“Yɛnntumi nnunu yɛn mpanyinfoɔ sɛ wɔbuu wɔn ani guu so” – “The elders cannot be accused of ignorance.” An Akan saying
I found out first. When my four other siblings discovered that our father had been unfaithful and fathered another child younger than our baby sister, our home erupted into a rowdy marketplace.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy, but daddy, how dare you do that?” Akwasi, the youngest boy, yelled. Then the room froze. He was as surprised as we were at his own commanding voice. No one, absolutely no one, yells or openly rebukes Papa Kwesi. A high court judge and a god in his own home. My aunties were furious, and my uncles whipped us back in line. But no one was talking about my mother, who had stage 4 leukemia. The real victim. This is what is happening in Cameroon, and Cameroon is dying.
The family fights about the affair, the spectacle, the betrayal, the drama. But that’s not what’s killing our mother. The cancer is. And while we rage about infidelity, she gets no treatment, no care, no chance.
Cameroon’s family argues about election fraud, about who really won, about Biya vs. Tchiroma. But that’s not what’s killing the country. Four metastasizing cancers are. And while the family fights about the spectacle, the patient dies untreated.
On October 27, 2025, Cameroon’s Constitutional Council confirmed Biya as the winner once again, marking his eighth term at the age of 92. Meanwhile, protesters lost their lives in the streets of Douala.
Cancer #1: Institutional Capture (The Brain Tumour)
Paul Biya eliminated presidential term limits in 2008. On October 27, 2025, the Constitutional Council declared him the winner again, with 53.66% of the vote. His former ally-turned-opponent, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, received 35.19% and rejected the result.
ELECAM had already banned Maurice Kamto from running, a move widely criticized by human rights groups. The election took place on October 12; by October 26, at least four protesters had been shot dead in Douala. Amidst it all, security forces clashed with opposition supporters demanding credible results.
Freedom House 2025 scores Cameroon 15/100. The country is Not Free. They’d better have the French back, now.
In 2017, A historic 94-day internet blackout was reported in the Anglophone regions, and fresh access disruptions were reported around the 2025 announcement. Then, military courts were on alert, still trying civilians under an anti-terror law used against journalists.
Cancer #2: The Anglophone Wound (The Internal Bleeding)
Then, in 2016, a protest that began as lawyer/teacher protests hardened into a protracted conflict. At least 6,000 civilians have been killed. Displaced people now number about 2.1 million.
This isn’t a fringe grievance. It’s a structural legitimacy crisis: when hundreds of thousands identify as “Ambazonian” and fear the state.
Cancer #3: Economic Necrosis (The Dying Tissue)
Cameroon’s Median age is 18–19 years, making it a very young society. As many as 38% live below the national line (2021), and 23% below the international extreme line (2021–22). It is unbelievable today that, with population growth, there are more poor people in absolute terms, not fewer.
Official youth unemployment is high, and informality/underemployment is widespread—around 80% of workers operate informally. That’s why diplomas don’t translate into livelihoods.
Corruption? CPI 2024: 26/100, rank 140/180.
Corruption is destroying Cameroon, the land of Rudolf Duala Manga Bell, who faced German rifles rather than surrender his people’s land. It erases the dream of André-Marie Mbida, who once stood in Paris demanding dignity for a self-governing Cameroon. It mocks Bernard Fonlon’s intellect, who taught that a nation without conscience is a corpse dressed in flags. It suffocates the legacy of Paul Monyonge Kale, who built bridges between the divided Cameroons, and betrays the prophetic voice of Achille Mbembe, who warned that colonial power never truly left. These were the minds and spirits that gave Cameroon a pulse. Today, their country lies on life support.
Cancer #4: The French Parasitic Infection
Cameroon uses the Central African CFA franc (XAF) pegged at 655.957 to €1.
France frames this as “monetary cooperation,” but a peg you don’t control is not sovereignty; it’s monetary policy outsourced
Tiger’s Roar
In my opinion, these four cancers produce a terminal diagnosis. A country where a 92-year-old wins another term, where a fifth of the nation rejects the state’s legitimacy by force of circumstance. This is a place where a youthful majority finds only informal work, and where monetary sovereignty is under French control.
One thing is clear from the patterns of history. Many Countries survive bad leaders. They survive regional tensions. They survive economic crises. They rarely survive all four at once.
I stand by my statement that Cameroon isn’t a country anymore; it’s an ICU patient whose family refuses to accept the diagnosis. Like a Shakespeare play, The Tragedy? Every cancer was preventable: the 2008 constitutional amputation; the 2016 crackdown that led into war; two lost decades of poverty; the peg that never loosens.
If Cameroon wants to be a country worth being part of, preventing these cancers requires leaders who care more about the body than their own survival. However, as a 92-year-old president, Biya is unfit, and the country is critically sick.
Does Cameroon still have a country?
Tiger Rifkin decodes Africa’s tradition-transformation nexus through analysis and satire. When power deserves ridicule, laughter becomes resistance. Follow The Witty Observer for continental commentary that entertains while it enlightens.