Reports about a veritable insurgency situation from the northern regions of our country are certainly very disturbing.

So far, we have been used to sporadic incidents either of hostage taking or others involving horrifying scenes of other forms of attacks, but never before have we come to the reality of armed attacks in the form of the scope and dimension of that which occurred in Kousseri, headquarters of the Logone-and-Shari Division of the Far-North Region two days ago and which, by any stretch of imagination, has been attributed to the Boko-Haram sect, as attested by the most serious military and administrative authorities of the Region.

This simply confirms that the much-detested sect is around and we have to look for ways of either keeping it at bay or, at least, looking for a modus Vivendi in such a way as to keep our peace-loving populations away from its constant and decried frays since its area of operation, at least as it has publicly stated, is to install an Islamic regime in lieu of the present secular Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The Republic of Cameroon is, at face level, not very important in the process of achieving such an objective, but along the line, it is paying colossal collateral interests in the process, least of which is not the displacement of the insurgency area into its territory as ascertained by the regular hostage-taking incidents and, now, by outright attacks on military targets within the sovereign territory of the Republic of Cameroon.

The writing on the wall is rather clear; too clear, for many citizens we are, to remain apathetically attached to passive statements about what is happening in that part of the country? For a very long time, Boko-Haram was perceived as a far-off organisation, but the fact that it now strikes at our backside is a veritable cause for concern.

Granted, the government has so far handled the situation the best way it could by, understandably, wishing to avoid the psychological torment of announcing an outright insurgency, but the snowball effect today cannot be hidden from even the most unsuspecting citizen. The incident in Kousseri has helped the Boko-Haram threat blown out in such a way that the national community should become more aware of the threat of this sect and the wide-ranging threats it has not only on Cameroon’s national security considerations, but also on its survival as a national entity.

The nation is squeezed virtually on all sides. There have been reported cases of identical, but yet to be identified cases of Boko-Haram cases in the North-West. The east Region is a veritable powder keg with pockets of problems reported virtually on every stretch of the long border with the Central African Republic. In the North-West, there is the growing and intractable Boko-Haram threat while the eastern border with the sister Republic of Chad is not necessarily the safest place on earth in terms of boarder relations given sporadic cases of strife within that country.

The military has been doing what it takes to keep the national territory intact and safe; but it takes more than that. Citizens must participate in the effort to install security in view of threats in the scope of Boko-Haram because of their capacity to infiltrate. One must denounce the rather apathetic attitude so far shown to these attacks, as seen by the relative ease with which hostages are taken. It is our collective destiny which is at stake and all citizens are being called upon to be the first to be relied upon for any meaningful effort to bring about lasting peace and tranquility. We, as citizens, are our keepers, with military intervention only coming afterwards.