OPINION: Double-Standards or Learning from Past Errors? Glaring Differences in Biya’s Treatment of Anglophone Protests vs the Post-Oct 12 Protests
By Blessed E. Ngoe (PhD)
When protests erupted after Cameroon’s October 12 presidential election, the country braced for another storm. Crowds filled the streets of Douala, Yaoundé, Bafoussam, and Garoua—angry, yet largely peaceful at first. What followed, however, revealed something striking: unlike in the Anglophone Crisis, the Biya government’s response this time was measured. Soldiers were filmed reasoning with protesters, urging calm, while prefects and mayors walked through marketplaces, pleading with citizens to reopen shops and keep the peace. The tone was softer, the approach surprisingly humane.
This moment forces an uncomfortable question: has the Cameroonian government learned from its past, or is it practicing double standards?
Nine years ago, when the Anglophone Crisis broke out, it was not a war; it was a plea. Lawyers, teachers, and students in the North West and South West regions came out peacefully to demand fairness, inclusion, and respect. Their tools were chalk, placards, and robes—not guns. Yet the government responded with brute force. Lawyers were beaten in the streets, teachers were manhandled by police, and students were jailed for daring to demand better.
Within months, rhetoric from government officials grew poisonous, with some of them calling Anglophones “dogs” and “cockroaches.” The message was clear: dissent from the periphery was to be crushed, not heard. President Paul Biya escalated matters further by labeling protesters “terrorists” and vowing to crush them. Entire villages were razed in those early days of the crisis, and children, farmers, and the elderly were killed. What began as a peaceful plea for reform became a protracted war that still bleeds nine years later.
In recent days, we’ve seen the same government that once militarized two regions now plead for calm in the streets of the capital, Yaounde. On the other side of the Moungo, no towns have been burned, no collective punishment, and no blanket curfews fhave ollowed the demonstrations. Instead of arrests and raids, we hear words of empathy. Soldiers now “reason” with citizens who they say loot and burn, while administrators appeal for dialogue.
Why this new tenderness from Biya’s regime? Why was dialogue impossible when the protesters were Anglophones? Are the French-speaking protesters somehow more human, more reasonable, or more deserving of compassion? Or has the government finally realized that violence only deepens national wounds?
If this is genuine learning, why does the Anglophone Conflict remain unresolved? Why do families in Bamenda, Nkambe, Mamfe, Kumba, and Mundemba still live under the shadow of fear? Why are schools still closed, and communities still haunted by trauma and displacement?
Perhaps the answer lies in Cameroon’s hierarchy of belonging. When dissent comes from the margins, it is criminalized; when it arises from the center, it is understood. The same leaders who branded peaceful teachers as “terrorists” now preach unity and dialogue when their own base takes to the streets. This is not growth; it is convenience disguised as wisdom.
But history has a memory longer than the government’s convenience. A nation cannot heal through selective justice or strategic compassion. The true test of leadership is not in how one softly treats allies but in how one justly responds to dissent.
If Cameroon is truly learning, then that learning must begin with truth—an honest reckoning with the past, an apology for the lives destroyed, and a renewed commitment to dialogue and dignity for all citizens. Until then, every call for peace in one region will echo as hypocrisy in the other.
For peace to mean anything, it must be equal. A government that reasons with some and represses others cannot claim moral authority. The wounds of the Anglophone regions will not close through silence or selective sympathy. Cameroon’s redemption lies not in managing crises differently but in valuing every citizen equally before the crisis begins. Until that day, each protest—whether in Bamenda or Yaoundé—will stand as a mirror, reflecting not only our divisions but the nation’s unhealed conscience.
Author’s bio:
Dr. Blessed E. Ngoe is a researcher and assistant professor of Communication at Illinois College in Illinois, USA. His work explores intercultural dialogue, political and organizational communication, and social justice in Africa. He earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Colorado Boulder, where his research examined collaboration and conflict in Anglophone Cameroon.
