By the late 1980s, the once promising pillars of Ambazonian capital had been dismantled. Nangah’s empire was gone. The Cameroon Bank had collapsed. CDC and PWD were shadows of their former selves.
By The Independentist investigative desk
The destruction of Nangah’s business empire in the 1970s was not an isolated case. It was part of a wider, deliberate pattern: the systematic dismantling of Ambazonian economic power to ensure that no indigenous wealth could challenge the dominance of Yaoundé or French corporate interests.
The Rise of Ambazonian Enterprise
In the 1960s, Ambazonia — then Southern Cameroons — was a vibrant economy. Its institutions were strong and locally grounded:
Cameroon Bank (Buea): Founded by Ambazonian entrepreneurs, it was a hub for credit, trade financing, and indigenous business expansion.
Public Works Department (PWD, Bamenda): Not just an engineering unit, but also a driver of industrial innovation, with links to road building, energy, and housing.
Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC, Victoria/Tiko): One of the largest agro-industrial complexes in Africa, employing tens of thousands and generating foreign exchange through bananas, palm oil, and rubber.
Private entrepreneurs like Nangah built on this foundation, adding transport, logistics, and trade networks that connected Ambazonia’s resources to the world market. By the early 1970s, Ambazonian capital was positioned to compete directly with French firms in shipping, banking, and agriculture.
The Weaponization of the State
But as in Nangah’s case, the state in Yaoundé used its machinery to sabotage Ambazonian initiative:
Cameroon Bank was overburdened with state interference, bad loans forced on it by decree, and ultimately liquidated in the 1980s.
PWD projects were deliberately underfunded or dismantled, with contracts shifted to French companies.
CDC became a cash cow for Yaoundé, stripped of reinvestment, and today remains under perpetual threat of privatization and collapse.
Each time Ambazonia showed signs of economic autonomy, Yaoundé tightened the noose. Excessive taxes, state harassment, and selective contract cancellations were the weapons of choice.
The Logic of Françafrique
Behind these moves was the same logic that guided Paris:
Weaken the local elite, so that loyalty, not merit, determined survival.
Keep the economy dependent on French companies for technology, financing, and export routes.
Punish Ambazonia’s independence, both economic and political, to prevent it from becoming an alternative model for the region.
A Legacy of Loss
By the late 1980s, the once promising pillars of Ambazonian capital had been dismantled. Nangah’s empire was gone. The Cameroon Bank had collapsed. CDC and PWD were shadows of their former selves.
What remained was a system where those who thrived did so through patronage, corruption, or intimacy with the regime — while genuine entrepreneurship was suffocated.
AfroLeaks Analysis
The fate of Nangah and the dismantling of Ambazonian enterprises were not accidents of history. They were deliberate acts — part of a “silent war” to erase Ambazonia’s economic backbone and bind its people to a centralized system loyal to Yaoundé and Paris.
The Independentist investigative desk
