Dictators fall when three blades descend together: loss of legitimacy, loss of capacity, and loss of impunity. Biya is already bleeding legitimacy. Capacity erodes as a state governs by permanent emergency. Impunity collapses when crimes are documented, named, and pursued without pause. History does not negotiate with men like Biya. It removes them.
By The Independentist Editorial Desk
History is not confused about tyranny. It is repetitive, blunt, and unforgiving. Across continents and ideologies, the record shows one constant truth: dictators do not reform because they are persuaded. They are ended by collapse, by law finally catching up, by force, or by death. Power does not educate them; it insulates them.
Consider Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Franco, Idi Amin, and Sani Abacha. None learned restraint from dialogue. None corrected course because citizens pleaded well. Each exited power only when circumstances forced the issue—defeat, death, exile, or the slow grind of accountability after the fact. This is not ideology. It is pattern recognition.
Now apply that pattern to Paul Biya. For over four decades, Biya has ruled Cameroon by perfecting the mechanics of permanence: elections emptied of consequence, institutions hollowed into rituals, repression professionalized and normalized. When Ambazonians raised lawful grievances, the response was not reform but fire—villages burned, civilians displaced, lives erased, and denial wrapped in the language of sovereignty. To expect transformation from such a system is not optimism; it is historical amnesia.
What history teaches—without apology.
Hitler did not negotiate his way out of tyranny. His regime ended only in total defeat and ruin. Every concession merely sharpened the appetite for more. Stalin ruled until death. The terror state could not reform itself while he lived; dismantling began only after his absence. Pinochet relinquished power only under irresistible pressure—referendum defeat, international scrutiny, and courts—long after the crimes. Franco died in office. Spain’s renewal came after him, not through him. Idi Amin’s reign ended in flight and exile after regional military defeat; terror did not mellow, it collapsed when force and isolation closed in. Abacha ruled by fear and looting until sudden death removed him; accountability began only after he was gone and stolen assets were traced abroad. Different flags. Same ending. Personal rule is immune to persuasion.
What not to do—Biya’s playbook of failure.
Longevity masquerading as legitimacy. Time in office does not convert coercion into consent. Criminalizing dissent does not pacify; it radicalizes and internationalizes the conflict. Staged dialogue without transfer of power buys headlines, not peace. Betting on fatigue misunderstands human memory; peoples tire, but injustices compound. This path does not end in stability. It ends in rupture.
The contrast—Sako’s approach to defeat tyranny.
Against this record stands Samuel Ikome Sako and the Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. The contrast is not rhetorical; it is strategic. Law before force through documentation, international filings, and diplomatic engagement that shrink impunity rather than expand bloodshed. Legitimacy before power anchored in consent, representation, and coalition-building. Pressure without surrender that isolates the regime rather than legitimizes it. Future-minded governance that designs institutions for the day after victory, because liberation without order is not freedom. This is not naïveté. It is a sober reading of history. You do not ask a dictator to learn; you constrain him. You do not wait for mercy; you build leverage—legal, diplomatic, moral, and material.
The guillotine truth.
Dictators fall when three blades descend together: loss of legitimacy, loss of capacity, and loss of impunity. Biya is already bleeding legitimacy. Capacity erodes as a state governs by permanent emergency. Impunity collapses when crimes are documented, named, and pursued without pause. History does not negotiate with men like Biya. It removes them.
The lesson from Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Franco, Idi Amin, and Abacha is not that tyranny always falls quickly. It is that it never reforms itself. The only variable is the cost paid before the end. Ambazonia’s task, therefore, is not to beg a dictator to learn—but to finish the lesson history has already written.
The Independentist Editorial Desk
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