A year on, justice has had its say. It is time for society to have its say.

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In May 2025, for a few days, Cameroon seemed to come to a standstill.

On social media, within families, on the streets — Matthis’s name was everywhere. The grief was real. The outrage was genuine. And for once, there was something resembling a genuine collective awakening.

Then life went back to normal.

Today, nearly a year later, a verdict has been handed down. On Wednesday 18 March 2026, the Mfoundi High Court found Dagobert Nwafo guilty of the murder of Ouandji Beao Mathys Nathanaël — known as Bébé Matthis — and sentenced him to death by firing squad, along with 500 million CFA francs in damages to be paid to the family.

This verdict is just. It was necessary. It was expected.

But before taking stock of what should have changed, we must first recall what this tragedy was all about.

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What happened — the facts

On the night of 10 May 2025, in the Ngoa-Ekellé district of Yaoundé, an altercation broke out in a pub between Dagobert Nwafo and Paulin, the father of little Matthis. Following the dispute, Nwafo left the premises.

He returned. Armed with a 42-centimetre knife.

He forced his way into the family home. He attacked the child — six years old, defenceless, an unwitting spectator to a conflict between adults that had nothing to do with him. The child pleaded: “Uncle Blaise, you’re hurting me.” The knife is thrust deep into his heart and lungs. Taken to the military hospital in Yaoundé, Matthis does not survive his injuries.

At the scene, a crowd violently attacks the assailant before the police arrive. Arrested, he is imprisoned in Kondengui. During his police custody, he claims partial amnesia due to his state of intoxication. On 11 December 2025, the Crown Prosecutor seeks the death penalty. On 18 March 2026, the court unanimously upholds the prosecution’s request.

One fact remains, beyond all debate: a six-year-old child was stabbed to death simply because he happened to be there — because he was the son of someone a man had decided to punish.

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What have we witnessed? What this tragedy was truly called

We must name things precisely. For this crime cannot be reduced to a single cause, and to reduce it solely to a failure of child protection would be inaccurate — and intellectually convenient.

What we have witnessed is the collision of three distinct realities, and it is precisely this intersection that makes it such a brutal tragedy.

Firstly: a deliberate, premeditated, heinous crime. Dagobert Nwafo left the scene. He chose to return. He chose to arm himself. He chose to cross the threshold of a family home. He chose to attack a six-year-old child. No mitigating circumstances can erase the chain of conscious decisions that led to this act. The courts have said so. We must reiterate: this is first and foremost a crime.

Secondly: a probable undetected, untreated mental health condition. According to the information available at this stage, this is not the first time this man has caused trouble — he is said to have been involved in another violent incident resulting in death prior to this tragedy. And yet, he was moving freely around the neighbourhood. Behavioural criminology has rigorously theorised this: monstrosity is rarely spontaneous. It is shaped. It leaves traces. It is, at times, predictable. A possibly undiagnosed mental suffering, accumulated rage, an unchecked trajectory of violence — these are warning signs. Signs that, on the surface, no one seemed able to read or address in the case of Dagobert Nwafo.

Thirdly: the total absence of reporting, responsiveness and community protection. In an ordinary neighbourhood of Yaoundé, a man whose behaviour, according to testimonies gathered at the time, appeared to be a cause for concern among those around him, lived amongst his neighbours. No institutional mechanism allowed them to transform what they perceived into a formal alert, a preventive intervention, or the neutralisation of the risk.

This tragedy is therefore the name of this convergence: a deliberate crime, seemingly invisible mental distress, and a total systemic void in the monitoring, alert and protection mechanisms.

It is this combination that should have been recognised. And it is this combination that we have not yet learnt to deal with.

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Justice has spoken. Many have claimed victory. Too soon.

For many Cameroonians, this verdict represents justice. The phrase has been repeated over and over: justice has been done. And this outpouring of emotion is understandable. Legitimate, even. When a society has so often seen impunity triumph, a firm verdict feels like a victory.

But we must have the courage to say what this verdict does not do.

It does not bring Matthis back to his family. It does not identify the next mentally unstable man roaming freely in a neighbourhood. It does not build the monitoring systems that might have intercepted Dagobert Nwafo before he returned, armed, on the night of 10 May. Punitive justice, however necessary it may be, is only one part of what society must do. And we have celebrated that part as if it were the whole.

What should have accompanied this verdict — institutional awareness, an action plan, reform — has not materialised. This is where the celebration turns into a blind spot.

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Matthis was not alone. He still isn’t.

Matthis is the name Cameroon has chosen. But he is not an isolated case.

Before him, there was Orphée. In August 2024, in Bonapriso, one of Douala’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, a five-year-old girl was raped and murdered just days before the start of the school year. Her parents are still waiting for full justice to be served. The hashtags #JusticePourOrphée flooded social media. The tragedy moved people. Then it was swallowed up by the flow.

These tragedies are not mere statistical accidents. They are the visible manifestations of a silent epidemic. In Cameroon, cases of child sexual abuse are on the rise – and massively underreported. According to those working on the ground, nearly 90% of such violence is committed within the family or circle of friends. Families withdraw their complaints from the police the day after filing them, under pressure or out of fear. Cases are closed without further action. Perpetrators continue to live in the same neighbourhoods as their victims.

This is not a society that protects its children. It is a society that, from time to time, expresses outrage on their behalf.

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What we owed to childhood

What should have changed: the creation of a national system for identifying and supporting children in vulnerable situations — rooted in neighbourhoods, schools and health centres. Not a token budget allocation. An operational system, properly resourced, evaluated and made public.

What has not changed: social services remain under-resourced, understaffed, and structurally absent from the very areas where tragedies unfold. Data that the state itself does not publish — on the number of children receiving support, the reporting rate, the number of social workers per capita — speaks louder than any speech. Their absence alone is an admission.

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What we owed to mental health

In a country with fewer than 150 psychiatrists for over 27 million inhabitants, people in deep distress follow paths that no one reads, understands or supports.

What should have changed: a national mental health plan, with decentralised care centres, integration into the training of social workers, teachers and healthcare staff — and a massive effort to destigmatise the issue. For in Cameroon, mental illness is still too often perceived as a mystical or shameful phenomenon, rarely as what it is: a medical reality and a matter of public safety. We must also recall the richness of African therapeutic traditions in this field — that ancestral ability to read the imbalances of the soul, which rapid urbanisation has eroded without modern psychiatry fully stepping in to take over.

What has not changed: no plan has been announced. No specific budget has been made public. Mental health remains the blind spot of our public policies, both a social taboo and an ignored emergency.

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What we owed to frontline workers: social services, the police, communities

It is they who, before the courts, before the ministries, before the experts, are present where tragedies unfold silently. And it is precisely because they are on the front line that they are the first to be abandoned.

Social services. A Cameroonian social worker covers an area far exceeding their actual capacity to intervene — without a vehicle, without digital reporting tools, without shared protocols with the judiciary and the police, and without ongoing training. What should have changed: a structural revaluation of this profession — mass recruitment, specialised training, enhanced status, and integration into shared alert systems. What has not changed: social workers remain one of the most underfunded and invisible links in our social policy.

The police and gendarmerie. All too often, on the face of it, the police response to domestic violence or reports concerning children remains inadequate — not through ill will, but due to a lack of specific training. Complaints are recorded but not systematically followed up. Minor victims interviewed without protection protocols. Officers who receive reports but do not know how to refer them. What should have changed: the creation of specialised units in every police station and brigade — trained to listen to victims, equipped with protocols for cooperation with social and judicial services, and capable of handling reports of violent behaviour before they become crimes. What has not changed: the police response remains generalist, non-specialised, and structurally disconnected from an integrated support system.

Community actors. Neighbourhood leaders, religious figures, women’s associations, informal leaders — they have what the state will never have: proximity, trust, and a daily presence. They are the ones who see. They are the ones who know, often before anyone else, that a man is losing his way, that a family is in crisis, that a situation is becoming dangerous. According to testimonies gathered at the time, warning signs existed in the neighbourhood before the events took place. And yet, there was no mechanism to turn them into a formal alert, a preventive intervention, or a way to neutralise the risk.

What should have changed: a national programme to build the capacity of community actors — trained points of contact in every neighbourhood, reporting protocols that are accessible and known to all, formal recognition of their role in the prevention chain. What has not changed: these actors continue to act on instinct, without a framework, without training, without institutional links. A considerable resource, largely wasted.

The real question this tragedy forces us to ask is this: how effective are our systems for preventing, intervening in and mitigating risks posed by individuals and situations in our neighbourhoods? The answer, if we dare to be honest, is: virtually none. We see violence emerging. We observe people whose behaviour raises concerns. And we have no operational mechanism to intercept these trajectories before they cause irreparable harm.

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What we owed to public coordination

What should have changed: a national coordinating body for child protection and violence prevention — with a clear cross-sectoral mandate, bringing together education, health, justice, social affairs, local authorities and civil society. Measurable objectives. An annual public report. Assumed accountability.

What has not changed: these actors still work in silos. In this lack of coordination, no actor feels fully responsible — which means, in practical terms, that no one is.

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What we owed to universities and research

Every year, our universities train thousands of students in law, sociology, psychology, education and medicine. Our researchers publish, analyse and supervise theses.

But where are they in the public debate on violence, crime and child protection?

Where are the criminologists who should have spoken out after Matthis’s murder — not to comment, but to shed light? Where are the clinical psychologists who should have described, with precision, the mechanisms that lead to an act of this nature? Where are the sociologists who should have contextualised this crime within the dynamics of our working-class urban neighbourhoods?

The truth is that criminology, as an established discipline, is virtually absent from Cameroon’s academic landscape. No university department is entirely dedicated to it. No research observatory on crime and violence produces systematic data. The existing work is scattered, courageous, but not organised into a body of knowledge capable of informing public policy.

What should have changed: the creation of a criminology programme in our universities, backed by a research centre on violence, deviance and child protection — capable of producing data, training practitioners, and informing public debate with the rigour that the issues demand. An academic culture that steps further out of the ivory tower to inform public policy and train those working on the ground.

What has not changed: our universities remain largely disconnected from the operational challenges of the society they are supposed to serve. This academic silence comes at a cost: it deprives society of a valuable intellectual resource; it deprives decision-makers of a rigorous mirror. Our academics, our researchers, our experts bear a responsibility for what has happened. Not the responsibility for the crime. But the responsibility for the silence that followed.

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What we owed to our culture of violence

Violence is not a marginal phenomenon in Cameroon. It is the norm.

It manifests itself in families under the guise of education, in schools under the guise of discipline, in public spaces under the guise of authority. And when a society normalises violence in everyday life, it inevitably ends up producing extreme forms of violence. The murder of little Matthis — like that of little Orphée, like the hundreds of cases of abuse that never make the headlines — are not anomalies. They are the culmination of a process.

What should have changed: a national campaign to challenge violent norms, taken to the highest level of government, backed by the resources of a genuine public policy.

What has not changed: no major campaign has been launched. The issue is not even on the agenda.

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What we owed to knowledge and data

A serious prevention policy cannot be improvised. It is built on facts.

What should have changed: the creation of a national observatory on violence and crime — capable of producing reliable, disaggregated, publicly accessible data, directly informing public decision-making.

What has not changed: we act without diagnosing. We react without understanding. Data on violence against children, on sexual abuse, on local crime — where it exists — is neither systematised nor used to guide public policy. And this has a human and social cost that we do not even measure.

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The missed opportunity: a presidential election without the real issues

In October 2025, Cameroon held a presidential election. Paul Biya was re-elected for an eighth term. The campaign took place. Manifestos were presented. Speeches were made.

But this campaign unfolded without the real social issues being raised with the force they deserved.

Where was the debate on violence prevention, on the effectiveness of our community monitoring systems, on the reform of social services, on mental health as a public safety priority? Some candidates touched on education, health and youth employment. But structural issues relating to protection mechanisms, the detection of risky behaviour, and the coordination of frontline workers never emerged as campaign priorities.

This presidential election was a missed opportunity. An opportunity to bring these issues to the heart of the political agenda. To ask the candidates not just what they would do for the economy — but what they would do to ensure that the next Dagobert Nwafo is intercepted before he crosses a threshold. That opportunity was not seized.

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The question we dare not ask: can we achieve this without overhauling the state?

We must now ask the question that many think but few voice.

Can we build a society that detects risky behaviour, that treats mental distress, that trains and equips its frontline workers, that mobilises its universities — without fundamentally reforming the structures that govern this country?

The honest answer is: probably not.

For the failures we have described are not mere hiccups along the way. They are the product of a centralised state with little accountability, where social policies are chronically underfunded, where public data is opaque, and where civil society and the academic world are structurally marginalised in public decision-making. They are the result of a system of governance that manages emergencies rather than anticipating them, that responds to crises rather than preventing them.

Some candidates in the 2025 presidential election had realised that a structural overhaul was necessary — genuine decentralisation, a new contract between the state and its citizens, and a more accountable system of governance. These voices were not heard. But the question they raised remains unanswered.

Can we protect a Matthis, an Orphée, the thousands of vulnerable people whom our systems do not yet see, without changing the nature of political leadership, without overhauling institutions, without rebuilding a welfare state worthy of the name?

We must have the courage to say no — probably not. Not to the extent that the situation demands. Not in a sustainable and systemic way.

This is not a partisan plea. It is a structural observation.

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What we owed to ourselves

In May 2025, we were outraged. Legitimately. Deeply. But outrage without lasting commitment is merely a fleeting emotion.

What should have changed within us: our refusal to forget. Our ability to transform an emotional shock into a lasting civic demand. To challenge our representatives. To demand plans, figures, deadlines. To refuse to let the October 2025 presidential election take place without these questions being raised forcefully. To create citizen monitoring groups in our neighbourhoods — those very neighbourhoods where the warning signs exist, where people see them, but where no mechanism allows them to turn what they see into preventive action.

What hasn’t changed: the tide has turned. The presidential election took place without these issues making it onto the agenda. And Matthis — like Orpheus before him — has become a name on a list of tragedies we recall with pain, but without any follow-up.

It is this organised amnesia — more than any other factor — that makes us collectively vulnerable. Institutions do not reform in the face of shock. They reform under sustained pressure. And only citizens can exert that pressure.

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The only progress, and what it teaches us

Only one element functioned as it should have: the institutional justice system. It withstood the digital mob, investigated, judged in accordance with due process, and handed down a unanimous verdict. This outcome deserves recognition.

But it also teaches us something essential: the only thing that worked was an inherited institution that we did not have to build ourselves. Everything we should have built, decided, funded, demanded — monitoring systems, frontline workers, research, institutional reform — remains intact in its failure.

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This assessment is not a condemnation. It is an urgent call to action.

A year after the murder of little Matthis, the list of what should have changed is long. The list of what has changed is short.

And in the meantime, other individuals in a state of mental breakdown move freely through our neighbourhoods. Other warning signs are noticed by neighbours who have no means of turning them into an alert. Other children are growing up in situations that nobody is monitoring.

This assessment is not a condemnation. It is an invitation — and a call to urgent action.

An invitation to decide that Matthis, that Orpheus, that all those whose first names we never knew, will not merely be names on a list of forgotten tragedies. But the starting point for a society that, at last, decides to learn.

And this decision will not come from above, unless we demand that it comes from below.

For the next tragedy will not spring from nowhere. It will spring from the same void that we have failed to fill. From the same warning signs that we saw — and failed to act upon. From the same inaction that we have failed to overcome. From the same leadership that we have failed to demand.

Justice has done its part. We have not yet done ours.

Franck Essi

#WhatIBelieve

#WeHaveAChoice

#WeHaveThePower

#Let’sUseOurBrains

Postscript — To go further: the four reflections from May 2025

This article is the fifth in a series. The four preceding texts give it its full meaning.

① Thinking the unthinkable, preventing the irreparable — How is such an act possible, and what warning signs should we have recognised? → https://franckessi.com/2025/05/15/the-murder-of-little-mathis-how-to-think-the-unthinkable-and-prevent-the-irreparable/

② Lydol, social media and the temptation of the mob — When the digital crowd demands death before trial: an anatomy of a drift. → https://franckessi.com/2025/05/15/lydol-networks-and-the-temptation-of-the-mob-when-mob-justice-becomes-our-new-justice/

③ When mob justice becomes law — Mob justice as a silent threat to our democracy in the making. → https://franckessi.com/2025/05/15/when-mob-justice-becomes-law-a-sketch-of-thought-on-a-silent-threat-to-our-justice-system-and-our-emerging-democracy/

④ Matthis, crime and us — The programmatic plea: seven areas of focus for a society that understands, prevents and protects. → https://franckessi.com/2025/05/15/mathis-crime-and-us-a-plea-for-a-society-that-understands-prevents-and-protects/