In some African countries that are striving to move forward, their constitutions are very strong and their leaders weak. In Francophone Africa, Cameroon included, leaders are very strong and constitutions are very weak.

It is common knowledge that the one important job of a constitution is to limit the power of the leader. However, this is not the case with all the countries in Africa where French is the official language.

President Paul Biya’s days as head of state now looks numbered after a sea of health issues. But while several possible successors including his eldest son Franck Biya have been suggested, there is no clear favourite.

Once Biya goes, the whole CPDM regime will fall, up to and including those in the so-called Senate and National Assembly and for genuine leadership to emerge, the politically docile French speaking Cameroonians would require a revolution that can lead people to the sunlight uplands.

Frankly speaking, nothing will change after Biya if French Cameroonians particularly those in the military and the gendarmerie turn a blind eye and do nothing in Yaoundé.  What those currently in Etoudi are planning is simply one yellow cake replacing another yellow cake. They all are criminals with blood on their hands.

Biya should never have gotten in and as we wait in joyful hope for his departure, his acolytes, his Beti Ewondo kinsmen and women who are only there to continue collecting bribes and putting one tribe against the other while destroying the economy will surely face the long arm of the law.

Unfortunately, anyone from the ruling CPDM consortium of criminal syndicates who replaces Biya will be no different. The agenda as teleguided in Paris is to destroy the Anglophones and guarantee France complete and total access to Cameroon’s mineral wealth. This agenda will not change. So, in the one and indivisible Cameroon, Southern Cameroonians and French Camerounians are just “allies”, not family.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai