COMMENTARY: Cameroon does not need prayers – it needs action

By Hans Ngala

As discussions around elections ramp up across the country, many Cameroonian Christians are turning to prayer. They are imploring God to intervene in the situation of Cameroon because it is beyond them. While this is a good gesture, it brings to mind Jesus’ Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30, which illustrates the importance of responsible stewardship and the consequences of neglecting entrusted resources or opportunities.
In the parable, the first two servants invest their talents and make a good return (profit) on them, while the third servant (which I believe represents Cameroonians) takes theirs and buries them. God has endowed Cameroon with many talents (or resources). We have abundant minerals, forests, rivers, plants and plenty of sunshine and arable land. It should be unheard of for Cameroon to be importing any kind of food because we can grow it all here sufficiently and feed the country and even neighboring countries. Cameroon has giant rivers and waterfalls, which can be harnessed to supply constant hydro-power, and if we want to generate clean and renewable energy, we have an abundance of sunshine in most parts of the country.
Don’t even get me started on the untapped tourist potential of the country. Mount Cameroon is the sole volcanic mountain and the highest point in West and Central Africa. Cameroon is home to a diverse number of animal species, human ethnicities, music, languages, cultures, et,c and yet, Cameroon is ranked as one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in the world.
In 2020, hundreds of millions meant for combating COVID-19 disappeared into thin air under President Biya’s watch, and yet, not much has happened to those who should normally have been behind bars for such a scandal.
On almost a daily basis, Cameroonians either lose their lives or those who are fortunate, lose their limbs in road accidents, either because of the poor state of roads, lack of maintenance on cars or both – all enabled by the suffocating corruption of public officials who are supposed to enforce traffic laws.
Instead of facing these challenges head-on and with practical solutions, Cameroonians prefer to pester God with endless prayers. God who has given Cameroonians all that they need to thrive and survive, must be disappointed when he looks down from Heaven and sees Cameroonians fleeing to Europe and America, risking life and limb on tiny, inflatable boats – fleeing from all the riches he has endowed Cameroon with, to go and wash dishes or tend gardens in Europe or America.
Cameroonians can rather take a page from Americans. Last Saturday, millions of Americans marched all over their country, calling for President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to keep their “Hands Off” of things like political speech, Medicare, etc. They were protesting what they saw as an overreach of Trump’s presidency. They took concrete action and made their voices heard.
During the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s in the US, religious leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr did not just sit and pray; they took concrete action, making their voices heard in the public square.
The same happened a few decades later in South Afric,a where religious leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu led street protests against the Apartheid regime. Tutu knew when to pray and when to act. Cameroonians don’t seem to have a sense of the latter, focusing entirely on the former.
Cameroonians cannot afford to be like the servant in the Parable of the Talents, which I referenced earlier – the one who took his Master’s talent and buried it, trying to please the master by simply giving back to the Master what the Master gave him.
We must stop being the servant who buried his talent. Cameroon does not need more prayers — it needs strategy. It does not need more fasting — it needs vision. It does not need more silence—it needs speech. If we are truly people of faith, then let that faith be seen in our actions — in our resolve to speak truth to power, hold our leaders accountable, and create a new dawn in Cameroon.