Something needs to be said about the pressing need to adopt personal responsibility as a people, accepting that you're in charge of your own actions and, ultimately, your results. This is prompted by the tragic accident in Nomalé, Ndikinimeki subdivision, Mbam and Inoubou Department, Central Region. The fatal accident claimed the lives of 16 people and left 40 injured, as reported by CRTV.

A large passenger bus collided with a truck loaded with planks that had reportedly been stationed on the road in the early hours of the morning. As tragic as this is, it should serve as a clarion call to adopt personal responsibility, particularly because road fatalities have become so common that we risk treating them as inevitable. No one is going to make those decisions for us, not even the government, which we so very much adore.

According to the State of Cameroon, there is an average of 16,583 road accidents each year, killing more than 1,500 people, according to a 2019 report by the UN Economic Commission for Africa. The number is even more staggering if we consider the World Health Organization's estimate of 6,000 deaths annually. Whatever figure is ultimately correct, the broader reality is difficult to dispute: road accidents continue to claim thousands of lives, leaving families to carry the consequences long after the headlines disappear.

Ask around and the answer is almost always the same: the roads are bad, the government isn't implementing effective road-safety measures, speed bumps are inadequate, sobriety limits are poorly enforced. Those explanations are rational, and the government has an undeniable responsibility to provide safe roads, enforce regulations and remove hazards that put citizens at risk. But how do we explain a driver slamming straight into a stationary vehicle? How fast was he travelling, and what was happening inside that vehicle before the collision?

Putting more than 60 people at risk isn't simply putting 60 individuals at risk. It's putting 60 families at risk, whole networks of people whose lives can be permanently altered by a decision made in a matter of seconds. If you don't value your own life enough, then the moment you occupy a position where your decision can affect someone else, you have an even greater responsibility to act carefully.

We've become accustomed to blaming our leaders for almost everything: institutional negligence, bad roads, failed businesses, and even some of the things we must accept personal responsibility for, our health, our financial literacy, our own self-education. In some situations, the government may carry eighty, ninety, even ninety-nine percent of the blame. But that still leaves an uncomfortable question: are we, as a people, doing our one percent?

Would your neighbour trust you enough to leave their door open if they knew you were around? Would your customer trust you if they knew you could make more money by giving them less than they paid for, and would your employee say you'd treated them fairly when nobody was watching? These questions may sound unrelated to a road accident, but they point to the same underlying issue: the choices we make when we believe nobody will hold us accountable.

I watched a video on social media of a "garri" vendor who had cut a hole underneath the container he uses to serve customers. I could only presume the goal was to maximise sales, presumably at the expense of customers. Such a deliberate act of dishonesty may seem insignificant next to a fatal road accident, but the principle is the same. We cannot demand accountability from people in positions of power while excusing dishonesty, carelessness and irresponsibility when those behaviours benefit us personally. The government's failing, and we are failing too.

Personal responsibility doesn't mean pretending the system works, and it doesn't mean excusing government when roads are dangerous, vehicles are poorly regulated, or institutions fail to do the jobs they exist for. Government must be held accountable for what falls under it. But citizens have to accept responsibility for the decisions that remain within their own control.

The driver decides how fast to drive. The vehicle owner decides whether a vehicle is fit to carry passengers. The trader decides whether to protect or exploit the customer in front of them, the employer whether to treat workers fairly when nobody's checking. Somewhere underneath all of it is the individual deciding whether to learn, to save, to act with integrity when there's no one around to enforce it. These decisions look small taken one at a time, but multiplied across millions of people, they add up to the kind of society we eventually build.

We can't control every pothole, every broken-down truck, or every government decision. What we can control is whether we speed into danger, deceive someone for profit, or neglect something entrusted to us, and whether we do the right thing when there's nobody around to enforce it. Personal responsibility isn't about pretending government has no role to play. It's about refusing to surrender the part that belongs to us just because the system has failed elsewhere.

 Government owes citizens competent institutions and basic public services. Citizens, in turn, owe one another responsible behaviour. Neither obligation cancels the other out, and demanding one should never become an excuse for abandoning the other. A country can't build a culture of accountability if everyone believes accountability starts with the person above them and stops the moment it reaches their own doorstep.

 The tragedy in Nomalé shouldn't end with another round of outrage, condolences, and demands for somebody else to act. It should leave each of us with a harder question: what's the one thing within my control that I could do differently today? The answer doesn't need to be perfect. Above average is a fine place to start.

 Maybe that's where personal responsibility actually begins, not with changing the whole country at once, but with refusing to make the small part of it within our control any worse.