The growing political conflict in Yaoundé over who to succeed the 89-year-old President Paul Biya is a result of some tribalists struggling to maintain the Beti Ewondo hegemony and making extremely provocative moves.

It’s a serious situation in which some few in Etoudi are driving the already divided country into a major conflict east of the Moungo, and it’s all about Beti Ewondo political elites protecting the Biya hegemony and also protecting their unique power status.

An obscure group known as the National Network of Youths for Peace and Stability in Cameroon has recently being flying banners of Franck Emmanuel Biya in Yaoundé as the potential successor to his father President Paul Biya.   

In one of its large banners deployed on Saturday, July 9, 2022 in front of the Grand Mosque near the Police Academy in Yaoundé and ignored by state authority, the so-called youth movement wrote that “God, destiny and the country present Franck Emmanuel Biya to continue the work of his glorious predecessors. Together, let us take up the challenge of a more prosperous Cameroon”.

The leader of the group Alhadji Aboubakar Garba, an unknown political figure has been quoted as saying that the banner heralds Franck Biya’s campaign for the presidential elections of 2025.

The choice of an Alhadji as leader of the group is deliberate and is designed to bring tremendous pressure on the Northern regions and also on the huge Muslim community in order to try to make the North accept the Beti Ewondo’s leadership and to comply with the Biya family succession plan. This is a dangerous situation and the consequences will be far reaching.

These Etoudi insiders are playing with fire at a petrol station by attempting to give Franck Biya the nation’s top job.  

The placing of the Franck Biya banner in front of the Grand Mosque in Yaoundé remains an extremely provocative move by the Biya gang. The people of French speaking Cameroon have been very, very slow to respond, but they will do at some point.

The 51 year-old Franck Biya, has not commented on the current situation and some in Yaoundé say he is simply apolitical, entrepreneur and a businessman.

By Rita Akana in Yaoundé