Paul Atanga Nji will be sacked from the Ministry of Territorial Administration if the next cabinet reshuffle is done, except Yaounde has plans to maintain him there symbolically but get someone else do the actual MINAT job.
With the setbacks from the February 9 elections, especially the Ambazonia lockdown of the territory it claims as its republic, Atanga Nji has proven to be all loud talk and little effective work on the ground. He has not delivered.
Even a bad system sheds its back guys, especially those brought in on the merit of their promise to do sufficient “rough work” in an area they claim to master to turn the tides around for a desperate enterprise like Yaounde.
Atanga Nji has proven to be more of a megaphone – a brash one at that – than a minister with any amount of control over the territory he claims to administer. Short and simple, he deceived President Paul Biya he could crush, quell and deliver Ambazonia and that the elections would prove his mission accomplished. He has not. If he will not be sacked outright, he might be sent to where he would do what he enjoys doing – talking and just talking loud – as Minister of Communication and Government Spokesman.
He has some Yaounde-valued merit, though, in that domain for the kind of dirty job he promises to do for a regime pushed to the wall. He is admirably bilingual and fluent (not exactly a testimony of any finesse), and his cobra approach to politics could be the next way an obstinate regime may find him useful. Should Atanga Nji be shown the door from MINAT but not to be MINCOM, that could be because Yaounde might have a different vision for its communication in the hereafter.
If Yaounde means to target the youth – Ambazonia fighters, pro-Kamto BAS and increasingly delinquent school children – with the message that they have a place on board, not on the fringes, Cabral Libii could be the face Yaounde wants to use to lure them, perhaps as MINCOM and Government Spokesman. How successful that would be is quiet another matter.
Libii is unquestionably inspirational. He is young, intelligent, eloquent, daring and gentle in ways and speech. Though official results of the twin elections are still awaited, there are hints he has won at least his own seat to the National Assembly from his Nyong and Kelle constituency, after his freshman breakthrough third place in the October 2018 presidential election. Besides his own merits, there is an evident push from Yaounde to legitimise him on the political stage. The disqualification of UPC lists in its natural Bassa fief is logically viewed as intended to leave a walk for Libii to win there and secure a political base for missions soon to be assigned to him by Yaounde. MINCOM could be a first step.
In the game of musical chairs, Rene Sadi, the “chosen one” may return to MINAT to resume his schooling on managing state affairs. At MINCOM, he sometimes lost his voice and when he was not co-spokesman with the more boisterous Atanga Nji, the anti-Amba “general” even went solo, “usurping” Sadi’s duties.
Elsewhere, Jean de Dieu Momo is nearly certain to be dumped from his post as Minister Delegate at Justice. Like Atanga Nji – even worse – he has not delivered on his dirty job. If Atanga Nji’s prime mission was to hold back the Amba tide, Momo’s was the Kamto tide. He too did not. He failed to neutralise the massively successful MRC boycott and even with no MRC to beat, his PADDEC party lost the elections everywhere, including in his Menoua home-base in the West region. He will likely be sacked. Libii with academic background in law may otherwise replace Momo and equally take over the Kamto mission as Yaounde might use him to show a gentler, less hostile face of the opposition to lure teeming youths from brash Kamto and pamper the international community that Kamto’s methods, not his opposition statutes, is his problem. Tchiroma will very likely stay on or get a promotion, if not for winning his own National Assembly seat when official results are released, at least for his FSNC party winning councils in the North and Far North regions.
The next cabinet reshuffle will deliver curious babies! Not exactly any assurance that it will solve the perennial and current problems.
SDF, wuna hear hot!
SDF incumbents “defeated” at the February 9 poll, now seeking redress before the Constitutional Council and other jurisdictions, will not find many sympathetic ears from their “constituency” who feel they betrayed their own people.
Though official results are still awaited, reports hold that Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam and his fellow North West SDF members of the National Assembly are lodging post-electoral litigations at the Constitutional Council, suggests they are aware they lost the vote. You do not win and protest, do you? They have also lost woefully in Council elections.
For many Anglophones or former Southern Cameroonians, SDF’s defeat is good riddance. It is news both as punishment for their betrayal to run in elections derided by the Ambazonia movement fighting for the rights and freedom of their constituency, but also because it brings Ambazonia back to square one. It achieves the wish of the Ambazonia movement that Parliamentarians from the “homeland” withdraw from Yaounde in the 1954-style withdrawal from Nigerian politics by Southern Cameroonian politicians.
outside africa
Trump puts West down, East up
Western political leaders have themselves come to the realisation that Russia and China are riding high in international affairs and geopolitics. Leaders of Germany and France poured the lamentation at their security conference in Munich, Germany last week. Trump administration’s “isolationism” and ally-bashing account hugely for this, though US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says “no” and, yes, some of America’s international lukewarmness preceded Trump.
China is a military power that flexes its economic power more. Russia, with dreaded military might reboosted under Vladimir Putin, is in about every conflict theatre as a counterforce to US influence. In Syria, it has more or less succeeded to stem the US tide attempt to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad, a sworn enemy of US ally, Israel. In Ukraine, Russia strolled into Ukraine and walked away with a mouthful of Crimea amidst protests from US’ Europe allies, but without as much as any significant US riposte. In Venezuela, in US’ own backyard, Russia flew in boots to support its ally, Nicolas Maduro and stem attempts by US-back Juan Guaido to topple marxist Maduro.
In the Korean peninsula, Trump’s resort to appeasement towards “rogue” North Korea, leaves their southern ally uncertain. After abrogating the Iran Nuclear deal and coming close to war with Iran after assassinating its revered military general at the end of last year, Trump made the US and its western allies look impotent for failing to punish Iran for attacking its installations in Iraq, after the assassination blunder.
Besides failing in US’ traditional gunboat diplomacy that has, across the years, reassured its allies of military cover, Trump has done even more verbally. He has engaged economic battles with allies (NAFTA and EU), derided traditionally symbols of US and western greatness like the CIA and NATO, though his trade wars with China and sporadic verbal fights with Russia send confusing signals.
Though US and western leaders are at a loss where to put a finger on Trump’s role in giving the East an edge over the West, suspicion remains that Russia put Trump in power for this purpose. This may lead allies to seek alternative alliances. Turkey, though a NATO ally has been weaving new friendship with rival Russia. From the post-WW2 bipolar world to the post 1990s unipolar of the US alone, the next page could be an anarchical multipolar world with each power seeking multifaceted alliances as suits specific interests.
Below is an excerpt from a poem I wrote predicting geopolitics today on the eve of Trump’s victory as US president:
Should Trump become president
Trump-Putin entente without precedent
US-Russia become interdependent
Mighty US no longer independent
Like Reagan praised Perestroika and Glasnost
And lured Gorbachev till Soviet Union lost
Putin praises Trump Towers, grabs US at no cost
Trump laments US nuclear rust
Fears Russian nuclear robust
…
Allies abandoned can’t stay frail
Germany, Japan must balance the scale
Teheran, Pyongyang on nuclear trail
Berlin and Tokyo too must be hale
Latinos are criminals, build a wall
Lazy, sex crazy Africans, let them fall
Muslims hate us, ban them all
America alone to stand tall
Trump, White House barm?
Africa reclaims its farm
Jihadists come to harm
Europe honors no alarm
America alone with arm
If Trump into White House ram
World snubs Uncle Sam
Friends and foe will slam
Latinos break Trump dam
China grabs market, says I am
Russia great, Trump on pram
NATO no foes will jam
America becomes a sham.