(Left Cameroon family)
Last week I got a peculiar email from a young man in the Cameroon.
“I do write story/screenplay for movies but it doesn’t pay here in Cameroon. i just finished one which i would have submitted already for PAGE International Awards in California but haven’t because of lack of of funds. Can you help link me up to Movie producers ?
The screenplay i have written now is titled “Black Ego”; settings few scenes in a village in Bamenda, Cameroon, GRU Airport-São paulo- Brazil, Ruta 7, Darien gap and Los Angeles .
Away from creative writing, i can do anything , Sir. I am a fast learner.”
I invited him to tell his story, a reminder that while we in the West struggle with weight loss, most of humanity struggles just to eat.
“As I walk through the streets of my country, I see a people battling hunger, fear, and a profound sense of abandonment. We are caught between the anvil of military violence and the hammer of rebel extortion. Cameroon is a beautiful, diverse nation being bled dry by a leadership that refuses to let go, even as its grip turns to dust. We are waiting for a morning that feels a lifetime away, asking the world to finally look at us–not as a statistic, but as a people who deserve to be seen.”
Unseen Cameroon: A Journey Through Turmoil
by Unanimous
(henrymakow.com)
I am 29 years old old and hold a Bachelor’s degree in Law.
Today, I am a ghost in my own country. I live hand-to-mouth, trapped between the brutality of the military and the extortion of the rebels. There is no job, no steady meal, and no bed that feels like home. Every sunset brings a terrifying silence, and every sunrise feels like a mockery of the effort I’ve poured into a life that refuses to work out.
I have fought through forests and bullets, but as I stand here today, the thought of ending it all is the only thing that feels like a quiet escape from a land that has forgotten I exist.
In Cameroon, time hasn’t just flown; it has curdled.
The mist over the Northwest hills of Cameroon used to mean life; now, it only hides the dead. I am a son of this soil, born into a family of ten where my parents valued the sheer number of hands more than the dreams inside our heads.
By Grade 4, the well ran dry. My education became a debt paid in sweat, clearing virgin forests in Mamfe under a scorching sun to fund a Bachelor’s degree I earned in 2018–just as my world began to burn.
The Anglophone crisis (see below) turned my graduation into a funeral for my future. I tried to cling to the earth, tending two acres of cocoa, but the land became a graveyard. In 2019, the sky fell. I watched three of my companions executed by the military right before my eyes. I survived by a miracle of words, only to be cast into a different cage. The “Amba” rebels demanded 250,000 francs–a fortune I didn’t have–and seized my farm when I couldn’t pay.
I fled to Bamenda, but the city offered no sanctuary. A 50,000-franc salary at a bar couldn’t even cover a 20,000-franc room. I retreated to my village, only to be met by a different darkness: the suffocating weight of “night molestations” and witchcraft. Desperate, I turned to the church, but the pastors were merely vultures in robes, stripping me of my last coins from construction sites to “sow seeds” that never bloomed.
We are a nation trapped in a shackle of few individuals . While the world marches toward the mid-21st century, we are tethered to the fading pulse of a 93-year-old ghost. Paul Biya, a man who has held the presidency for over 43 years, is now less a leader and more a rumor. In this “Ugly Nightmare,” he joins the ranks of Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang Nguema and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni–monarchs in suits who have transformed republics into their families affairs, keeping their people in perpetual bondage.
The Great Silence
Since the October 12, 2025, elections, the silence from Cameroon’s Presidency has been deafening. Officially, Biya was declared the winner with a comfortable majority, an eighth term secured. But the streets tell a different story. Issa Tchiroma Bakary, once the fierce “voice of the regime” as Minister of Communication, became the unlikely face of hope. Repented and galvanized, he broke ranks to contest the 2025 elections. By all parallel vote counts, Tchiroma won the hearts of a youth population desperate for air, yet the results were openly declared in favor of Biya, just as they have been for decades.
But Biya has vanished. He is absent from ongoing the African Union General Assembly; he was a no-show at his own high-profile birthday celebrations. At every turn, he is “represented.” The common question waggling on every lip from Maroua to Buea is: Who is ruling Cameroon? The answer whispered in the corridors of power points to the “masquerades” behind the curtain. First Lady Chantal
The Debt Trap
This brings us to a bitter irony. While the common man cannot afford basic commodities , the government continues to borrow. The IMF and international creditors keep pouring billions into a vessel with a shattered bottom. Why does the IMF continue to lend to a country heavily indebted and incapable of showing where the money is spent? These loans do not build schools or hospitals; they lubricate the machinery of a dying regime, leaving the next generation to inherit a debt they never signed for.
The Anglophone Tragedy
Nothing illustrates our descent into disaster better than the Anglophone Crisis. What began in 2016 as a dignified protest by Common Law lawyers and teachers’ syndicates against marginalization was met not with dialogue, but with the cold steel of military repression.
Paul Atanga Nji, the Minister of Territorial Administration and a staunch Biya stooge, became the iron fist of this crackdown. His refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of Anglophone grievances turned a spark into a forest fire.
From that fire emerged the “Amba” rebel groups. They came in the disguise of liberators, promising to protect the marginalized, but they have now become a nightmare that rivals–and sometimes exceeds–the military’s brutality. Today, the Northwest and Southwest regions are “dead cities.” I have seen the eyes of children who have forgotten the sound of a school bell, replaced by the sounds of gunfire. Millions have been displaced, and famine now stalks the valleys.
The World’s Apathy
The most painful part of this journey through turmoil is the global indifference. One of the world’s deadliest wars is happening in plain sight, yet the international community remains largely silent. We are a footnote in the global news cycle, a “low-intensity conflict” that claims lives with high-intensity frequency.
As I walk through the streets of my country, I see a people battling hunger, fear, and a profound sense of abandonment. We are caught between the anvil of military violence and the hammer of rebel extortion. Cameroon is a beautiful, diverse nation being bled dry by a leadership that refuses to let go, even as its grip turns to dust. We are waiting for a morning that feels a lifetime away, asking the world to finally look at us–not as a statistic, but as a people who deserve to be seen.
