allAfrica.com: Cameroon: Biya Pays Price of Arrogance, Economic Delinquency (Page 1 of 1)

Once upon a time, a great wrestler, who had vanquished all challengers on earth, decided to shift battle ground to the land of spirits. There he knocked down all adversaries. Some of the spirits he crushed had ten heads.

Against the advice of his friends, he faced a tiny wiry spirit, his own guardian spirit who simply picked him up and dashed him to pieces against a rock.Cameroon's President, Paul Biya, is not unlike the wrestler in the fable. The only difference is that his challengers are political giants.

He defied the US in 1992, and was sworn in after a presidential election which Uncle Sam's country confirmed that he lost. He gave France an upper-cut when he openly supported Chirac's opponents (The US and Britain on the eve of the US-led war against Iraq). Against protests from the whole world, he hooked up with Communist China.

The Commonwealth is still nursing the bruises it received during the political wrestling match with Biya over the idea of a truly independent organ to monitor elections. He floored Nigeria in the legal war over Bakassi.

But see who is giving our Lion sleepless nights. A wolf called Theodoro Obiang Nguema.

The conflict started simmering after large deposits of oil were discovered in a previously beggarly nation a few years ago. But it blew off the lid in December 2007 when dozens of Cameroonians were bundled out of Obiang Nguema's devil island.

Frightened by the prospects of retaliation, Equato-Guinean traders abandoned their waves at Mbopi Market in Douala in the same month. Nobody touched even a pin of their property. The expulsions of Cameroonians were only a pull by the leg. More of them were sent packing with the excuse that they were involved in a bank robbery.

The only acts of retaliation from Cameroonians have been the ejection of some Equato-Guinean students from the University of Buea and Biya's recent blockage of food to some neighbourly countries. A move which pundits think is intended to punish Obiang Nguema for defying him.

The climax of the undeclared war involved the titans of the two nations: Obiang Nguema and Paul Biya. The battle field was Yaounde where the recent CEMAC Summit held. Obiang Nguema wanted the chairmanship of the Bank of FCFA 500 billion which constitutes half of the bank's share capital. Biya and other CEMAC leaders would not let him have it. In anger, he stormed out of the meeting before its formal closing. Biya had never been so embarrassed.

In fairness to Obiang Nguema, it must be admitted that he deserves some distinction. Biya cannot pretend to be oblivious of the fact that he who owns the largest share in a bank is generally either the President of the board of directors or, at least, has a great say in the affairs of that financial institution. It is irrelevant whether the person is tall or short, gigantic or diminutive.

If Biya Could See Tomorrow

If President Biya could foresee the future, he would not have given Obiang Nguema all the support the Equato-Guinean leader needed before it was discovered that his country was an Eldorado of 'black gold."

Before that discovery, Obiang Nguema was a mendicant who relied on Biya for such necessities as a plane to travel abroad and a State car befitting a head of State. Today, the Equato-Guinean President with all the trappings of a yahoo millionaire (considering the rapidity with which he has drifted from penury to opulence) expects his Cameroonian counterpart to view him the way a poor, retired civil servant looks at a newly installed Treasury Director.

Paying The Price Of Mismanagement

Biya is a man whose pranks are difficult to bear. Those who don't abhor him for his arrogance detest him for his inclination to voodoo economics and reckless spending. Peter Eigen, President of Transparency International, was greatly applauded when he "stripped naked" the Biya Regime on this issue of secrecy surrounding oil money.

The occasion was a press conference he held in Yaounde on June 26. Most recently, the IMF sanctioned Cameroon for its inability to execute its economic programme, poor governance and lack of accountability.

Playing God

In terms of dialogue, Mugabe is a saint by comparison. The Zimbabwean dictator has accepted dialogue, despite the fact that Tsvangirai speaks about him with very little reverence.

Since 1990, Biya has snubbed the opposition and the SCNC. He is one of the few African leaders to maintain such intransigence. At first, Fru Ndi, said he could only hold talks with him in the presence of a third party. That condition has since been dropped. But Biya has remained as nonchalant about dialogue in 2008 as he was in 1990.

Biya dreads even his own militants. Victims of the 1992 post-election violence in the Northwest Province, like the SCNC, took their grievances to the African Court when all attempts to meet him were abortive. Fru Ndi is resolved to do same.

The brutal suppression of a youth uprising in February in protest against skyrocketing prices of basic commodities and the constitutional amendment of last April, took away the last vestiges of respect most Cameroonians had for him.

Obiang Nguema deserves reproach for xenophobia and for converting the former sweet Ferdando Po into an island of hate and mistrust. But Biya deserves the guillotine for transforming the once rich Cameroonian nation under his "illustrious predecessor" into a triangle of misery and desolation.

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