The President of the National Assembly, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril has said that social networks are terrorist organizations like Boko Haram. With age telling on him and many of the hardcore members of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate, the House Speaker has promised to engage the national assembly to shut down all social networks in the country.

The leading politician from the Far North region who speaks all his French in the past tense was quoted as saying that “Social networks are as dangerous as a missile launched in the wild. It is time to organize a tracking system in Cameroon’s cyberspace.” The 76 year old MP made the remarks on Thursday as he celebrated 24 years as Speaker of the National Assembly. Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that cat calls greeted the Speaker’s speech with opposition MPs observing that the parliamentary session was devoted to examine the budget.

Some MPs of the ruling CPDM party reportedly made a mockery of the Speaker saying he was visibly disconnected from reality. The CPDM MPs surfed the internet and made selfies. For many observers, the Eseka train disaster is what has triggered this anti social media move by the Yaoundé regime. When the Minister of Transport was attempting to deny news of the accident, images of the disaster were already circulating on the Social media.  More than 75% of the young population in Cameroon own smart phones and are therefore connected to social networks. This strong presence of younger Cameroonians on social networks is obviously not well perceived on the side of the Biya Francophone Beti-Ewondo regime.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde