Tension after constitutional revision: Are security services cashing in on public disapproval?

The Biya regime is not at ease with itself. Suspicious of enemy action, it has posted armed troops all over.
But where is the enemy? Is it not the security services creating the atmosphere of uncertainty in
order to milk the regime? That is what the government is tending to believe

By Roland Akong Wuwih in Yaounde

After last week’s assembly vote of the constitutional revision that keeps Biya in office after 2011, the
Yaounde authorities are gripped by fears of an uprising. This has led to the militarisation of the
main towns of the five provinces that participated in last February anti-government riots.

Government is so unsure of itself that a planned trip out of the country last Saturday by President Paul
Biya was canceled at the last minute.

After lengthy meetings the exact source of the tension does not seem to be clear to the government. On Monday afternoon however, the government began to work on the hypothesis that much of the tension was being created by security forces themselves, as a way of obtaining funds from the government.

Our sources say that this is a technique that has sometimes been used, and the government was working on
the possibility that, given the unpopular nature of the constitutional revision and the February uprising
to challenge it there couldn’t be a better time for security chiefs to rake in a huge financial haul.

But that was only one perspective of the present state of uncertainty.

A security commentator admitted that the placement of armed troops all the towns was itself tension
generating. In parts of the South West, the government is reported to have given orders to shoot on sight
anyone seen destroying anything or behaving unusually.