CAMEROON: WHEN ROADS TURN INTO GRAVEYARDS AND THE STATE ACTS AS THE GRAVEDIGGER

By Franck Gutenberg
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A Nation Mourning in Silence

Cameroon is in a state of permanent mourning not due to a natural disaster but because of a pervasive, normalized scourge: road accidents. Each week, entire families are shattered on national highways, which have become corridors of death. Official statistics report over 1,500 deaths annually, a figure that is widely believed to be underestimated, as many tragedies remain unreported and uninvestigated.

Even today, in Konzou, near Melon, yet another accident claimed lives in total indifference: No official statement, no national mourning, only cries stifled by a government deaf to the suffering of its people.

The Scandal of Phantom Roads

The causes of this ongoing tragedy are well known:

  • Dilapidated roads, unpaved, unlit, sometimes impassable even in city centers;
  • Widespread corruption at checkpoints, where decrepit vehicles continue to circulate for a few banknotes;
  • Overloaded vehicles, untrained drivers, decrepit intercity buses;
  • Despite billions of CFA francs budgeted and “consumed” every year, there is a total absence of road maintenance.

Striking Examples:

  • The Yaoundé–Bafoussam road, a vital artery, has become an open-air graveyard.
  • The Douala–Bangangté axis, now a yawning trench where every trip is a leap into the unknown.

Meanwhile, billions of taxpayers’ money are methodically siphoned off into ghost projects such as:

  • The Olembe Stadium, “with its four-star hotel and Olympic pool under the stands,” devouring 163 billion FCFA and still unfinished.
  • The Japoma Stadium, already cracking despite the billions invested.

Ministries or Embezzlement Agencies?

The Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Sports illustrate the collapse of a predatory State:

  • Massive overbilling;
  • Unfinished projects;
  • Public fund embezzlement turned into a national sport;
  • Political score-settling disguised as governance.

Every stolen franc is:

  • A road left unpaved,
  • A school left unbuilt,
  • An ambulance that never arrives.

Each act of embezzlement shatters a Cameroonian life.

Silence as a Tool of Oppression

After every tragedy:

  • A few official tweets,
  • A quick visit by a sub-prefect,
  • A so-called “investigation” whose results are never made public.

No moment of silence.
No policy shift.
Not even a shred of shame.

Why such indifference?
Because people in distress are easier to manipulate.
As long as the living are desperate, they will beg for survival rather than demand justice.

A Call for a National Awakening

Cameroon does not lack money.
It lacks honest leaders and a true civic awakening.

As long as this mafia-like system is tolerated, as long as the guilty sleep peacefully, as long as impunity reigns,
Cameroon’s roads will continue to kill.

Cameroon does not need:

  • Another commission;
  • Another audit;
  • Yet another failed action plan.

What Cameroon needs:

  • A national emergency plan to rehabilitate its roads;
  • A strict and transparent road safety policy;
  • Serious judicial prosecutions against embezzlers;
  • Transparent and accountable governance.

A nation that cannot guarantee the safety of its roads is a nation in moral collapse. And a nation that allows its children to die on its roads is complicit in its own downfall.

“Cameroonians, how many more deaths will it take before outrage becomes revolution?”

You have been warned.