NEWS ANALYSIS:

By Peterkins Manyong, guest writer and publisher of  The Indpendent Observer

Paul Biya: Carrying fire and water in the same mouth

War and love are two mighty opposites. To romance with the two is to serve both God and mammon.

Unfortunately, that is what the Biya regime is doing with Boko Haram. Just as we should not negotiate with corrupt regimes any forum of compromise with terrorists is criminal.

The terrorist is the same as the blackmailer, who will always come back. The palpable solution is to eliminate both.

Paul Biya has taken Cameroonians for granted for the last 32 years. He believes that any yarn he spins will be acceptable to Cameroonians. His latest declaration that Boko Haram will be completely wiped out from Cameroonian soil is one provocative statement too many times, especially coming on the heels of the release of high profile hostages, among them, Amadou Ali’s wife. If we believe press reports about the backdoor negotiations that preceded the return of the captives (and we have no convincing reason to doubt them). Boko Haram is now better equipped with sophisticated weapons from Cameroon and 200 MFCFA richer.

With this very encouraging gesture from Biya, Boko Haram, far from being crushed has better means and ability to return to Cameroon for more funding. Nigeria has often complained that Cameroon is the weakest link in the African sub region as far as the war on terror is concerned. All this because the regime at the helm of the nation is more concerned with pleasing foreigners than Cameroonians. Boko Haram is a well organized terrorist organization. It knows it can’t get anything out of Nigeria because Goodluck Jonathan’s government has resolved never to negotiate with them. The Nigerian government rejected the terms Boko Haram imposed as a condition for releasing the Chibok girls. Boko Haram released video tapes, threatened to sell the girls. Goodluck didn’t bulge. He reasoned that there is no war you can win without casualties. The Chibok girls and those added to them later constitute Nigeria’s casualties in the war on terror.

Of recent, the Nigerian armed forces inflicted severe wounds on the Chaboli Boko Haram sect both physically and psychologically. Many of the terrorists had to run for their dear lives after many had been mowed down with Nigerian army machine guns.

But Biya would rather see the whole nation slaughtered than have a single hair missing from the head of a French man or woman.

That is not the worst part of the tragedy. Biya has released back to the Boko Haram camp hardened unrepentant terrorists who should logically be serving a life sentence each in Cameroonian jails.

Apart from the fact that the terrorists now understand the nation’s terrain better, Boko Haram has made mincemeat of the Cameroonian legal system that has as duty the maintenance of justice by ensuring that justice takes its course in the vicinity where the crime was committed. Boko Haram is smiling and obviously the devil is also beaming in his strategic headquarters in hell.

But perhaps those most hurt by Biya’s hide and seek game with Boko Haram are family members of soldiers who have fallen in the battle field in the Far North. Seeing the terrorist crushed would have been a better source of comfort to them than the financial compensation to the families of the slain soldiers.

How can the president convince the members of such families that their children or brothers did not die in vain when the same Biya who declared war on Boko Haram is savouring juicy praises from CPDM militants for ensuring the release of the hostages. The philosophy that Cameroon is Cameroon or that the impossible is not Cameroonian is rather being carried too far.

Biya owes Cameroonians an elaborate explanation on how the hostages are being released, as Tazoacha Asonganyi aptly remarks. We of the media had since resolved to stand by the president in his war on Boko Haram because we reason that if the terrorists take over Cameroon, none of us would be safe. Biya has betrayed this trust by opting to negotiate with the same terrorists we are fighting.

Cameroonians in their vast majority have lost faith in most of our security forces because they negotiate with the criminals they arrest. Later on we find these same hoodlums back on our streets and in our neighbourhood.

We can’t also have faith in a president who treats the security of Cameroon in the same manner as the information on oil money which led Jean Assouma, director of the National Hydrocarbons Corporation, SNH who once remarked that statistics on petroleum were far too complicated for the average Cameroonians to understand. Tell us Your Excellency, what exactly is happening.