The wind has shifted. And in that shift lies the clearest sign yet that the Biyameroun system is running out of both time and consent.
By The Independentist Political Desk
October 9, 2025
Across the length and breadth of Cameroun, frustration with Paul Biya’s regime has reached a boiling point. From the far-northern town of Maroua to the forested hinterlands of the Centre Region, ordinary citizens are venting their anger in ways not seen since the post-2008 food riots. The ongoing presidential campaign has peeled back the layers of propaganda, revealing a government that thrives on broken promises, militarized repression, and elite indifference.
Symbols of a Collapsing Force
A set of distinctive berets recently found on a roadside in Maroua has triggered widespread speculation. Their design unmistakably identifies them as belonging to elite corps within the Biyameroun military. But their owners were nowhere to be found. Locals whisper that they either abandoned them after a night of heavy drinking on #Bilibili, the popular local brew, or more likely, deserted to join one of the growing number of rebel factions proliferating across the country.
This incident has become emblematic of a deeper rot within the regime’s once-fearsome security architecture. Increasingly demoralized soldiers, unpaid for months and deployed without clear strategy, are turning their backs on a government that has failed to deliver either peace or prosperity.
Biya’s Insulting Return to Maroua
Paul Biya’s recent visit to Maroua — his first major campaign stop — was meant to project authority and rally support in the north, a region long treated as a reservoir of votes. Instead, it triggered widespread anger. Citizens have not forgotten his 2018 campaign promise to drill 3,000 boreholes in the region. Seven years later, not a single borehole was completed.
The President returned not with water, schools, or hospitals, but with another round of empty pledges, ignoring the searing droughts, rising food prices, and crumbling infrastructure that define daily life in the north. To many, his visit felt less like a campaign stop and more like a calculated insult.
The Man of Empty Promises
From Maroua to the Ring Road in Bamenda, from Tiko to Bertoua, Paul Biya’s trail is littered with broken promises. Roads have remained on paper, boreholes were never drilled, hospitals stand unfinished, and schools have collapsed under neglect.
He alone may forget his words once the campaign convoy rolls on, but the victims never do. Communities have endured decades of unfulfilled pledges — and in 2025, the chickens are finally coming home to roost. Citizens are openly questioning how many more times they are expected to believe the same speeches from the same man, without seeing results.
The North Is Not Alone
The anger in Maroua mirrors nationwide sentiment. In Douala, transport unions have threatened strikes over rising fuel prices and taxation. In Yaoundé, students are increasingly defiant in their criticism of corruption and unemployment. In Ambazonia, the war of occupation has drained lives and resources with no political solution in sight. Even in the East Region — once the stronghold of regime loyalty — murmurs of discontent are spreading as roads collapse and basic services vanish.
A Regime Running on Borrowed Time
At 92, Paul Biya continues to cling to power, running what many Cameroonians describe as a “remote-controlled presidency,” issuing decrees from his Swiss hotel suites while delegating governance to a tight circle of unelected courtiers. The disconnect between the ruling elite and the population has grown unbridgeable.
This year’s campaign has therefore become less about promises and more about public reckoning. Citizens are openly mocking the regime’s recycled slogans and staging impromptu protests during rallies. For the first time in decades, the aura of fear around the Biya state is visibly cracking.
Conclusion: The Wind Has Shifted
The sight of abandoned military berets in Maroua is more than a curiosity — it’s a metaphor for a regime unraveling under the weight of its own contradictions. As Biya embarks on yet another campaign of promises he has no intention of keeping, the people are responding not with applause but with anger, laughter, and defiance.
The wind has shifted. And in that shift lies the clearest sign yet that the Biyameroun system is running out of both time and consent.
The Independentist Political Desk
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