President Paul Biya 88 reportedly displayed senile dementia during his recent meeting with the French ambassador to Cameroon Christophe Guilhou. Ambassador Guilhou said that his meeting on Thursday 14 April was intensive and productive.

“We had a very long discussion,” he added in a brief statement after leaving the presidential palace, during which he also brought up issues relating to French-Cameroonian cooperation, the focus of his conversation with Biya.

Biya hailed his government’s efforts at combating the COVID-19 pandemic in a nation where the virus is still circulating and which according to French Cameroun Minister of Public Health Manaouda Malachie has now recorded 2579 positive cases of the virus since the outbreak of the pandemic on March 6 with approximately 114 deaths.

Prof Maurice Kamto, the leading French Cameroun opposition leader denounced his stumbling, hesitant performance in front of the French ambassador saying that Mr Paul Biya had finally lost any grasp of Cameroonian reality.

The burning of more than 300 towns and villages in Southern Cameroons by Cameroon government army soldiers has now led to 5,000 Southern Cameroonians being arrested and 500,000 left homeless.

Over the last month since the Coronavirus showed up on the country’s shores, the government has been slaughtering Southern Cameroons citizens where Ambazonian fighters are protecting their positions.

Biya does not seem to comply with the terms and conditions of a ceasefire negotiated by the United Nations.

Over the last four years, the Yaoundé government has diminished the population of Southern Cameroons by spraying bullets all over the place, in total disregard for calls by the international community for a negotiated settlement.

Yet there has been no stirring of protest or resistance inside French Cameroun signaling  glaring failure by the French Cameroun opposition to stand up to the regime.

This has allowed President Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate to escape any pressure from the international community over his reckless handling of the crisis in Southern Cameroons.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Biya rode unmolested from Mvomeka’a to Yaoundé in a gleaming Mercedes Benz once used by the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo.

Biya told the French diplomat that Cameroon was making great strides towards improving relations with Paris after President Macron’s shocking pronouncement during a surprise meeting with a French Cameroun activist in Paris.

In reality, Cameroon is suffering the worst inflation in the CEMAC region and more than half of its economy has been wiped out in the last four years by the crisis in Southern Cameroons.

Biya’s statements to the French ambassador reflect his senile dementia. Any decent doctor will tell you that once you are in your eighties, you lose your memory, you lose your grasp of reality and you have no grip of time or space. That’s what is happening with the old man in Yaoundé.

By Asu Isong in London