Why Cameroonians should take Akoa's murder seriously

The murder of a senior government official at the Biteng-Nkoateng neighbourhood in Yaounde may easily be dismissed as one among many such murders in a country where criminality institutional and private is an acceptable way of life.

The execution of the delegate of transport for Nyong-et-Kelle and the supposedly secured neighbourhood within which the execution took place, calls for scrutiny and informed comment.

Maurice Akoa, was executed by two unidentified individuals last Wednesday in a secure residential area in the outskirts of the nation’s capital hosting prominent government officials including Chief and Prof.

Peter Agbor Tabi, Assistant Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic. The execution was carried out by professional assassins judging from the manner the operation occurred.

Only persons who had good knowledge of the neighbourhood and the security arrangements in place could have ventured to operate there. The failure to intervene by the security operatives deployed to the area may be construed as a security lapse, failure, ineffective or ineptitude.

It may also signify the impending collapse of the security outfit that has over half a century construed peace and security from the perspective of safeguarding the head of state, the regime in power and the institutions responsible for their survival.

Half a century in the life of a regime whose staying power is based on the use of violence, oppressive legislations and state institutions to protect and safeguard the interests of a few against that of the majority poor is long enough for it to implode.

This implosion which is approaching at a galloping velocity has led to key architects of the regime and the institutions that are keeping it in power, jailed, on the run or dead in very humiliating circumstances in jail. This has demystified and delegitimized the regime and the few hitherto revered individuals holding on, awaiting their turn in jail.

This should lead many to seek answers to the question whether the regime can provide them effective security. It should generate a conscientious meditation and debate about the role of all in a political system which has generated so much hatred, division and revenge breeding insecurity at all levels of national life.

Under this climate of implosion, fear, distrust, backstabbing, hatred, jealousy and mounting violence, executions using the same machinery of terror which held the citizenry hostage are at long last emerging to complicate the political, social, economic and cultural miasma into much the Republique du Cameroun has fallen.

The impunity, confidence and professionalism with which this one more execution occurred should preoccupy watchers and analysts of the Cameroons political implosion.

The Boko Haram war in the North, the Rebel incursions from Central Africa Republic, the government escalation of acts of oppression, repression and widespread violations against the Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia activists pressing for their internationally recognized rights to external self-determination and other forms of violence have put the people, on the alert of unprecedented violence in a not distant future.

There is no perceptible government policy plan to address the underlying causes of the frustrations or grievances that may potentially lead to war and national disintegration.

The Present political dispensation in Cameroon like that in Cote D’Ivoire under Houphouet Boigny, claim that without President Paul Biya, Cameroon would never be at peace.

This premonition has come to be true because President Paul Biya’s policies have placed the country on a permanent state of emergency pitting region against regime, ethnicity against ethnicity and politician against politician.

In this political arrangement, only the President is entitled to effective security. Those staking their lives for him are steadily killing and being killed.

Targeted political executions and assassinations like that of Mr. Maurice Akoa in a supposedly secured area of the capital may find in this and others such assassinations that at long last; true security belongs to God and God alone.

Because the President alone is entitled to security, he sees no reason to provide the type of security he enjoys to the rest of the citizenry because he has benefitted and will again benefit from the galloping insecurity to justify his stranglehold on power.

In this circumstance, even people like Professor Peter Agbor Tabi whom the assassins came so close in search of their latest victim will point to the insecurity arising from half a century of misrule as justification for Paul Biya to beat nature and remain in power for “ thirty more years”.

In normal life, when an execution occurs within the neighbourhood, ignoring the presence of what one considered a strong security presence, there is need to reconsider the futility of allegiance to a system that made the execution possible, on whose watch it occurred and which is irreversibly leading the nation towards destruction. This message seems to be ignored by persons who should know better.

Who among these coteries of presidential worshippers and apostles of deceptive mystical orders can beat the record of Professor Gervais Mendo Ze in his sycophancy and deification of the President? Who? Again we ask. Yet, a life in prison seems today to be the only way by which God may save the life of the professor from the impending disaster towards the country is piloted.

Cameroon Concord strongly hold that the execution of Maurice Akoa and others that occurred previously, should alert the conscience of Cameroonians to have an urgent debate on the direction the country is taking and the use of the Maurice Akoa-style execution to settle scores. It is this dispassionate debate and genuine national healing that can avert the cause of the escalating violence that this execution advances.