Cameroon has a way of surprising you. It sneaks up on you every time and every one of those times you tell yourself you can never be caught unawares again because you have seen it all. And yet it sneaks up on you again and surprises you. Sometimes you tell yourself that ‘based on logistics’ (to quote from a Big Brother Naija housemate) nothing can surprise you anymore…
And then pouf! Just like that, along crawls a spider we can call Samuel and you are shocked out of your seat with a monumental surprise.
I’m guessing that by now, you all should have seen the footage from yesterday where your G.O.A.T on his self-proclaimed, knight-in-shining-armour mission to save the AFCON declared to TV cameras that he was going to vote our dictator-in-ch... ummm sorry…, commander-in-chief and incumbent president during the elections just days away.
It’s not so much the fact that he says he is going to vote Biya that make my balls itch. It’s the two reasons he advances for that. ONE; the tired slogan of “Vivre-ensemble” that must have been coined in the pits of Mordor by Sauron himself. (pssst… that’s a Lord Of the Rings reference)
TWO; he says “Je vais voter Paul Biya pour tous ces choses qu’il m’a apporté dans ma vie.”
First of all, there’s nothing I hate more about the Anglophone crisis than this vivre ensemble nonsense. There has never been such a problem and despite all the tension and fighting going on in the NW and SW, to my knowledge, no francophone has been harmed deliberately because of his area of origin.
Secondly, we all know that the source of Cameroon’s problems today and the direct cause of the Anglophone problem is institutional. The frailty of our institutions is responsible not only for poor infrastructure and brain-drain but also for talent drain. It is this same institutional problem that pushed Oga Eto’o himself to go to France in his youth to get a shot at playing football! Things didn’t work out too well and he came back to Cameroon and enrolled at Kadji Football School (a private institution that did not suffer from government inertia).
Let me take another example; Eto’o’s South American teammates from Barcelona all went back to their native countries au soir de leur carriere to retire. I’m talking about people like Ronaldinho and Raphael Marquez. We can even extend that to the likes of Riquelme and Robinho. Neymar could have stayed in Santos and made far more money than most players in top clubs in Europe.
Question: Why did Eto’o choose to go end his career in Qatar? Why didn’t he come finish it in Cameroon? We all know the answer to that. And today he is going to vote for the man whose institutional policies do not permit struggling footballers today to have a decent playing pitch? Good heavens!
But the man is out here playing messiah for the Nations Cup. An endeavour which has already cost us hundreds of billions in borrowed money from China. And which will cost us even more after as these 40,000 seater stadia will become white elephants swallowing up hundreds of millions in maintenance costs.
Maybe he forgets how our health system is so bad that he had to build a paediatric wing at the Laquintinie Hospital.
The lack of sincerity is so annoying. And if he really believes in vivre-ensemble, he could have put that energy elsewhere such as in helping displaced persons in Nigeria by actively taking a role in either providing or looking for funds. After all is he not a UNICEF ambassador?
I may be shooting in the dark here but I daresay if Eto’o had done something for the IDPs and refugees, we would have known by now. The man is a bit of a megalomaniac who speaks of himself in the 3rd person and is not known to, to paraphrase Lord Byron, ‘walk in silent beauty like the night.’
That failed tour of the NW and SW regions would have been an opportunity for him to get some photo ops, smile from ear to ear and position himself for a Colgate brand ambassadorship.
As for Rigobert naaa… Chei! Da grand don soil very badly. I honestly no know how some of di paddy-mendem dia brain di function.
The guy’s reason for voting Biya is basically that the regime ‘saved his life’. It is not a direct quote, please. He said, referring to his medical evacuation to France after his stroke, that he owes the CPDM a lot as they did everything to get him treatment, and apparently footing all the bills.
First of all, Magnan, the CPDM party didn’t do that for you. WE did. It is our tax payer money that put you on a luxury ride to France. We ironically do not have that luxury. When we are sick here, we die here.
I spoke to a doctor friend and he explained to me that medical evacuations in Cameroon usually are a long and tedious administrative procedure and that in Song’s case, it went by really fast. I understand that he is, after all, Rigobert Song and that because of his stature, mountains are moved faster. It was expected. It would happen in any country.
But what of Monique Koumatekei? Isn’t she a citizen too? Shouldn’t the ‘CPDM’ have had to care more for her too? Did she deserve to be cut open in the courtyard of the hospital like that? (yes, yes, I know… her sister should not have done that, but you get my point nah?)
For a man who was the leader of the national team, I expected more from him. Leadership, after all, is to serve to suffer and to sacrifice. And those are not my words. They are the words of Desmond Tutu when he was describing Nelson Mandela.
Tout ça pour dire qu’il y’a quelque chose qui ne tourne pas rond dans ce pays. Et j’attends que Richard Bona me l’explique. Peut-être qu’il le fera d’une manière que je ne comprendrai pas pour comprendre ensuite.
I think I speak for many, if not most Cameroonians that we are all sorely disappointed in these two icons. Let’s be clear, it’s a democracy and they can choose whomever, but we cannot deny that reason is NOT on their side. The every-day struggling Cameroonian is not on their side. The institutional, infrastructural and moral decay of our society does not support their choice.
Don’t get me started on the fact that Eto’o is a Spanish citizen and he is not allowed to vote and yet he says he is going to, and thus de facto violating the constitution. And he is announcing that right on the doorstep on the person who has the most obligation to uphold the constitution of the land!
This country naaa….
Anyway. Theirs is just two votes. For every one of their votes, there are ten thousand dissenting voices. Thank the heavens we know better. Make your vote count on Sunday.
- Wandji Wilfred.