There is a movie that is always playing in Cameroon.
It is the one where personal ambition dons national attire. Where private aspiration borrows the language of public service. Where disappointment is repackaged as duty denied.
I once joked that people should be banned from carrying the Cameroonian flag and acting like elected ambassadors –especially those artists and influencers who think Dubai is a country. Not because representation is unimportant –we should represent our country every chance we get –but because too many of us represent it poorly.
For a long time now, personal ambition has learned to speak in the voice of the nation. It often hides behind the convenient phrase “support your own.” Anyone who does whatever nonessential thing they can think of on TikTok eventually plays that card. Around them, a chorus of people “paying their dues” hopes to benefit from the same appeal one day. That is how they ended up being called “dull and gullible” two weeks or so before.
To this group, symbolism is everything. And symbolism quietly replaces substance.
This pattern has resurfaced once again in the debate over Anglophone TikTokers allegedly excluded from FECAFOOT AFCON-sponsored travel. Predictably, the discussion has collapsed into accusations of marginalization. Beneath the noise sits a more revealing question—one we avoid because it is uncomfortable:
Why does personal ambition keep wearing the language of national duty?
Not every unmet ambition should become a national emergency.
Let me be clear. Anglophone marginalization in Cameroon is real. It is documented, structural, and historical. No serious observer disputes this. But real injustice has a dangerous side effect: it can breed lazy thinking.
Over time, marginalization risks becoming not only a political reality but a rhetorical shortcut—an all-purpose explanation for every absence, every non-selection, every closed door. The danger is not that the argument exists. The danger is that it becomes unfalsifiable.
Much of the AFCON debate rests on a false assumption: that choice was about representation. It wasn't.
When creators are selected for international sporting events, they are not being honored. They are being used. Their role is not self-expression. It is message transmission. Institutions like FECAFOOT are not operating on vibes. They operate on control. In that context, representation is not about who feels left out. It is about who can be relied on.
One peculiarity of influencer culture in Cameroon is how often the client, especially the state, is treated as a ladder rather than a partner. You pay an influencer to promote your product, and the campaign quickly becomes about them: how big they are, how visible they are, how powerful they must be to have secured the deal. They consistently place themselves in front of the message they were hired to carry – story for another day.
That said, FECAFOOT has historically used influencers as PR tools, not as beneficiaries of cultural policy. This is not generosity or acknowledgment. It is utility. To confuse utility with validation is to misunderstand power.
The state does not exist to confirm your importance. It engages you only when you become useful.
The state owes its citizens rights. It does not owe them relevance. No Anglophone TikToker had their rights violated in this process.
And let this be clear: this is not an argument that those who were sponsored are the best or are relevant. It is an argument that they serve whatever agenda the federation has chosen to pursue. Whether that agenda is admirable, cynical, or misguided is a separate matter altogether.
What matters here is this: when personal ambition masquerades as national duty, critique loses clarity, and justice is hijacked. We end up fighting symbols rather than systems and seeking invitations rather than building leverage.
The tragedy is not exclusion. The tragedy is mistaking popularity for influence and mistaking your passport for a résumé.
- Norbert K. Foy
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