The drowning of Paul Biya marks more than the twilight of a ruler; it signals the end of an era — the slow death of a post-colonial empire sustained by fear and French patronage. His reptilian instincts kept him alive longer than conscience should have allowed, but not forever.
By Kemi Ashu, A Contributor, The Independentist
Introduction
For over four decades, Paul Biya has ruled Cameroon with the instincts of a reptile — cold-blooded, patient, and dangerously adaptive. Like a chameleon, he shifted colours to match the power of the moment: blending with France’s post-colonial agenda, the church’s moral façade, and the loyalty of a fearful elite. His mastery of silence and manipulation once made him the continent’s most elusive autocrat. But time, like rising water, eventually catches up with even the craftiest survivor. The same instincts that once preserved Biya’s rule are now dragging him under.
The Reptilian Instinct of Survival
Biya’s gift was never vision — it was survival. When confronted, he froze. When cornered, he struck through proxies. When exposed, he shed allies and adopted new camouflage. For years, this reptilian reflex allowed him to appear unshakable while the state decayed around him.
Yet survival without renewal breeds decay. The silence that once inspired awe has become paralysis. His instinct to rule through fear and distance has turned against him. A leader who prided himself on composure now appears fossilized — a cold statue in a burning room.
Losing Ambazonia, Losing Legitimacy
Biya’s gravest mistake was to treat the Ambazonian crisis as a military inconvenience rather than a political reckoning. Instead of dialogue, he chose domination; instead of justice, he unleashed soldiers on civilians. But brutality cannot drown truth. The people of the former British Southern Cameroons did not yield. Each village burned, each teacher jailed, each child killed became a testimony to the illegitimacy of Yaoundé’s rule.
Ambazonia’s endurance — moral, legal, and political — stripped Biya of the illusion of unity. He lost Ambazonia not only through battlefield defeats but through the bankruptcy of his moral authority. And now, the same rot that consumed his “Union” has begun to devour La République itself.
The Drowning Moment
Like an aging crocodile thrashing in shallow water, Biya is fighting currents he no longer controls. Internal dissent, economic collapse, and the exhaustion of international patience swirl around him. His legendary stillness — once interpreted as wisdom — now reveals inertia.
France, his colonial patron, grows weaker in Africa. Western capitals that once toasted him now fall silent. Within his own party, whispers of succession echo through marble corridors once built to suppress them. Every instinct that once saved him — deceit, delay, denial — now pulls him deeper into the mire of his own making.
The Irony of Survival
Paul Biya survived coups, recessions, scandals, and insurrections. Yet what he cannot survive is truth. The reptilian code of power — deception and suppression — cannot coexist with an awakening citizenry. His system, engineered to silence the people, has been undone by its own cynicism.
Meanwhile, Ambazonia rises — not in vengeance, but in vindication. A people who endured bullets and bans have refused to lose their soul. Their persistence exposes the contrast between Biya’s cold instinct for survival and their warm insistence on justice. As one Ambazonian thinker put it: “We fight like the oppressed, but forgive like the free.” That moral altitude is the surest sign that history’s tide has turned.
Conclusion
The drowning of Paul Biya marks more than the twilight of a ruler; it signals the end of an era — the slow death of a post-colonial empire sustained by fear and French patronage. His reptilian instincts kept him alive longer than conscience should have allowed, but not forever.
Every dictator eventually faces the waterline of truth. And when Biya finally surfaces for air, he will find a new reality waiting — one where the people he tried to drown have learned to breathe without him.
Kemi Ashu
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