By Tata Mbunwe
In a division haunted by decades of under-development, CPDM elites in Lebialem rallied dozens of militants on November 6 to celebrate President Paul Biya’s 44th anniversary in power.
The spectacle, critics say, only exposes the ruling party’s failure to develop an area where the opposition barely exists.
Since Lebialem became a division in 1992, it has had no tarred road connecting it to the rest of the country. It has no urban centre. Roads across all three subdivisions: Fontem, Wabane and Alou, remain largely seasonal, cutting off villages from one another and from basic services.
The vital trans-Lebialem road, which links the three Subdivisions and stretches from Fontem through Alou, Nkong and Bechati to Wabane, remains an eyesore.
Except for administrative headquarters such as Menji, Alou and Wabane, most of the Division has no electricity, no pipe-borne water and no other social amenities.
Vehicles cannot travel to several villages, from Atongeh in Fontem Subdivision to Egumbo in Wabane, because the roads are impassable. Healthcare facilities are recklessly under-equipped and medics are few.
Yet the CPDM has won every municipal and parliamentary election in Lebialem since 1992. The party has held the councils and the parliamentary seat. It has produced a minister in Paul Tasong, the highest-ranking government official from the area. The excuse of opposition strongholds does not apply here. Lebialem is a one-party fiefdom. And still, the roads are dirt, the clinics are few, and the lights are out.
The November 6 celebration, according to observers, was less a testament to Biya’s legacy than an indictment of it. The elites who gathered to praise the president traveled on dirt roads and did so in a division where their own constituents cannot travel to the market, cannot access healthcare, and cannot connect to the national grid.
The area’s political elite, including Tasong, have often been accused of looking only after their own interests while overlooking the wellbeing of ordinary citizens. They travel to Lebialem for political events and to canvass for votes, after which they return to their comfortable abodes in Yaoundé, Douala, Buea and other urban areas.