integrity.
In a genuine democracy or even any
context, there is something absurd in one man ruling a country for 35 years and
counting. It just cannot be that there are no other capable hands to continue
wherever he stops!As has been apparent in the course of history, with each
passing generation, the state of leadership deteriorates in double proportion.
Whilst a systemic failure to sacrifice for the nation’s greatness signposts the
leadership quotient of Biya and his generation, it should now be obvious that,
Biya’s inability to harness the talents and qualities of Cameroonian youths, to
help lift his administration to a commanding height of moral regeneration and
socio-economic progress, is a regrettable personal failure. This failure has
made Ambazonia very appealing to Anglophones, as a great country waiting to
happen.Not even an Anglophone president under the present dispensation will
alter this dynamic!
*Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai
is a Public Intellectual and graduate of Harvard University John F. Kennedy
School of Government, where he was Managing Editor of the Harvard Journal of
African-American Public Policy. A former Research Analyst for Freedom House, he
is a Consultant and lives in Boston, USA. Talk back at ekinneh@yahoo.com
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