“Youth, import substitution and economic patriotism for the progress of Cameroon“, such is the official theme of the 58th Youth Day celebrated this 2024 year. They could have found a more relevant one, such as: “youth, education and creation of wealth and jobs “. But they prefer to consider hollow terms as “economic patriotism” to ignore the harsh reality that Cameroonian youth is confronted to.
The celebration of this edition of the Youth Day comes at a time when, more than ever, Cameroon is at the bottom of the collapse of moral reference points.
Our youth has been methodically sacrificed by the so -called “New Deal” regime for several decades in a rare political cynicism; this regime has built a whole strategy to keep youth distant from its legitimate concerns relating to their future, in particular the encouragement to complacency and to all kinds of debauchery.
Alcoholism, sexual deviations, the consumption of narcotics, the uncontrolled expansion of religious associations with the derives and abuses of all kinds, the grip of various sects on society, addiction to gambling activities, endemic moral corruption, the search for easiness, rejection of effort etc. It is a cocktail that puts the conscience at sleep, and puts youth in the inability to play their role as a reservoir of energy and creativity and engine of the dynamics of social, economic, scientific and technological development.
The power is, at this point, afraid of the youth that they have sacrificed without hesitation, keeping them far from politics in particular of the exercise of the right to vote.
Indeed, how to understand that between 14 and 18 years old, a young person, although under-age, is criminally responsible and can therefore be tried and sentenced, and thrown in prison, that at 18 a young person can be recruited as a soldier or element of the security forces and therefore professionally empowered to kill, if the rules of engagement or the circumstances require him to do so, but that he should wait for the age of 20 to have the right to participate in the political life of his country?
In the debauchery society manufactured and sold to our youth by the power through sulphurous influencers, it is not surprising to note that the youth environment is dominated by crime, including in schools: rapes, murders, assassinations, various trafficking, hard drugs, cybercrime, kidnappings against ransoms, incivility etc., these crimes and many others of which are victims and/ or authors more and more young people bear witness to the great moral disintegration of the environment in which our youth bathes.
Confronted with this unforgiving universe, where violence and all kinds of crime dominate, this youth, which represents more than half of the population, has made a dream of its own:
Emigration at all cost, including at the price of their life. Yet, under this very dark painting, which unfortunately reflects reality, some of them have the lucidity and the courage to refuse the sinking to which the power has condemned our youth. They are fighting with all the forces to stay morally up, and above all, they work for their future. I congratulate them and encourage them.
In this contest of moral deliquescence and desperation that I have just mentioned, the theme “youth, import substitution and economic patriotism for the progress of Cameroon” is an off-topic, as only the power has the secret. Indeed, inviting the youth to consume local instead of imported products is to make the false assumption that they would be responsible for the flight of currencies and the chronic inability of the government to create attractive conditions for the harmonious industrial and economic development conducive to more jobs.
This 58th National Day comes on the eve of a major political turning-point for our country. There is no need to remind young people that their future will be decided upon in the municipal, legislative and presidential elections of next year.
I therefore invite young people aged at least 20 years old to go and register on the electoral lists, in numbers, to become actors of change and therefore of their future.
Long live the Cameroonian youth! Long live Cameroon!
Maurice KAMTO,
CRM National President,
APC candidate for the 2025 presidential election
