Dr.Joseph Dion Ngute the heavily guarded PM on assignment.
By Joseph FritzMcBobe, Local Correspondent Embedded in Convoy.
THE CONVOY THAT FROZE A CITY
Bamenda’s twilight usually smells of roasted plantains and diesel fumes. Last night it smelled of fear. Thirty-two armored vehicles, two ambulances, and an electronic-warfare van snaked through Matazem Pass, headlights off, escorted by a helicopter that hovered like a metal vulture above Mile 11. At the center of the column sat Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute—Cameroon’s highest-ranking “Anglophone” in Paul Biya’s Francophone court—arriving for a three-day “working visit.”
Locals whispered that the convoy looked less like a government tour and more like an occupying army returning to its forward operating base. Children in Bamendakwe counted eighteen long-barreled rifles pointed from pickup beds toward the dark hills; vendors were ordered to shutter kiosks by 5 p.m. “He travels like a governor in a foreign land,” a retired teacher muttered, “because that’s exactly what Bamenda has become to Yaoundé: conquered territory.”
NO AGENDA—ONLY STAGE PROPS
Official communiqués promised a “7th Steering Committee Session” of the Presidential Plan for Reconstruction and Development (PPRD-NW/SW) and a few stone-laying ceremonies for roads, a micro-stadium, and a bore-hole.
Yet insiders in the PM’s entourage leaked that no project files were placed in his briefing binder—only press talking points, security protocols, and a single instruction from the Presidency: “Appear confident.”
Contractors had frantically resurfaced 800 m of asphalt around the “proximity stadium” hours before his arrival, dumping quick-dry paint over unbolted goalposts so the ribbon-cutting photos would sparkle. The stadium itself is funded by UNDP, not Yaoundé. Behind the cameras, the grass lies yellow, the locker rooms flood when it rains, and the Bamenda-Babadjou road remains cratered and mined just two kilometers away.
WHISPERS OF COLLAPSE IN THE CAPITAL
While Dion Ngute shuttles between choreographed site visits, ministers in Yaoundé are jumping ship—resigning to run against their own emperor. Employment Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary quit last week; Tourism Minister Bello Bouba Maigari followed days later. Two junior ministers from the Grand North have quietly filed notices as well. In private, aides admit the PM’s Bamenda detour is meant to project “normalcy” while the Biya edifice cracks.
Yet nothing feels normal on Commercial Avenue. Snipers perch atop Ecobank, gendarmes frisk boda-boda riders for “separatist pamphlets,” and a mobile jammer blacks out WhatsApp voice calls within a one-kilometer radius whenever the PM’s SUV idles. Women’s groups invited to “dialogue” were allotted five minutes each—under the gaze of plainclothes DST officers—before being herded out a side door.
COLONIAL ECHOES, FRANCOPHONE STRINGS
Ngute’s performance eerily mirrors the French “pose-over-purpose” culture skewered in The I Hate the French Official Handbook—the satire your earlier editorial revived. Yaoundé’s scriptwriters learned from Paris: Appear, announce, leave; never concede power. The PM’s grand entrance, empty portfolio, and suffocating security bubble illustrate the template Biya distilled in Communal Liberalism—Cameroon’s own Mein Kampf for assimilation.
Inside his armored Lexus, Ngute reportedly clutched a speech titled “Consolidating Peace Through Reconstruction.” Outside, Special Forces scanned rooftops for RPGs—proof that peace is a talking point, not a lived reality.
THE EMPIRE ON LIFE-SUPPORT
Bamenda’s streets shout a verdict the state media will not broadcast: The empire is dying; its envoys know it. The convoy, the snipers, the ceremonial stones, even Dion Ngute himself—these are respirators keeping a comatose regime twitching. Every ministerial resignation in Yaoundé yanks another tube. The PM’s visit is less an act of governance than a bedside vigil.
“Reconstruction without liberation is decoration,” a Catholic priest murmured after midnight mass. He watched the convoy’s taillights disappear toward Up-Station and added, “When decorators travel with battalions, you know the house is already condemned.”
Reporting from Bamenda’s ghost-lit crossroads, this is Joseph FritzMcBobe for The Independentist.
