Friday, 23 October 2026
Fontem Neba, PhD
Scholar, Critic & Civil and Political Rights Advocate
Abstract
This essay critically examines Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute’s reported forecast that the Southern Cameroons conflict could persist for another 10 to 15 years before dying a natural death. It interrogates the political implications of this prediction, particularly government accountability, the limitations of the 2019 Major National Dialogue, and the failure to resolve underlying political grievances. The essay argues that prolonged conflict cannot be addressed through time, exhaustion, or institutional reforms alone. It advocates an inclusive, inter-Southern Cameroonian political dialogue and meaningful negotiations with Cameroun as essential pathways towards a durable settlement, reconciliation, and sustainable peace.
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The Politics of Waiting
There is something profoundly disturbing about a government contemplating another 10 to 15 years before a conflict within its own territory might disappear. It is even more disturbing when the conflict has already consumed human lives, disrupted education, displaced families, destroyed livelihoods, and condemned an entire generation to uncertainty. When Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute suggests that the conflict in Southern Cameroons could “die a natural death,” citizens are entitled to ask whether their government is pursuing peace or simply waiting for the people to become too exhausted to demand it.
The Prime Minister’s reported remarks in Buea on 28 September 2026 raise fundamental questions about the effectiveness of government initiatives, the limitations of the 2019 Major National Dialogue, and the political responsibilities of leadership towards a population that has endured years of suffering.
If another 10 to 15 years pass, the conflict that escalated in 2016 could extend into approximately 2036–2041. For a child growing up amid insecurity, this is not an abstract political forecast but a substantial portion of a lifetime. For a displaced family, it could mean another decade without a permanent home. For young people whose education has been interrupted, it could mean entering adulthood without opportunities that should have been available. For Southern Cameroonians whose political future remains contested, it could mean another decade without credible answers to fundamental questions about governance, institutional identity, and political authority.
The Prime Minister may have intended to describe a possible outcome rather than announce official government policy. Nevertheless, this distinction does not remove the obligation to explain the reasoning behind the forecast or identify measures intended to prevent it from becoming reality. If the statement is a warning, what action does it demand? If it reflects the limitations of existing policies, what will change? And if it is merely a prediction, why should the population accept another decade of uncertainty as a reasonable prospect?
The fundamental concern is whether the government has become so accustomed to managing the conflict that its eventual disappearance is being treated as a substitute for resolving it. Conflicts may end through negotiated settlements, military victories, political transformations, or exhaustion. These outcomes are not equivalent. The disappearance of armed resistance does not necessarily mean that the grievances sustaining it have been addressed. Peace by exhaustion may produce silence, but silence is not necessarily reconciliation.
What the Forecast Really Implies
The Prime Minister’s reported forecast raises questions about whether the government’s existing approach offers a credible pathway to a durable settlement. Seven years after the Major National Dialogue of 2019, the prospect of another decade or more of conflict invites scrutiny of what that process accomplished, what it left unresolved, and what lessons have been learned.
The forecast also risks normalising prolonged suffering. When another decade of uncertainty becomes a publicly contemplated possibility, an extraordinary humanitarian and political crisis may gradually be treated as an ordinary condition of national life. The urgency of resolution gives way to the management of a conflict expected to persist indefinitely.
Another implication concerns the distribution of responsibility. The population is repeatedly expected to endure the consequences of insecurity, displacement, interrupted education, economic decline, and uncertainty. Yet the institutions possessing the authority to initiate substantial political change must explain why these burdens continue and what they intend to do differently.
The forecast also raises questions about government credibility. A government that has convened a national dialogue, introduced institutional reforms, and pursued security measures must be prepared to explain why the conflict persists and what its next steps will accomplish that previous initiatives have not.
The question is not whether earlier initiatives produced any results. It is whether those results have been sufficient to resolve the underlying dispute.
Finally, the forecast forces a distinction between the reduction of violence and the achievement of peace. Roads may reopen, markets may become busier, schools may resume classes, and combatants may surrender. These developments matter because they can save lives and restore livelihoods, but they do not automatically resolve disagreements over political identity, governance, or the structure of the state.
The government must therefore clarify what it expects to die a natural death: the fighting, the armed movements, the grievances, or the political dispute itself. Unless these are distinguished, a decline in armed activity may be mistaken for a settlement that has not actually been achieved.
The Unfinished Business of the Major National Dialogue
The implications of the Prime Minister’s forecast become clearer when examined against the Major National Dialogue held in Yaoundé from 30 September to 4 October 2019. The dialogue was presented as an important initiative for resolving the crisis, addressing decentralisation, the special status of the Northwest and Southwest Regions, education, justice, bilingualism, and national cohesion.
Its recommendations contributed to the adoption of Law No. 2019/024 of 24 December 2019, which established the legal framework for regional and local authorities, including special-status arrangements for the two regions. These developments should not be dismissed. Institutional reforms can have practical value, and special-status arrangements represented a significant development in regional governance.
Nevertheless, the key question remains: Did the dialogue resolve the political dispute that produced the conflict, or merely introduce institutional measures within which the dispute continued?
Before the government convened the Major National Dialogue, efforts were already under way to bring Southern Cameroonians together to deliberate on the crisis and develop proposals for resolution. Cardinal Christian Tumi and other religious leaders had pursued an Anglophone General Conference. The All Southern Cameroons People’s Conference, held in April 2019, also sought to encourage deliberation across political divisions and identify possible pathways towards a sustainable settlement.
Yet representatives of the All Southern Cameroons People’s Conference were not invited to participate in the Major National Dialogue, and the conference’s collective position was not formally considered within that process. Although individual Southern Cameroonians may have participated, individual participation is not equivalent to formally considering the resolutions of an existing conference or engaging with its collective political proposals.
This exclusion raises a fundamental issue about inclusiveness. How could a process claim to address the crisis comprehensively while leaving out the position developed by a conference specifically convened to discuss the political future of Southern Cameroons?
The sequence also raises the suspicion that the government’s process displaced earlier initiatives by transferring the principal forum for determining the response to the conflict to a dialogue convened and controlled by the central government. At minimum, the national dialogue proceeded without first establishing a broadly agreed internal position among Southern Cameroonians on the fundamental questions at stake.
The constitutional framework adds another dimension. Article 62(2) of the 1996 Constitution provided for legislation to take account of the specificities of certain regions in their organisation and functioning. The special-status arrangements recommended in 2019 therefore drew on a constitutional mechanism that existed before the conflict escalated in 2016.
This chronology raises a legitimate problem: did the dialogue open the fundamental political settlement to reconsideration, or channel the crisis towards a mechanism already available within the existing constitution of Cameroun?
Some Southern Cameroonians believe that the constitutional provision envisaging special status was intended to anticipate unrest following the All Anglophone Conferences or predetermine the outcome of any dialogue if or when it was convened. Nevertheless, it reinforces the need to examine whether the dialogue genuinely opened the political questions at stake to meaningful consideration.
A process can produce legislation without resolving the political dispute that made such legislation necessary. If special status was considered an adequate response, the government must explain why it did not produce a durable settlement. If it was intended as an initial step, the government must identify the further political measures required. If fundamental constitutional questions were excluded, citizens are entitled to ask where and when those questions will be addressed.
The Implicit Admission of Failure
The Prime Minister’s reported 10–15-year forecast carries an uncomfortable implication: it raises the question of whether the pathway established after the Major National Dialogue has proved insufficient to deliver a durable settlement.
This is not a formal admission of failure, nor does the forecast establish that every policy pursued since 2019 has been ineffective. Rather, it makes it necessary to assess the relationship between the dialogue’s stated objectives, its institutional outcomes, and the continued existence of the conflict.
If the measures adopted after 2019 had established an effective pathway towards a settlement, why is another decade or more being contemplated before the conflict might disappear? What assumptions have proved inadequate? What lessons have been learned? What will the government now do differently? These are questions of political accountability, not merely speculation about the future.
A government cannot point to the existence of reforms as proof of peace when the fundamental dispute remains unresolved. Nor can it invoke the complexity of the crisis indefinitely without explaining how that complexity informs its strategy. The persistence of the conflict requires an assessment of the government’s approach, including whether it has adequately addressed the political grievances that successive initiatives have failed to settle.
The Prime Minister may intend his forecast as a warning about the difficulty of resolving the crisis. But a warning about prolonged conflict also demands an account of the measures being taken to prevent that outcome. The public deserves to know what milestones will demonstrate progress, which political questions will be addressed, and how the government intends to prevent another generation from inheriting the same dispute.
Otherwise, the forecast risks becoming an implicit acknowledgement of impotency without the corresponding explanation of responsibility, lessons learned, and corrective action. Extending the anticipated duration of a conflict is not a new strategy, and predicting its eventual disappearance does not discharge the obligation to resolve it.
Weaponized Incompetence: When Failure Becomes a Forecast
The concept of weaponised incompetence offers a useful, though critical, framework for examining the political implications of the forecast. It describes a pattern in which failure to fulfil an expected responsibility shifts burdens onto others or allows difficult obligations to be avoided.
Applied to conflict resolution, it raises the question of how persistent non-resolution can become normalised, with the population bearing the consequences while the institutions responsible continue to fall short.
A conflict escalates, the government introduces measures intended to address it, those measures do not produce a durable settlement, and the population continues to suffer. The public is then presented with the prospect that the conflict may eventually disappear through the passage of time.
At what point does persistent failure to resolve a problem require political accountability? When does the government acknowledge that its existing approach may be inadequate and accept the responsibility to change it?
The difficulty of a problem does not eliminate the obligation to address it. The greater the consequences, the greater the need for clear objectives, measurable progress, and accountability.
The danger is that the endurance of the population is being used as an implicit resource in the management of the conflict. Families are expected to endure, young people are expected to abandon violence, and communities are expected to survive prolonged insecurity while fundamental political questions remain unsettled.
Yet the surrender of weapons cannot by itself guarantee that the grievances associated with the conflict will disappear. Nor can the passage of time establish that a political settlement has been achieved.
The government possesses institutional powers and political responsibilities that ordinary citizens do not. If the existing approach has not secured a durable settlement, the obligation is to explain what must change. The Prime Minister’s forecast should therefore be the beginning of that examination, not the end of it. A government should not convert the persistence of a problem into a justification for allowing it to persist.
An Inter-Southern Cameroons Dialogue Before Negotiations
Southern Cameroonians do not share identical political aspirations. Some favour independence, others advocate federal arrangements, and others support different forms of political and institutional reform. These differences cannot be wished away, nor should any organisation presume to speak for everyone.
I have severally argued in previous essays for an inclusive internal political dialogue, mediated by Southern Cameroonians themselves, through which participants can deliberate on their differences, identify shared priorities, and agree on key issues, including a credible negotiating position.
The objective would be to establish what can be agreed upon, what remains contested, and how those differences should be represented in subsequent negotiations. External negotiations become more difficult when the people whose future is at stake have not had sufficient opportunity to deliberate among themselves.
An internally developed negotiating position would not eliminate disagreement, but it could establish clearer priorities and a more transparent basis for engagement with the government of Cameroon.
A Southern Cameroons Conference could form part of this broader conversation. The essential distinction is that internal dialogue and external negotiations serve different purposes. The former helps Southern Cameroonians deliberate on their priorities and prepare a negotiating position; the latter provides a forum for addressing the substantive issues in dispute with the other party.
The government cannot resolve disagreements among Southern Cameroonians on their behalf, nor should it assume that an administrative arrangement within the existing constitutional framework necessarily settles the political questions they wish to address. An internally driven process would provide a more credible basis for political engagement without requiring every participant to agree on every aspect of the future.
This is not an argument for postponing negotiations until every disagreement has been resolved. Rather, it is an argument for ensuring that negotiations are informed by meaningful consultation, credible representation, and a clear understanding of the issues requiring resolution.
The Future Will Judge the Present
Prime Minister Dion Ngute’s reported 10–15-year forecast raises a fundamental question: will the government pursue a credible political settlement, or allow another generation to inherit unresolved grievances?
Seven years after the Major National Dialogue, the prospect of another decade of conflict demands an honest assessment of the measures adopted, the questions left unanswered, and the government’s willingness to change course.
Security measures can protect civilians, and institutional reforms can address important concerns. But neither can guarantee lasting peace while fundamental political grievances remain unresolved. The government must demonstrate that its policies are directed towards a durable settlement rather than the indefinite management of violence.
Southern Cameroonians must have the opportunity to deliberate among themselves, reconcile their differences, identify shared priorities, and develop a credible negotiating position. The government, meanwhile, must explain why previous initiatives have proved insufficient and demonstrate how its present approach will deliver a settlement that addresses the causes of the conflict.
The Prime Minister’s forecast should therefore be treated not as an acceptable timetable for peace but as a challenge to political leadership. If another 10 to 15 years of conflict is considered possible, the government must explain what it will do to prevent that outcome. It must identify the political obstacles to resolution, acknowledge the limitations of previous measures, and demonstrate a credible commitment to addressing the fundamental issues in dispute.
A government cannot escape responsibility by predicting that a conflict will eventually end. It remains accountable for the suffering its policies create, the opportunities for peace it squanders, and the consequences of decisions it postpones.
Waiting for a conflict to die is not a peace strategy. The true test of political leadership is not whether a government can predict when a conflict might disappear, but whether it possesses the courage, imagination, and political will to address the reasons it began. Ensuring that another generation has no reason to inherit this conflict is the true test of political leadership.
