For the first time since the failed 1984 coup, the Cameroonian army is questioning its own role in preserving the Biya system.
Inside Etoudi, the fear is palpable. Advisers have reportedly warned the President that any attempt at repression in Garoua could provoke defiance — not from the streets, but from within the ranks.
By The Independentist Investigative Desk
In Yaoundé, behind the marble walls of the Ministry of Defence, a quiet tension now hums beneath the surface. For decades, Paul Biya’s generals projected an image of unity — a monolithic force guarding the regime against all storms. But today, that façade is cracking.
According to exclusive revelations from Jeune Afrique, the Cameroonian military — long considered Biya’s final line of defense — is now fighting a war within itself.
The spark of this internal conflict lies far from the presidential palace, in the northern city of Garoua. There, a once-dismissed politician, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, has reemerged as a moral and political disruptor. His fiery speeches, echoing through the North’s dusty streets, have found new listeners — not only among the people but within the barracks themselves.
Generals close to Paul Atanga Nji, the Minister of Territorial Administration, are pushing for a familiar solution: brute force. Their strategy is simple — intimidate early, repress fast, and remind the public who still holds the gun. But not everyone in uniform agrees. Several senior officers, weary of years of endless deployments and empty propaganda, now warn that a violent crackdown in the North could ignite something irreversible — a fracture within the army itself.
One officer, speaking to Jeune Afrique under strict anonymity, offered a confession that would have been unthinkable a few years ago:
“We are exhausted. The government is asking us to fight our own people to protect an aging president. Many of us no longer see that as the army’s duty.”
That single sentence reveals a deeper truth — the moral foundation of the Cameroonian military is eroding. Years of bloody counterinsurgency in Ambazonia have left scars that neither medals nor speeches can heal. Soldiers have watched comrades die for causes they barely understood, while generals built fortunes and politicians played succession games in Yaoundé. The gap between command and conscience has widened beyond repair.
In this vacuum of conviction, Issa Tchiroma’s rhetoric has found oxygen. His calls for the military to “stand with the people” have quietly circulated among officers, spreading like forbidden scripture. It is no longer a fringe whisper — it is a conversation. And according to Jeune Afrique, even within the general staff, debates have begun over the “constitutional limits of obedience.” That phrase — bureaucratic yet revolutionary — signals a seismic shift.
For the first time since the failed 1984 coup, the Cameroonian army is questioning its own role in preserving the Biya system.
Inside Etoudi, the fear is palpable. Advisers have reportedly warned the President that any attempt at repression in Garoua could provoke defiance — not from the streets, but from within the ranks. The old man’s circle now walks on eggshells, torn between enforcing authority and avoiding mutiny.
Meanwhile, Tchiroma’s image grows stronger. In the minds of some soldiers, he is becoming a symbol of rebirth — a man who dares to speak the truth they cannot. His appeal is not ideological; it is emotional. He offers what the regime has long denied them: dignity, purpose, and the illusion of redemption.
This development carries grave implications for the entire Central African sub-region. The same forces that Biya unleashed in Ambazonia are now turning inward. The empire of obedience that once defined the Cameroonian army is decaying under its own contradictions. What began as an attempt to silence Anglophone resistance may now consume the very institution that sustained the state.
If Jeune Afrique’s sources are correct, Cameroon stands on the edge of a historic shift — not through revolution from below, but through corrosion from within. The generals are divided, the troops are demoralized, and the people are restless. The regime’s greatest fear is no longer Ambazonia — it is its own reflection in the mirror of the barracks.
The story of “The Generals and the Shadow of Tchiroma” is not merely about political intrigue; it is about a dying empire’s last defenders questioning their faith.
When the soldiers begin to doubt the cause they serve, the end is no longer a matter of speculation — it is only a matter of time.
— The Independentist investigative Desk
