Until corruption is treated as a public health emergency, until negligence is treated as criminal liability, until state failure is treated as mass manslaughter, there will be no road safety in French Cameroon. Because what they call “accidents” are not accidents at all. They are state-manufactured deaths.
By Ali Dan Ismael Editor-in-Chief The Independentistnews
In French Cameroon, the word accident has become a convenient lie. 7It is a linguistic anesthetic — a soft word used to numb the public to a brutal reality: people are not dying because of bad luck, bad weather, or divine will. They are dying because the state has engineered a system where death is the predictable outcome of policy, corruption, and neglect.
What Yaoundé calls “road accidents” are not tragedies of fate. They are products of systemic failure. Every month, the same images return: weeping passengers, villagers frozen in silence, families gazing at twisted metal and broken bodies by the roadside.
And every month, the same absence follows: No government statement. No accident report. No public investigation. No corrective measures. No accountability. Just silence. Budgets for road construction and maintenance are embezzled, safety funds are diverted, contracts are looted, and no one speaks. Not in parliament. Not in ministries. Not in councils. Not in courtrooms. Silence becomes policy.
A System Designed to Kill
When a bus overturns on a cratered highway, that is not misfortune — it is infrastructure collapse. When a truck with failed brakes kills a family, that is not chance — it is regulatory fraud. When overloaded vehicles plunge into ravines, that is not destiny — it is institutionalized impunity. When motorcycles carry five people without helmets, that is not culture — it is the absence of enforcement. When night travel becomes a death sentence, that is not darkness — it is state abandonment.
Death on Cameroonian roads is not accidental. It is structural.
French Cameroon has built a road-death machine that functions with chilling efficiency: roads awarded through corrupt contracts, built with substandard materials; no meaningful vehicle inspection regime; licenses sold, not earned; police checkpoints turned into extortion booths; transport unions operating without accountability; non-existent safety audits; no data-driven policy; no enforcement culture; no legal consequences; no institutional shame. This is not failure of capacity. It is failure of character. The state does not lack knowledge. It lacks conscience.
The Politics of Coffins
Every mass-casualty crash follows the same ritual: press statements, condolences, “investigations,” silence, no prosecutions, no reforms, no resignations, no structural change. Bodies are buried. Files are buried. Truth is buried. Responsibility is buried. And the system resets — waiting for the next bus, the next truck, the next market day, the next mass grave. This is not governance. It is ritualized negligence.
Corruption Is the Real Speeding Vehicle
Speed does not kill people. Corruption does. Alcohol does not kill people. Corruption does. Overloading does not kill people. Corruption does. Poor road design does not kill people. Corruption does. Because corruption disables every safety mechanism that should protect life. When laws exist but are not enforced, the state becomes complicit. When standards exist but are ignored, the state becomes responsible. When deaths are predictable and repetitive, the state becomes guilty.
A Death Economy
Road carnage in French Cameroon has become an economy: police profit from bribes; officials profit from contracts; elites profit from transport monopolies; hospitals profit from casualties; funeral businesses profit from bodies; politicians profit from silence. Death circulates money. Safety does not.
No More Language Laundering
Calling these deaths “accidents” is moral laundering. There is nothing accidental about known dangerous roads left unrepaired for decades, known dangerous vehicles allowed to operate, known dangerous drivers allowed to drive, known dangerous practices allowed to continue. This is not misfortune. This is policy. This is governance by neglect. This is violence by omission.
The Truth
French Cameroon does not have a road safety crisis. It has a governance crisis. It does not have an accident problem. It has a state accountability problem. It does not suffer from fate. It suffers from institutionalized irresponsibility. People are not dying on the roads. They are being sacrificed by a system that values rent over life.
Final Line
Until corruption is treated as a public health emergency, until negligence is treated as criminal liability, until state failure is treated as mass manslaughter, there will be no road safety in French Cameroon. Because what they call “accidents” are not accidents at all. They are state-manufactured deaths.
Ali Dan Ismael Editor-in-Chief The Independentistnews
