Cameroon’s cowardly intellectuals: They fall over one another telling the story of Obama but stop just short of drawing appropriate lessons for Biya..

Barack Obama the new US president is in more than just a few respects an extraordinary person. His charisma and brilliance were very much in evidence during the nearly two-year campaign that took him to the White House.

During that time the American media were replete with discussion on the man. Four books were published on Obama, he himself having written two. So far there is hardly any aspects of the new president, his wife and two daughters that have not been sufficiently exposed.
Obama and his electoral campaign were rousing not only to Americans but also to the rest of the world where the new president continues to enjoy much popularity.
It is also understandable that the enthusiasm of Cameroonians also found expression in the media where journalists and academics have had a field day commenting on the Obama phenomenon.
They have equally shared with their listeners the lessons they draw from the phenomenal rise of an African American, a minority American, to the presidency of the most powerful nation in the world.
One fact that has not been given sufficient enough attention is the political and social system that permits a gifted minority person like Barack Obama to find easy upward mobility.
Unrelenting hard work, natural brilliance, high academic success and excellent character would not have taken Barack Obama very far had the American society not allowed equal opportunity for all of its citizens.
Equal opportunity for all is in the end the great lesson for Cameroon deriving from the Obama rise, with all due respect to the admirable personal qualities of the new president.
We all know that in Cameroon there is still tribalism, nepotism, favouritism, rigged elections and many more social ills which combine to deny the Obamas of Cameroon the opportunity to put their extraordinary gifts at the service of the nation.
This is the clear and unmistakable lesson that the noisy academics who eagerly assume the rostrum of the public media stop short of drawing. Yet it is the only lesson there is to tell anybody by a Cameroonian commentator on Obama.
It is in the same spirit that Jean Emmanuel Pondi beat all the others to write a book on Obama. Missing the point altogether Pondi tells his readers to work hard and lift themselves like Obama!
Why would the brilliant professor make such a monumental error of avoiding the real lesson of Obama for Cameroon which lies not so much in the person of Obama but in the society that opens the way for the likes of Obama from minority groups and race to rise to the top.
We dare to say that intellectuals have failed the most in contributing to resolve the hugely unbalanced political equation of Cameroon. Each time they come out they are either validating the political blunders of the Biya-regime or being cowardly prudent enough to steer clear of addressing the regime.
That posture, no doubt, is also a choice. But then comes the question: why should a Cameroonian read a Cameroonian writer instead of an American on Obama if the Cameroonian is not going all the way to draw the truly instructive lesson for Cameroon from the Obama story?
The lesson stares us all in the face. Let the cowardly intellectuals keep pretending they do not see. They will see when the time comes.