List of approved churches in Cameroon. Is your church there?

Grinding an axe with the armed forces

Where are our famous BIRS and others now that life in Northern Cameroon has become more insecure than in Northern Afghanistan? Busy preparing a 20th May Parade?! What do they make of all the kidnaps and killings going on? One of them said over the radio that they 

Do soldiers in Cameroon today enjoy showing off instead of doing the military work of defending their fatherland? If not, someone tell me, why does Boko Haram have the leeway to stroll into Cameroon, kill, kidnap and stroll out without the least disturbance?

Do our overpaid military officers enjoy their salary and the good things money can buy so much so that they forget their duty to fatherland? Do they know why they are paid? Or do sinecures from Biya's regime make them to believe that their only duty to Cameroon is to bind their hands from conducting a military coup?

If, as they claim, they are still aware that the army was not only made to protect the regime against its disgruntled civilians, have they forgotten a soldier must always be ready? So they want Boko Haram to finish kidnapping the whole Northern Cameroon before it will occur to them that national security is threatened? If they are so great as they have been claiming, why does Boko Haram keep getting away with these incursions?

Is it that the soldiers do not yet have orders from their commander to act? I keep wondering how our regime operates. Their soldiers are ever so quick and decisive in dealing with former workers striking over severance pay (Tole Tea), students striking over academic reforms (Yaounde in the early 90's and Buea since then), and the public manifesting against price hikes (Feb. 2008) and constitutional changes, but never there when military might is needed.

Why have they not established a plan of action to secure the borders since Boko Haram started brazen incursions into Cameroon? Regime barons bragged about BIRS in the Yaounde Maritime Security summit last year and claimed that other countries came to learn from Cameroon how to protect their borders. Now, it is clear that it was empty "vooooooom" or "big mup" as we call it in pidgin.

I beg, somebody, tell our president, we do not need France's help to protect this country. Unless he is not the one in charge of these trigger happy BIRS et al. We just need to unleash them on Boko Haram. They may be a guerilla force, but I do not believe the handful of hungry ruffians with no formal military training or sophisticated equipment can defeat the Nigerian and Cameroon armies even with hit and run strikes. What happen to hot pursuit. I am sure if Nigerians pursue Boko Haram, they will stop at the border and Cameroon can continue from there!

Do Cameroon and Nigeria want to claim that their border is so big that with Nigerians on one side and Cameroonians on the other, we cannot secure it? Or is it simply that François Holland has not yet given instructions to his valet, the president of France in Yaounde, to take action?

Only time will tell. However, I am sure that after another excuse to hurry to Europe, away from this ill smelling air of the capital city, the president of France in Yaounde will, on his return, execute instructions from the president of France in France and at last Boko Haram may start worrying.

Soldiers were congratulated and promoted recently, for their role in defending Bakassi, even though I read from the ICJ that the conflict was settled peacefully! I see a man creating an opportunity to pander the army for nothing done, encouraging laziness and setting a bad precedent for future generations.

In towns, top army officials are putting up mega buildings, I wonder where they get the money from, are soldiers also business men? Bribery, nepotism and tribalism are the working principles for recruitment into the ranks. Proof, some spoiled brats whose parents bribed for their entry into top official training schools died during training. If not, how did these weaklings make it through the selection tests? What war can such an army win, apart from the one against civilians.

Has this army really been tested? Does Cameroon not remain highly vulnerable to any external attack? Are we not only safe because other countries realize that war helps no one, reason why we have no major external threat?

No one can convince me that with fuel being diverted from the army camp and sold on the black market, our army has the capacity to swiftly and decisive contain a serious, planned and orchestrated attack from outside or within Cameroon. With promotion in the army being based on tribal origin and name, nothing proves that the rank and file have the morale to fight to the very last to defend our country.

Today, the Cameroonians soldier feels that he is a superior citizen. See them flouting traffic rules with impunity, endangering the people they are supposed to protect. Is it because someone told them that they are free to do anything in as much as it does not go in the direction of a coup d’état?

I also wonder why it does not occur to anyone that military barracks are better situated away from town, in order to keep prying civilian eyes away (since spies can easily mix in the civilian population and steal our defence secrets) but also, to protect civilians because in any feud, military installations will be the target. What of the consequences of an explosion like the one that once occurred in the arms depot (la poudrière) here in Yaounde. If such an explosion where to occur in the presidential guard camp, will all the civilian population around Melen not be endangered? Why does it not occur to anyone that the camps should simply be moved to a new, more remote part of town? Are they only good at bullying unarmed demonstrators? What a mess!