It is this Yindo Tangeh–like disposition that President Biya displayed once again on December 31, 2025, during his State of the Nation address — a pattern repeated consistently since he took power in 1982. Just as Tangeh blamed birds, wildfires, and chance for his empty barns, the presidency habitually points to external forces to excuse systemic failure.
By Colbert Gwain | The Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor) for The Independentistnews
As fireworks lit the sky across Cameroon on December 31, 2025, announcing the arrival of 2026, so too did promises fill the air during President Paul Biya’s New Year address. But on the streets, the same frustrations linger: potholes, power outages, and unanswered calls for reform. Once again, citizens are left applauding speeches while change remains stubbornly out of reach.
In Muteff village, near Abuh, in Fundong Local Government Area (LGA), Boyo County, there lived a man of curious contradictions: Yindo Tangeh. Nature had taken nearly everything from him, leaving only his gift of words — lofty, inspiring, and just frustrating enough to leave visitors scratching their heads.
He welcomed anyone with a generous serving of cola nuts, yet when it came to a proper meal, he offered only a few roasted plantains, explaining that birds had devoured all the corn his wives had grown near the thick Angheli forest. At other times, he claimed the few surviving maize ears were later consumed by a wildfire that had mysteriously leapt from a neighbouring bush. No matter the explanation, there was always some grand external cause for his meagre harvests — while his neighbours, facing the same birds and fires, diligently fire-traced their fields and set up scarecrows to protect their yields. With Yindo Tangeh, hope and exasperation were always served in equal measure.
It is this Yindo Tangeh–like disposition that President Biya displayed once again on December 31, 2025, during his State of the Nation address — a pattern repeated consistently since he took power in 1982. Just as Tangeh blamed birds, wildfires, and chance for his empty barns, the presidency habitually points to external forces to excuse systemic failure. Yet the underlying causes are widely known: inertia, corruption, embezzlement, and chronic mismanagement.
When President Biya launched his re-election campaign in Maroua, on October 7, 2025, ahead of the October 12 presidential election, he announced — much like Tangeh explaining his empty barns — that a team had already been assembled to design strategies for the next administration. The message was clear: preparations were complete, the groundwork laid, and the president would “hit the ground running” from day one of a new mandate.
On November 6, 2025, during his oath-taking ceremony for yet another term in office, Biya repeated the same assurances, placing renewed emphasis on women and youth as priorities of his new “septennate” — a concept still undefined. Two months later, on December 31, he returned to the national stage only to restate, almost verbatim, the same commitments.
Like Yindo Tangeh blaming birds and bushfires, the presidency continues to offer explanations rather than results. Meanwhile, the government in Yaoundé drifts in visible inertia as the old guard awaits the formation of a new cabinet. Two months into a seven-year mandate, action has once again been replaced by rhetoric, urgency by reassurance, and governance by excuse. As the Kom adage puts it: “imætɨ ɨwùyn.” If the opening months are any indication, the nation may already be witnessing another term spent explaining failure rather than delivering progress.
If Yindo Tangeh were a state, he would be Cameroon. And if Cameroon were a farmer, it would still be explaining why the barns are empty — sixty-five years after the first seeds were planted.
Like Tangeh, the state receives visitors with eloquence. Speeches are polished, intentions generously served, and explanations offered in abundance. Yet when citizens ask for food — roads that last beyond one rainy season, electricity that stays on, water that is safe to drink — they are handed roasted promises and told the birds were unusually aggressive this year, the bushfires unusually stubborn, and the global winds unusually hostile.
Consider the roads. On paper, the state boasts 121,873 kilometres. In reality, only 10,576 kilometres are tarred — about 8.6 percent. The rest exist largely as intention, aspiration, or seasonal suggestion. For every ten kilometres promised, one is paved and nine are explained away. Like Tangeh’s farms, the land is vast, the excuses convincing, but the harvest embarrassingly small.
Electricity follows the same logic. Officially, 72 percent of households are said to “have access” to power — a statistic that shines brightly in reports. In practice, access often means watching power lines pass overhead like migrating birds: visible, unreachable, indifferent. Rural LGAs and entire counties remain in darkness, reassured that the grid has arrived, even if light never did.
Water, too, is explained rather than delivered. Outside major urban centres, millions still drink from unprotected wells and surface sources, walking an average of 2.4 kilometres daily in search of what should flow from a tap. Like Tangeh’s scorched maize, the problem is never planning — it is always circumstance.
Healthcare completes the portrait. With less than two percent of the population covered by private health insurance and overall social protection below 6.5 percent, illness remains a personal misfortune rather than a public responsibility. Most citizens pay out of pocket, learning too late that sickness is the one expense the state does not subsidise — only sympathise with.
Education, constitutionally guaranteed, fares no better. Schools without water, classrooms without desks, teachers without materials — and yet policies without end. Public spending on education stands at 2.6 percent of GDP, far below international benchmarks, ensuring overcrowded classrooms and under-resourced futures. Like Tangeh’s scarecrow-less farms, the damage is predictable, preventable, and perpetually postponed.
And so the pattern endures. Every season begins with confidence; every failure ends with explanation. The state, like Yindo Tangeh, is never short of reasons — only of results. The birds are blamed. The weather is blamed. The global economy is blamed. Time itself is blamed.
What is never blamed is the refusal to act with urgency, the comfort of inertia, or a system that has perfected the art of governing by excuse.
In the end, the country is not starving for ideas. It is starving for delivery. And until the harvest replaces the speech, the nation will continue to eat words — and sleep hungry.
This reality echoes the argument advanced by Chinua Achebe in his 1983 book The Trouble with Nigeria, where he concluded that national failure stems not from people or geography but from leadership collapse. Cameroon’s predicament is no different. Its leaders have consistently prioritised personal gain over national development, transforming corruption, embezzlement, and mismanagement into a system of governance. In 2023, the national anti-corruption agency, CONAC, disclosed that over 114 billion francs were lost to corruption in a single year. Yet President Biya’s New Year address made no mention of this scourge.
Diversity — which should be an asset — continues instead to be manipulated as a political tool for maintaining power.
Colbert Gwain | The Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)
