By Franck Essi

I have been writing a lot over the past few days. Because what happened cannot be digested in silence. Because this tragedy—the murder of little Mathis by Mr. Dagobert Nwafo—strikes us at our most vulnerable core: our humanity, our need for meaning, our thirst for justice.

But as the tears flow and the comments roll in, one question gnaws at me: Are we ready to face what this crime says about us, about our society, about our collective blindness?

Despite the strong emotions that remain, another, even more essential question emerges: Are we equipped to understand what is happening to us? Are we capable, as a society, of thinking about crime beyond the news story?

Because ultimately, the most disturbing thing is perhaps not what happened. It is our inability to think about it. And that is where the real danger begins.

—

I. A crime that reveals our collective failure to think

This is not about making excuses. It is about understanding.

This horrific crime is also a wake-up call. It reveals a dramatic lack of collective tools for thinking, analyzing, and anticipating. With each news story, emotions run high, but nothing changes in our prevention systems, social policies, or institutional reflexes.

Where are the criminology institutes? The databases on violence? The spaces for interdisciplinary reflection on deviance? Cameroon, like many countries, seems quicker to punish than to understand.

—

II. The criminological blind spot: foundations to be built urgently

To my knowledge, Cameroon still lacks the scientific and institutional foundations necessary for an effective criminal policy:

• No national crime research institute.
• No intersectoral prevention strategy rooted in research.
• No reliable database or culture of regular diagnosis.
• Little cross-training between actors in the legal, security, mental health, and social sectors.

We are in a state of permanent improvisation. We react instead of acting, we punish instead of preventing. In most cases, crime still appears in our society as a vast hidden continent, unknown in its intricacies, dynamics, and logic.

—

III. Overburdened and under-resourced public services

The institutions supposed to prevent these tragedies are either absent or chronically underfunded:

• Social services are marginalized, lacking resources and power to act.
• Mental health remains the poor relation of our healthcare system, confined to a few overcrowded urban centers.
• Law enforcement lacks training on mental illness and complex family conflicts.
• The justice system, which is overburdened, often acts more to maintain apparent order than to address the root causes of social ills.

Meanwhile, the politicians in charge remain silent or take refuge in administrative platitudes. The lack of a coordinated and committed response from the authorities to such tragedies is clearly a form of abandonment.

—

IV. Rehabilitating knowledge: experts, speak up!

We can no longer be satisfied with commentary. We need insight. And for that, society needs its experts.

Criminologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists: where are their voices in the public debate? Why is public discourse monopolized by those who judge on the spot, condemn on the fly, without conceptual tools or concern for accuracy?

It is time to create specialized spaces for analysis and listening. To rebuild the link between knowledge, emotions, and collective decisions.

—

V. Mental health: recognizing and treating an invisible disaster

This tragedy reveals with rare brutality the extent of psychiatric distress in our country.

• 20% of Cameroonians live with mental disorders, according to the WHO.
• The country has fewer than 150 psychiatrists, most of whom are concentrated in large cities.
• Care facilities are rare, poorly funded, and stigmatized.

Families are left to fend for themselves. They hide, they chain their loved ones, they pray. Meanwhile, lives are being turned upside down. Children are being exposed. Tragedies are brewing in silence.

And yet, African therapeutic traditions also contain valuable resources. Why not consider a reasoned alliance between this ancient knowledge and modern psychiatry?

—

VI. Social media: between collective awakening and a spiral of confusion

In these cases, and particularly in the murder of Mathis, social media amplified everything: emotion, pain, anger. But also confusion, lynching, and a lack of nuance.

Can we still think about it calmly? Ask useful questions? Listen to those who know, instead of glorifying those who shout the loudest?

It is not a question of demonizing social media. But we must refuse to allow it to become a laboratory for collective panic. We must educate people on the sensible use of these tools. And we must recreate digital spaces for collective reflection.

In any case, as an act of resistance, I do not want to give in to resignation, but rather contribute, in my own modest way, to maintaining spaces for constructive learning and discussion. That is why I am trying and inviting others to reflect so that we can then act in the most informed way possible.

—

VII. What can we do now to move towards a more lucid and protective society?

We cannot bring Mathis back. But through him, we can lay the foundations for a collective awakening. Here are seven modest, non-exhaustive but structuring projects:

1. Create a multidisciplinary observatory on violence and crime

A national monitoring center, bringing together researchers, practitioners, statisticians, and field workers to produce regular analyses of crime trends, emerging violence, and root causes. The goal: to anticipate, guide policy, and inform public opinion.

2. Establish public spaces for discussion and education on mental health

Places accessible to all, to raise awareness, educate, and discuss mental disorders, psychological suffering, and ways of coping with them. The objective: to break taboos and strengthen the collective capacity for detection and support.

3. Embed prevention in local everyday structures

Bring the issues of mental health, family conflict, and deviance into schools, churches, mosques, and community centers. Create simple, accessible modules for prevention from an early age and in all areas.

4. Give specialists a voice in the media, universities, and institutions

Establish a regular presence for professionals (psychologists, sociologists, lawyers) in the media and decision-making forums. Scientific knowledge must once again become a pillar of public debate, rather than an academic rarity.

5. Educate people on the critical use of social media

Teach young people and citizens how to critically analyze information, manage their emotions online, and combat fake news and digital lynching. Train educators, produce content, and integrate these skills into school curricula.

6. Rebuild justice policy around prevention and science

Rather than blindly repressing crime, build a justice system that understands its causes, anticipates risks, and treats people. This requires joint units comprising magistrates, psychiatrists, social workers, and researchers.

7. Launch a national mental health education initiative

Mobilize the government, the media, NGOs, and community leaders to launch a major awareness, information, and support campaign on mental health. This should be a public priority, on par with infectious diseases. Because unfortunately, more than ever, despite what those who willfully blind themselves may say, everything is political.

—

VII. No lasting change without breaking with the current political order

Implementing this vast project also requires putting an end to the growing failure of law enforcement, social services, community structures, and public administration. Nothing will be possible without a profound change in leadership and governance.

We need a national awakening, which will require a renewal of the ruling class, a rebuilding of the state, and a Copernican revolution in the way power is conceived, exercised, and accounted for in our country.

It is also a huge wake-up call for all of us who aspire to public office. It is good to have ambitions, but it is even better to be serious and capable of taking charge of the organization of collective life when we know how much our failures can lead to real human tragedies.

—

So that Mathis is not just another victim forgotten

It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about starting to ask the right questions. Together.

It’s about recognizing that our ignorance is costing us too much. That crime is a total social phenomenon. And that it forces us to rethink our institutions, our solidarity, our knowledge, and our ways of living together.

Once again, it is not a question of solving everything at once. But of refusing to give in to resignation. Of daring to say that we can do better. That together, we can build a society that is less indifferent, less blind, and less vulnerable to the irreparable.

Little Mathis will not come back. But the duty to remember, so that he did not die in vain, obliges us to think differently.

To understand what we did not see.

To listen to those we did not hear.

To protect those we failed to defend.

Through him, we can ensure that something opens up.

Not a miracle. A requirement.

The requirement to become a society that understands before it punishes. That heals before it condemns.

A dignified society. A living society.

Franck Essi

#WhatIBelieve

#WeHaveTheChoice

#WeHaveThePower

#TurnOnOurBrains

#CitizenEducation