Cameroon’s Road to Nowhere: Minister Nalova’s Bamenda Outcry
By Princeley Njukang
As the dust settles over Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute’s recent walking visit to Bamenda, one thing that will likely stay with Cameroonians for a long time is Minister Nalova Lyonga’s scathing assessment of the town’s state of roads. While members of the PM’s delegation at the Bamenda Congress Hall tried to tout the achievements of the Presidential Plan for the Reconstruction and Development of the North West and South West Regions (PPRD), Prof. Nalova was visibly disappointed at the broken road networks in the city, a concern denizens have echoed for years.
Addressing the PPRD steering committee, the minister strongly condemned the deplorable road networks in a city President Biya called his “second home” when he last visited in 2010. “I have to start by saying that I’m completely, completely just shocked by the state of the roads in Bamenda,” she stated.
It was unexpected, perhaps more so from a member of government, especially in Cameroon, where government members are expected to think and speak from the same frame. But there was no falsehood.
Before the PM’s visit, contractors at different road construction sites in Bamenda were seen struggling to cover up the fact that they had been sleeping for months. There were reports of many of them working overnight in places where weeks before, you’d never have guessed that contractors ought to be working. And what happens, now that Dion Ngute is gone? The projects probably return to slumber mode.
For anyone with an active memory, stories about the imminent completion of the Bamenda-Babaju road have become clichéd. Yet in Bamenda, the PM’s delegation reechoed it, promising that the project will be delivered by December 2025.
And it is promises like this, likely to not go beyond catch phrases in the mouths of politicians eager to impress and confound, that no-nonsense Nalova, Minister of another broken sector, Secondary Education, could not wrap her head around. Like you and I, it seems the minister has also grown weary of a regime that talks 100% and delivers 5%, a regime that has failed us, for four decades and counting, miserably. Of this government, which believes it has succeeded in every endeavor, that hypes a 92-year-old man who should be enjoying quiet rest somewhere in the South, as the only one capable of leading Cameroon into emergence. Maybe more correctly, into an emergency.
“And I think what is wrong with roads… I will say, let us not make promises which we cannot fulfill. Let us make a promise, short, even for one month, two months, you do what you said, and the population is going to see that you have done just what you could do within that period. Let’s not make some high-saluting points, and then it turns out that we cannot,” Prof. Nalova advised.
Her statements represent the larger sentiments of Cameroonians, that this government needs to move from a master of promise making to a master of promise fulfilling, or, at least, use the electoral window of 2025 to quit honorably. That last part? It’s unlikely to happen soon. President Biya assured Cameroonians on 10th February 2025 that he remains willing and ready to serve their best interests, so his candidacy, though doubted, is only days from dropping. And that will mean, for all that it’s worth, that the ‘new deal’ government that cannot deliver simple roads to Bamenda, the city of the future, continues to drag us decades backward and tout it as development.
Prof. Nalova, whose criticisms were not new, appears to know what the people feel, although her being minister doubtlessly veils her from the daily woes of you and me. Last year, during a visit to Buea, her words, “these roads are not for human beings,” went viral. But what changed?
Perhaps, only the size of her popularity. The roads in the South West Region, even in Fako, her division of origin, where she serves as Head of the CPDM permanent bureau, keep descending into rot. And yet she is happy to lead the party that landed us in this chasm. That, in this country whose strategy for national development is blame shifting, is not strange.
I remember the Delegate General for National Security, Martin MBARGA NGUELE, complaining about the state of roads in the South West region in November 2024. “I had never experienced this situation before,” he said, referring to the horrible nature of the Mutengene road, the principal entry point into the South West. There he was, telling us that Biya has given instructions, perhaps struggling to indict his colleague of Public Works, whereas his sector is only as bad as the worst.
While many struggle to define the irony of outings such as Nalova’s, one thing is clear. The infighting among members of the CPDM is becoming difficult to keep in, and outings of that nature are the only way you put a colleague in the disgrace seat without realizing that that’s where you all sit. Also, and perhaps even more true to the self-interested way of politics, Prof. Nalova is trying to win the love of the masses so that if the CPDM collapses, as is almost certain, she can recycle herself back to the limelight.
