Narco-Politics: How the Biya Regime Uses Football to Maintain Its Power

Amedee ToukoAmedee Touko

Amedee Touko

Me Amedee Dimitri Touko Tom speaks out on the Fecafoot-Minsep showdown. The lawyer at the Paris Bar accuses Paul Biya’s regime of developing a “narco-politics” to maintain its power. For Me Amedee Dimitri Touko Tom, the regime uses football to anesthetize the people and crush the opposition. The lawyer considers that the blackmail exercised by the Biya regime on the opposition is unacceptable and that Samuel Eto’o must be removed from his position at the head of Fecafoot

Read the release of Me Amedee Dimitri Touko Tom:

The Cameroonian people are gripped by the oldest dictatorship in the world, in the hands of nonagenarian leaders. For its sustainability, this interminable 42-year regime has developed, as has rarely been seen in history, the atomic weapon of what I call narco-politics.

Indeed, the BIYA regime, incapable of offering Cameroonians basic existential security, has plunged them into artificial drug paradises like alcohol, the manufacture, marketing and uncontrolled consumption of which have installed the entire people in a state of very advanced alcoholic satiation, annihilating any fighting spirit in them, allowing them to be a political being.

It is thus that the latter, anesthetized or zombified, his happiness is reduced to bits of pleasures that football, drugs, sex, or even the dream of a better life after death provide him, that the exponential dissemination of Churches that talk about everything, except what would make the faithful happy here and now, are responsible for maintaining.

The paroxysm of this political cynicism was reached when in this Cameroon that lacks everything: roads, electricity, water, schools, hospitals … the BIYA government still found a way to permanently indebt the People by 3000 billion to organize the continental football festival, in order to further drug a people who have an empty stomach. We have seen them boasting about stadiums, real white elephants, unfinished, as if to celebrate a Cameroon that has become brutally prosperous due to the majesty of its outlets for frustrations, its cover-ups.

To increase tenfold the psychodysleptic effects of football drugs, FECAFOOT (Cameroon Football Federation) had to put itself in a position to be able to play its full part in this narco-industry. The candidacy of Samuel ETO’O, an immense footballer with proven popularity, for the presidency of this association, was a godsend for Cameroonian leaders. They gave him all their support and political connections, so that he could crush his rival, Seidou Mbombo Njoya, the outgoing candidate.

And it was done!

But very quickly, the overactivity of Samuel ETO’O, a supporter of the BIYA regime, whose family he is also very close to, led those in power to suspect that he had ambitions that would go beyond the presidency of FECAFOOT. He would have let them show in the communication think-tank in which journalists and other web-influencers meet, set up to magnify his action at the Federation.

For the BIYA regime’s strategists, it did not seem useful to them to directly counter Samuel ETO’O, President of FECAFOOT on the political field, especially since he was only at the beginning of his mandate. Indeed, they hoped that he could, through his aura, through FECAFOOT, do such great good to this moribund regime. They were therefore content to let the best scorer in the history of the Indomitable Lions get involved in money matters and mismanagement, as part of his missions at FECAFOOT. Indeed, the scandalous unfair dismissal of the Portuguese coach Antonio CONCEIÇÂO will cost Cameroon more than a billion CFA francs, the breach of contract deemed abusive with the equipment manufacturer Cop Sportif will ultimately cost Cameroon around ten billion, the nebulous deal with One All Sport, the new equipment manufacturer, is today a masterpiece of managerial stupidity that is aggravated by the history of contracts with a sports betting company and the so-called rigged matches…

It must be said right away that in a normal governance, each of these cases would have given rise to government controls, especially since in many aspects, public funds are at stake, or the initiation of legal action. But faithful to its religion, the strategists of the BIYA regime were content to keep these elements as a wild card in case Samuel ETO’O displayed a certain “political delinquency” (ambition) in their eyes. As in the mafia, they were content to say, “we have it, we are holding on”. No one enters it if they do not have dirty hands.

However, things will rush: the expected sporting results are lacking. Worse, a deleterious climate in football in Cameroon means that in the eyes of the government, Samuel ETO’O no longer seems to be the man so dreamed of, who will help to plunge the people into the myth of their strength, their prosperity, despite their extreme poverty.

We therefore come to the resolution to get rid of the quadruple African Golden Ball, including by using violations of the law, which have become commonplace in Cameroon. Today, unable to obtain the latter’s capitulation, the BIYA regime’s strategists are therefore threatening to release “the files”…

THE BLACKMAIL ORCHESTRATED ON THE CAMEROONIAN OPPOSITION ON THE BASIS OF THE METASTASES OF POOR GOVERNANCE IN CAMEROON AT FECAFOOT IS UNACCEPTABLE

In this politico-sporting magma, Samuel ETO’O’s communicators, who hope to obtain the support of the political opposition to Paul BIYA, believe they must say at the same time that if his ordinary activists and sympathizers continue to be demanding, both with regard to the government, in its management, and with regard to any other entity including FECAFOOT, intervening in public life in Cameroon, they would de facto ally themselves with the government against the opposition.

It must be said right away that such blackmail is unjust and unacceptable to any spirit that loves justice and freedom. The President of FECAFOOT has never been an activist or sympathizer of the opposition, which would naturally owe him recognition and solidarity because of the values ​​he upholds. On the contrary, he has always presented himself as a supporter of BIYA, whose “adoptive” lineage he now claims. In his current quarrels or disputes with certain power holders, his first resort has been to activate his networks within the same power to counter his adversaries. He has not turned to this People, part of whom languish in the jails of this same regime, to overthrow the established order and demand justice for all.

In short, trying to blackmail the people who love change by crudely presenting the war of egos and power within power, as proceeding from CHANGE is an act of intellectual banditry, morally UNACCEPTABLE.

In reality, if Samuel ETO’O’s action at the head of FECAFOOT was crowned with sporting successes that the government dreams of in order to continue to anesthetize the People, this crisis would never have happened, despite the astonishing incompetence and suspicions of embezzlement that the leaders of this association are saddled with.

In fine, if we are on the side of the People, of their political and social emancipation, we must display it. Glory is also used for that, to defend values.

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