The announcement that Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, will not be returning to the country anytime soon, has sent many of his ardent supporters into a deep depression.

The supporters, many of whom are crooks and criminals being supported by a system designed to engineer and sustain corruption of the highest order in the country, are concerned about what will become of them in case Mr. Biya does not come out of his deep coma after a complicated surgery that has left Swiss medical experts doubting their own ability.

The crooks and criminals in the system had begun chunning out long press releases on the president’s return following announcements by well-informed media organizations that the Yaoundé strong man was in a deep coma and could be out of the country a lot longer than expected.

In their usual deceptive manner, the crooks who have hijacked the ruling party, the CPDM, had to invent ways of making more money by transporting hungry supporters from Yaoundé, Obala and other towns to the airport to welcome a president who is completely out of touch with his own people.

Some of these supporters lined up the streets of Yaoundé, singing and provoking other citizens who do not share their perspective of life.

The ruling party has held many Cameroonians by the balls by impoverishing them and letting them know that salvation can only come if they join the large crowd of beggars and criminals who have made the stealing of state funds a way of life.

The pseudo-demonstration of support to the president was simply to prove that the man who has ruined the country and the lives of the country’s youth was still popular.

But their singing and dancing were cut short when instructions from the Secretary General at the Presidency to the organizers of such unpalatable drama urged them to take their comedy to somewhere else as the president will not becoming home anytime soon.

Fame Ndongo and his team of “agents provocateurs” are still licking their infested wounds. Their bloated egos have been deflated. Their pseudo-champion has been pinned down by a bunch of diseases in a Swiss hospital and after a month or so, he could be declared incapacitated and incapable of leading the country.

The supporters who showed up yesterday where actually there to end their CFAF 2,000, but now that Mr. Biya has not got any plans to return to Cameroon anytime soon, all of them have been sent home without a salary.

There are huge fights as to how those from distant towns will return to their homes. The cars hired to transport the desperate singers and dancers were not paid and the owners are screaming at the top of their lungs for their money to be paid. They have simply refused to do the return trip and like Paul Biya, the hungry supporters will not be heading home anytime soon.

Speaking to the Cameroon Concord News Group correspondent in Yaoundé, a source at the Presidency said that the silence at the State House was deafening, with many officials just avoiding to have a long face, though everybody now knows that the news from Geneva is not good.

A CPDM militant who has spoken to our London-based correspondent via phone has indicated that the uncertain and unsettling quiet is killing senior officials of the party and government.

“Though no clear message has been put out there, the uncertainty triggered by the news that Biya will not be coming home anytime soon is killing many people,” the CPDM stalwart said on condition of anonymity.

“The silence is deafening and many people are genuinely concerned. This is the first time that the country will be going through such challenging times. Our institutions have been weakened by long years of political erosion and we really doubt if they will stand this stress test,” he stressed.

“Though the constitution clearly spells out who will take over, the next of kin is as sick as the president himself. Even the Speaker of the National Assembly is really struggling with massive diseases which can terminate his life at any time. These people seem to have chosen the same time to be sick,” he regretted.

“Everything seems to be at a standstill. The country is frozen. Not many government officials are answering calls. Nobody wants to talk and this is only fueling the rumor. For how long are we going to live in this deafening silence? Somebody has to talk. Cameroonians should be updated on their president’s health. It is now clear that the short private visit to Europe is morphing into a long unsettling health tourism,” the desperate CPDM militant said.

“There is nothing wrong being sick. We all will be sick some day. We cannot continue arguing that the president is out of the country on a private stay in Europe. This prank belongs to the past. Cameroonians cannot be fools forever. The cat is out of the bag,” he concluded.

From every indication, the ruling crime syndicate is working behind the scenes, trying to come up with another bunch of lies that will prepare the minds of the citizens.

Dark clouds are gathering over the country and the rain that will fall will surely trigger chaos and a bloodbath. The country has been misled for decades and Mr. Biya’s slow and painful slide to the world beyond is troubling and it is likely to bring out the worst in many Cameroonians.

Ethnic tensions have been on the rise for years and even within the government, there are huge divisions which, if not properly managed, could transform the country into another Rwanda or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

If Mr. Biya exits the stage unceremoniously, he will be leaving behind a fractured country with many conflicts threatening to balkanize the nation.

Southern Cameroonians are fighting very hard to walk away from a hastily stitched union with a dictatorial East Cameroon. The high-level insurgency fully funded by the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora has already claimed the lives of more than 2,000 soldiers while some 5,000 civilians have been sent to an early grave.

Northerners, for their part, are looking forward to reclaiming power, arguing that the south has had it for almost forty years.

On their agenda, is a huge revenge project against the Betis who orchestrated a massive massacre of the Northerners after the 1984 coup d’etat.

Meanwhile, Boko Haram is stepping up its attacks on soldiers. The religious sect wants to gain more grounds, especially at this time when the country is deeply divided.

Cameroon is facing tough headwinds. If care is not taken, the country might implode with the disappearance of the man who has engineered the worst corruption machinery in the country’s history.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai