Democracy In Africa Needs Help

 By Collins Obibi

It was in a policy development class many years ago that a teacher asked us to listen and understand what he was teaching and how to apply it to our work instead of thinking and focusing on how to develop a Political Theory since even our teachers are not developing any. Being a post graduate class, the statement was not very palatable.

I struggled with it for a long time. Over 25 years, though I have made some contributions to the world of knowledge by my writing and verbal expose on different subjects, I still have not been able to develop any Theory and it appears I have given up.

Why Cameroonians Must Reject President Paul Biya

By Fon Christopher Achobang

After 36 years in power, the records are there to prove that President PAUL BIYA and the CPDM party have failed the people of Cameroon woefully. Yes, everyone, even the old “mamas” in the villages and towns of Cameroon have experienced the effects of bad governance which has brought about the corruption and embezzlement of public funds, for which Cameroon is now internationally known and derided.

*President Buhari and Paul Biya 

But that is no news because some misguided people are quite ready to vote for a corrupt government and a regime made up of people suffering from kleptomania, a disease which in Cameroon, makes the sufferers unable to distinguish between public funds and their own bank accounts. In the past 36 years, President PAUL BIYA and his regime have also been notoriously known for instituting tribalism and ethnic discrimination in the management of the Cameroonian Civil Service and public companies. 

2019: Is Buhari Deliberately Running To Lose?

By Richard Maduku

There is hardly any good thing that we Africans don’t corrupt. Sometimes, we practise only the negative aspect of almost every good thing. Clocks or watches for instance, are meant to ensure punctuality but in Africa they are used mostly for the opposite. It is called African Time. The Internet is meant for fast communication but in Nigeria many youths have turned it into a farm where they reap what they did not sow. It is called yahoo yahoo. Churches have been so corrupted in Africa especially in Nigeria that our traditional shamans blush with envy at the tricks church leaders of today play in order to exhort money from their gullible members.

*President Muhammadu Buhari 

 Democracy in most African countries has also been badly mangled due to the way most sitting Presidents or Heads of Government in Africa operate. They don’t only harass prominent members of the opposition in their respective countries they also brazenly rig supposedly democratic elections in order to remain in office. This has in turn made winning a re-election by a sitting President to be viewed with utmost suspicion. As a result, whether an election was free and fair, a sitting President conceding defeat was now more acceptable to the world especially to the West. 

Cameroon: The Threat of Religious Radicalism

The full report is available in: French.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

In Cameroon, the rise of Christian revivalist (born again) and Muslim fundamentalist movements is rapidly changing the religious landscape and paving the way for religious intolerance. Fundamentalist groups’ emergence, combined with communal tensions, creates a specific risk in the North and increases competition for leadership of the Muslim community: such competition has already led to local conflicts. 

*President Paul Biya of Cameroon 

Moreover, the various religious groups have negative perceptions of each other. The state and the mainstream religious organisations’ response to the emerging radicalism is limited to the Boko Haram threat and therefore inadequate, and in some cases carries risk. A coherent and comprehensive response has to be implemented by the government and religious organisations to preserve religious tolerance and to avoid the kind of religious violence seen in neighbouring Nigeria and the Central African Republic.

Unlike these two countries, Cameroon has never experienced significant sectarian violence. However, the emergence of radical religious groups risks destabilising its climate of religious tolerance. Traditional Sufi Islam is increasingly challenged by the rise of more rigorist Islamic ideology, mostly Wahhabism. The current transformation is mainly promoted by young Cameroonian Muslims from the South, whereas the Sufi Islam of the North, dominated by the Fulani, seems on the decline. These southern youths speak Arabic, are often educated in Sudan and the Gulf countries, and are opposed both to Fulani control of the Muslim community and to the ageing religious establishment. Disagreements between Sufi leaders, traditional spiritual leaders and these newcomers are not only theological: the conflict between “ancients” and “moderns” is also a matter of economic and political influence within the Muslim community.

These changes have divided Muslim communities and already degenerated into localised clashes between Islamic groups. Fundamentalist groups’ growth in the North, combined with local communal tensions, is a potential source of conflict. In the South, the competition between Sufi members and Wahhabi-inspired groups over leadership of the Muslim community will increase and could lead to localised violence.