By Adonis Byemelwa
For more than forty years, Paul Biya has ruled Cameroon with an iron grip. At 91, he remains almost invisible in public life, yet determined to extend his reign when Cameroonians head to the polls this October. The ritual is predictable: state coffers fuel campaigns, opposition voices are silenced, and the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
But beneath the official calm, a storm brews—especially among the youth, whose dreams of a better tomorrow have been strangled by decades of corruption and colonial entanglement.
In a searing conversation with journalist Colin Benjamin on WBAI Radio New York, Chief Charles Taku—an accomplished legal practitioner, crusader for justice, and former president of the International Criminal Tribunal Bar—laid bare the depth of Cameroon’s crisis.
His voice carried the weight of history, and his words cut with clarity. “Paul Biya is not accountable to Cameroonians,” Taku declared. “He is accountable to French colonial masters. The elections you see in Cameroon are nothing but a sham.”
It was not the first time Taku had spoken truth to power, but the timing was telling. With the election looming, he traced a line from Cameroon’s past to its suffocating present. And he did so with names and dates that history has tried to erase.
“Look back at our nationalist leaders—Ruben Um Nyobè, Félix-Roland Moumié, Ernest Ouandié,” Taku said, his tone sharpening. “These were the giants who carried Cameroon’s hopes for independence. They wanted a sovereign nation, free from the grip of Paris.
And what happened? The French intelligence services hunted them down. They assassinated them. They massacred tens of thousands of their supporters. That is the legacy on which Biya built his regime.”
The story of Ruben Um Nyobè alone is chilling. Known as the “Mpodol”—the spokesperson for the voiceless—he was a charismatic leader of the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), the party that dared to demand full independence from France.
In 1958, he was tracked down in the forests and executed by French forces, his body dragged through villages as a warning. Two years later, Félix-Roland Moumié, another UPC leader, was poisoned in Geneva by French intelligence. And in 1971, Ernest Ouandié, who had kept the nationalist flame alive, was captured and publicly executed under Biya’s predecessor, Ahmadou Ahidjo.
“These were not accidents,” Taku said. “This was systematic. The French knew that by eliminating our nationalists, they could keep control through proxies. And Paul Biya is the ultimate proxy.”
That proxy has proven devastatingly effective. Since Biya took power in 1982, Cameroon’s constitution has been manipulated to abolish term limits, its judiciary militarized to silence dissent, and its resources funneled outward to serve French interests.
“Our constitution was written by the French,” Taku reminded. “Our economic system is still designed to enrich France. Our petroleum, our plantations, our minerals—they are siphoned off while Cameroonians sink deeper into poverty.”
The statistics tell their own story. More than 40 percent of Cameroonian youth are unemployed. Graduates roam the streets with no opportunities; some are reduced to riding motorcycles for survival. Skilled professionals flee abroad in search of dignity, leaving behind a brain drain that hollows the nation. And those who dare to question the system at home often find themselves facing military courts, indefinite detention, or exile.
“The brightest minds of our nation are being wasted,” Taku lamented. “Political dinosaurs cling to power, suffocating the aspirations of an entire generation. Meanwhile, the people remain trapped in misery, their land looted, their future stolen.”
The tragedy, he argued, is not limited to Cameroon. It is a reflection of Africa’s wider entrapment in neo-colonial chains. From the French military base in Niger to the security arrangements across Francophone Africa, Taku described a pattern of control masked as cooperation.
“We call it sovereignty,” he said, “but what we have is a vessel state. Paris still dictates our currency, our trade, even our education. Nothing moves without their blessing. And Biya is the guarantor of that system.”
At moments, Taku’s voice carried a prophetic urgency. He compared the militarization of Cameroon to the warning signs that preceded the genocide in Rwanda. “What we see in Cameroon today is chillingly similar,” he warned. “Villages burned, youths massacred, scholars jailed without due process. It is a slow-motion genocide against the young people of this country.”
Yet for all his critique, Taku was not resigned to despair. Instead, he called for a radical reimagining of Africa’s future—rooted in Pan-African unity and economic sovereignty.
“We need to process our raw materials here, not ship them abroad for others to profit,” he said. “We need to open our borders to each other, create visa-free travel, and build infrastructure that connects our countries, not just Paris. If we fail to do this, Africa will remain trapped for centuries.”
He drew inspiration from the visionaries of the past—Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania—leaders who dared to dream of a continent free from exploitation. “We need another Pan-African convention,” Taku insisted. “A gathering where Africans themselves decide the rules of the game. Not to beg for aid, but to demand a seat at the global table. To push for economic sovereignty. To ensure that the next Berlin Conference is written by Africans, for Africans.”
Throughout the interview, Taku’s words blended personal grief with defiance. He spoke of traveling across the continent, of reading deeply from Africa’s greatest thinkers, and of seeing firsthand the immense potential buried beneath layers of exploitation.
“Africa has everything it needs to rise,” he said. “But as long as leaders like Biya keep selling out their people for personal power, we will remain trapped. This is not just about Cameroon. It is about the soul of Africa itself.”
Colin Benjamin’s questions allowed Taku to reveal the full depth of his conviction. When asked about the youth, he returned again and again to their plight. “They are the real victims,” Taku said softly. “They are left with no future, no hope. And yet, they are also our greatest strength. If Africa is to break free, it will be the youth who lead the way.”
As the conversation wound down, there was no mistaking the weight of Taku’s warning—or the clarity of his vision. Cameroon’s coming election, he suggested, is not merely a domestic affair. It is a symptom of a wider disease: the persistence of colonial structures masquerading as independence. And unless that system is dismantled, the cycle of exploitation and despair will continue.
“I have seen the footprints of genocide in Uganda, in Darfur, and yes, in Cameroon,” Taku said, his voice heavy with both memory and resolve. “The world turns a blind eye because it benefits from our suffering. But Africa must no longer wait for others to save us. We must stand, together, and fight for ourselves.”
In the quiet that followed, one could sense the weight of history pressing on the present. Cameroon’s struggle is not isolated—it is part of a continental reckoning. And in Chief Charles Taku’s words, there was both a warning and a call: a reminder that the fate of a people cannot be outsourced, and that liberation, once delayed, must still be claimed.
