The “Boko Haramisation” of Cameroon:
A prolonged Night mare for a Sustaining Assemblage
Mark Bolak Funteh[1]
University of Maroua, Cameroon
Ndikum Azieh[2]
Alpha Operation, BIR Cameroon.
Abstract
Many scholars qualify Cameroon as
the savviest place to stay and invest in the sub-region owing to its
unperturbed peace, and that since the independence of French Cameroon and its
reunification with British Southern Cameroons in 1960 and 1961 respectively,
only the petty show-offs of the Nigerian forces in the peninsula of Bakassi
unrewardedly tried to change the status-quo. But this assumption has been
brought to book by recent events and the accounts of more critical scholars on
the Cameroon-tranquility thesis. This paper - written on the basis of secondary
and primary data (military intelligence data for that matter), and actor and
observer’s account - falls in line with the latter approach. It argues that the
Cameroon military might has never been tested by a serious foreign armed
challenge until the rise and the internationalization of the Boko Haram. For it
was only then that Cameroonians (civil and the military alike, gripped by the
insecurity fever) understood what it meant to be dared in an unremitting and
deadly manner by a sturdy and impulsive enemy that cost the entire nation-state
huge human and material resources. Cameroon (the northern regions for that
matter) was classed as one of the “no-go areas” in the world. This protracted
nightmare impelled a sustained domestic and foreign effort against this sect
with the sole aim of bringing the sad story to a final end.
Keywords: Security crises, peace, prolonged nightmare,
Sustainability, Assemblage, Boko Haram, Cameroon
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