In a republic long desecrated by dynastic ambitions and geriatric despotism, Cameroon now bears witness to a scandal so brazen, so unrepentantly venal, that even the ghosts of accountability must surely weep. The Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH), the state oil and gas company meant to steward the nation’s most valuable resource, has degenerated into a private fiefdom of the Moudiki family, operating with all the arrogance of a medieval court and none of the shame.What masquerades as national development at Kribi Deep Seaport is in truth a festering symbol of oligarchic capture, disguised under bulldozers, steel, and state silence. The so-called Cstar Tank Farm Project – a shady petro-venture being shoved down the throat of public interest – is not merely a corporate overreach. It is a state-sanctioned incest of power, privilege, and plunder.

A family affair, draped in the national flag

At the rotting center of this farce is Adolphe Moudiki, the 86-year-old director-general of SNH – senile in sight, but still omnipotent in reach. Too frail to stand, yet firm enough to rule by proxy, he has now crowned his wife, Nathalie Moudiki, queen-regent of SNH’s new era of nepotism. As legal director and now inspector general – a newly invented post tailor-made for dynastic expansion – she commands the institution like a duchess inheriting ancestral land.

Nathalie Moudiki, who now presides over Cstar, SNH’s shady new subsidiary, is pushing forward a multi-billion-dollar petroleum project without board approval, as if the nation’s hydrocarbons were the inheritance of a noble house, not the patrimony of a people. The project lubricated by dubious Dubai meetings, offshore shell structures, and suspicious partnerships, bears all the fingerprints of a classic kleptocratic heist. The involvement of Franck Hertz Biya, the First Lady, Chantal Biya’s son, only sharpens the stench. That the President’s inner court is now dabbling in opaque oil ventures, playing puppeteer over contracts and concessions, makes mockery of even the pretense of governance.

Kribi: Where dreams go to be laundered

Franck Hertz-Biya is playing an active role in the current negotiations for the attribution to SNH of a 250-hectare site in Kirbi port. A memorandum of understanding between the Port Autonome de Kribi (PAK) and SNH is expected to be signed soon. The project is driven by the special-purpose vehicle (SPV) Cstar Tank Farm Project Management, which groups SNH, its distribution subsidiary Tradex, and Ariana-RCG consortium, owned by the secretive Lebanese businessman Azzam Makhlouf, who is Vanuatu’s honorary consul and special envoy to the Middle East. Cstar is planning to build a refinery, a petroleum product storage terminal, and a gas pipeline in Kribi.

Although SNH’s Board of Directors have yet to approve Cstar as a strategic partner, Nathalie Moudiki, legal director and now inspector general of SNH; who doubles as CEO of Cstar, is already acting as if Cstar is an integral part of SNH; and she is pushing the project forward. On June 19, Cstar’s managing directors met in Dubai to approve the company’s development plan and the creation of its local subsidiary, the Joint Operating Co (JOC). According to a confidential communiqué reviewed by Cameroon Intelligence Report, the JOC will be in charge of “operating and maintaining the terminal for the storage of strategic reserves of petroleum products in Kribi.”

Among the figures present at the Dubai meeting were Franck Hertz-Biya, Emmanuel Patrick Mvondo, Tradex CEO and Mougnal Sidi, Director of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of External Relations. Sidi, has been tipped to officially replace Nathalie Moudiki as head of SNH’s legal department, is the mastermind behind Cstar’s sprawling legal structure.

The Kribi storage terminal, on paper, is a symbol of industrial growth. In practice, it is an altar to corruption, constructed with no transparency, no parliamentary scrutiny, and no credible oversight. The Dubai-based legal structure, orchestrated by Mougnal Sidi, another foot soldier in this grotesque theatre, is designed not for efficiency, but for obfuscation. It is a legal maze meant to hide profits, evade scrutiny, and funnel public wealth into private vaults. This isn’t development. It is plunder at the speed of progress. It is the reanimation of feudal Africa by way of petroleum pipelines.

The Deafening Silence of Power

The scandal has drawn public outrage from public figures like Akere Muna, whose called for an independent audit of Cstar have so far met a brick wall of bureaucratic cowardice. Where is Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, the powerful secretary general to the presidency that publicly spars with the Moudikis, yet does nothing to sever the rot? Where is Energy Minister Gaston Eloundou Essomba, whose portfolio has been hijacked by this royal family and its foreign co-conspirators? Where is the Cameroonian state, when its wealth is being handed to Lebanese middlemen, Vanuatu consuls, and princeling operatives? Cameroon is governed not by law, but by clan, by a coven of career courtiers who sip champagne while villages burn kerosene to light their homes. The SNH has ceased to be a state enterprise. It is a cathedral of corruption, and the oil it controls is not black gold; it is black betrayal.

From Republic to Petrocracy

The Biya regime, now entering its fifth decade of zombified rule, presides over a country where oil flows upward, not outward, and where institutions serve only to formalize theft. SNH, instead of funding roads, schools, or hospitals, has become the treasury of a twilight monarchy. The Moudikis, Hertz, Makhlouf, and their ilk are pimps of the public purse, trafficking national assets in luxury boardrooms while millions live and die in darkness. The Kribi refinery and storage terminal will not store hope. It will store fuel — for yachts, not ambulances; for Range Rovers, not rescue boats .And while Adolphe Moudiki clutches power from his hospital bed, and Nathalie sharpens her knives at SNH headquarters, the very concept of republicanism drowns in an oil slick of cynicism.

Let this be a warning

To the Moudiki clan: your names will not be remembered as builders, but as plunderers wrapped in tricolor. You will not be praised as visionaries, but cursed as vandals of the nation’s soul. To the silent enablers in government: your complicity will not be forgotten. History does not absolve cowards who looked away while the nation was auctioned at Kribi’s gates. To the Cameroonian people: this is not governance. It is organized theft, polished with protocol and perfumed with PR. Do not be deceived.

And to the next generation: remember that your inheritance is being siphoned by a few, in Dubai boardrooms, under fake titles, behind closed doors. But oil is not eternal. And neither is tyranny.

Cameroon deserves a future unshackled from dynastic parasites. The SNH must be returned to the people — or it will become a monument to everything that ever went wrong in post-colonial Africa.

Let the Moudikis build their empire elsewhere. The nation is not their plantation.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with intel files