Tough negotiations are underway in Geneva, Switzerland, where Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, is fighting for his life.

It is clearly emerging that things are pointing south for the 91-year-old Biya who has been battling many diseases for some time now, and even his own ministers have begun organizing prayer sessions.

The French are working hard to find a successor who will protect French interest and guarantee peace to Mr. Biya’s family which is considered by many Cameroonians as having illegally benefitted from the massive corruption scheme Mr. Biya has run for almost 42 years.

In this regard, top military officials have been called to Geneva, including the head of the Brigade d’Intervention Rapid (BIR). Some senior government officials such as Louis-Paul Motaze are already in Geneva where they are being briefed on actions which will follow once Biya breathes his last.

The Senate President, Niat Njifenji was also supposed to be in Geneva, but given his state of health, he has been left out of the negotiations. His deputy, Abubakary Aboubakar, is also taking part in the negotiations.

It is being rumored in Yaoundé that 63-year-old Aboubakary will run the transition while Frank Biya or Motaze could become the CPDM’s candidate in the presidential election which will follow Biya’s death.

There is a lot of water going under the bridge and some CPDM stalwarts are arguing that they would not embrace any candidate imposed on them by the West.

Cameroon’s situation mirrors what happened in Côte d’Ivoire in 1994 when Houphouet Boigny died and in Togo and Gabon when Gnassingbe Eyadema and Omar Bongo died.

In all three cases, the French delayed the announcement of the deaths of those leaders until a French-dictated solution was found. In Togo, the speaker of the house, who was the constitutional next in line, was sent out on a fake mission and once the announcement was made, the country’s airspace was closed, ensuring that the speaker was kept out of the political equation, making it easy for Faure Eyadema, the late president’s son, to take over despite protests by several ECOWAS countries.

In Gabon, it was a similar scenario where Ali Bongo, who has recently been ousted in a military coup, succeeded his father.

The West has the nasty habit of imposing leaders in French-speaking African countries. In Chad, French President Emmanuel Macron had to rush to Ndjamena, the country’s capital at the height of COVID-19 to ensure that the country’s current president got installed following the assassination of his father, Idris Deby. A similar scenario also occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo following the assassination of Laurent Désire Kabilla.

Cameroonians should be vigilant. Biya is no more or he is dying and the delay in the announcement of his death is because the West is cooking up something for the country.

Cameroonians must reject a West-imposed political solution as it will never serve the interest of the ordinary Cameroonian.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai