“Handsome Blaise” and Burkina Faso are no longer an item. General Honore Traore is now in control. Correspondingly, the French have welcomed the departure of President Blaise Compaore and business is now as usual in Ouagadougou.

There are many lessons for Cameroonians and Congolese to learn from the revolution in Burkina Faso. Cameroon Concord thinks that the main lesson to take home from the Burkinabe revolution is that targeting the tyrant and leaving intact the corrupt institutions that sustained the dictatorship may not be effective.

The Burkinabe people deprived the dictator the institution of parliament through which he intended to effect the constitutional change to eternalize power.

In Cameroon, the mantra was that Biya Must Go forgetting to note that President Biya like most dictators is a hydra with many heads.

With no parliament to rubberstamp the changes President Blaise Compaore intended, the rest of the instruments of oppression like the judiciary and the security forces were powerless to confront the people.

In the end power has effectively returned to the people to whom it rightfully belongs. The manner in which the Burkinabe revolution has been prosecuted will send a chill down the spins of dictators in the continent and force some of them to think and rethink their strategies.

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