As the nation teeters on the brink of collapse, haunted by its own fractured identity, former Prime Minister Philémon Yang has stepped forward not to call for reform or justice but to once again decorate the presidency with laurels. In a recent public declaration, Yang hailed President Paul Biya as the best candidate to ensure peace, stability, and development in Cameroon.

To the average Cameroonian who wakes each morning in a country consumed by war, corruption, and deep institutional decay, such praises land not as reassurance but as salt in an open wound.

After more than four decades in power, President Biya is not just a symbol of continuity. He has become the face of an enduring and painful crisis. Yet from polished podiums and elite gatherings, the political establishment continues to sing his praises while the nation bleeds in silence.

A Tale of Two Cameroons

There is the Cameroon that Philémon Yang speaks of. A land of order, progress, and unity under the steady hand of its long-standing and dictatorial ruler. And there is the Cameroon most citizens live in. A nation where soldiers torch villages in the Northwest and Southwest, where journalists disappear into detention cells, and where mothers grieve over the charred remains of their children!

In this other Cameroon, peace is a myth, stability is enforced through fear, and development has taken a long painful detour.

What Mr Yang calls leadership, many Cameroonians now recognize as survival politics. A regime that sustains itself not through vision but through silence, suppression, and self-preservation.

Samuel Wazizi The Journalist Who Vanished in Custody

Perhaps no story better captures this brutal contradiction than the tragic fate of Samuel Wazizi, a journalist arrested in August 2019 in Buea for reporting on the Anglophone crisis. Daring to speak aloud what others whispered in fear. For months, his family and legal team were kept in the dark about his whereabouts. It was not until June 2020 that the government finally confirmed what many feared. Wazizi had died in military custody, allegedly due to severe torture.

No one has been held accountable

There was no public inquiry, no independent investigation, and no justice. His death sent a chilling message across the media landscape. In today’s Cameroon, telling the truth can cost you your life or exile.

Yet, Philémon Yang invokes stability without mention of the silence that now blankets the press and the country.

Ngabou Ngarbuh and the Memory of Fire

What kind of peace allows the massacre of children?

In Ngarbuh in 2020 and later in Ngabou, families were ripped apart in unspeakable acts of violence reportedly at the hands of state forces. The haunting images of babies burned in their sleep, mothers executed in broad daylight, and entire villages left in ashes are etched into the national memory. These are not the birthmarks of peace. They are the scars of abandonment.

Still, the state’s response has been slow, evasive, and muted. Instead of confronting these horrors, the political elite chooses to elevate a narrative that serves power over truth.

Development Deferred, Justice Denied

While Mr Yang speaks of development, hospitals collapse under the weight of neglect and roads in rural regions are impassable during the rainy season. Unemployment remains high and the wealth gap continues to widen. The COVID-19 pandemic further exposed the fragility of Cameroon’s health infrastructure. A system more responsive to elite interests than public needs.

And what about justice? For many, it remains a phantom. A luxury reserved for those with connections. The poor are left to navigate a system designed to exhaust rather than empower. Victims of abuse from arbitrary arrests to land grabs find little relief in courts where power not law determines outcomes.

A Legacy of Fear Disguised as Stability

What Philémon Yang and others in the ruling elite call stability has in practice become the art of managing fear. Dissent is criminalized. Protesters are jailed. Artists and musicians like Longue Longue have faced harassment and physical abuse simply for daring to speak. Cameroon has become a place where criticism is conflated with criminality and where silence is no longer a choice but a survival tactic.

The Danger of Ritual Praise

The most dangerous lies are not the ones told by dictators but the ones repeated by those who know better.

Philémon Yang, a seasoned politician with decades in public service, cannot claim ignorance. His endorsement is not just political theatre. It is an act of betrayal. A betrayal of the suffering Anglophone mothers, the silenced journalists, the displaced families, and the young Cameroonians who see no future in a country where truth has no microphone.

The Final Irony

In the end, it is not Biya’s rule that shocks the conscience. It is how many in the elite continue to applaud while the country drowns. Their praises echo in marble halls while ordinary Cameroonians bury their dead, walk miles for medicine, or flee their homes under gunfire.

To call this peace is to spit on grief.

To call this development is to mock despair.

To call this stability is to ignore the tremors shaking the nation’s soul

The truth is not convenient but it is necessary. Until those in power begin to speak it, Cameroon will continue to stand as a republic of silence wrapped in empty applause.

By Ntam Charles in Bonn, Germany

Cameroon’s elderly president Paul Biya was absent from the country on Sunday as campaigning kicked into high gear for October 12 polls to decide who will fill his position.

The 92-year-old — the world’s oldest head of state, in power since 1982 — is seeking an eighth term in office.

But he left Cameroon a week ago on a “private trip” to Europe, according to his office. Diplomatic sources have said the leader, who is rarely seen in public, was in Geneva.

Campaigning started on Saturday and continued on Sunday with Biya’s main rivals holding rallies.

Cabral Libii, candidate of the opposition Cameroon Party for National Reconciliation (PCRN), held his under light rain in the coastal city of Douala.

A former tourism minister, Bello Bouba Maigari, who is also running, roused several hundred National Union for Democracy and Progress party members in his own rally, alongside another candidate, Akere Muna, who has dropped out of the race and given him his support.

A total of 12 candidates were cleared to vie for the presidency, including Biya.

The outgoing president has not directly addressed his fellow citizens since July 13, when he announced his candidacy on the social media platform X.

Biya — who is seen as a favourite to win, given the divided opposition — was embarrassed on September 17 when his daughter Brenda Biya posted a video to TikTok urging her followers to abandon her father.

She later deleted the video and posted an apology.

A 2018 investigation of economic crime by a consortium of journalists found Paul Biya had spent some 4.5 years of his presidency abroad, largely in Switzerland, at an estimated cost of $65 million.

The president failed to show as scheduled at the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, represented instead by his foreign minister.

By Queen Besumbu Agbaw

Cameroon’s presidential race officially began on Saturday, with 12 candidates, including one woman, vying for the country’s highest office.

The campaign will last for two weeks, culminating in the presidential election on Oct. 12.

Incumbent President Paul Biya, leader of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, is seeking to extend his 43-year rule by winning another seven-year mandate.

Issa Tchiroma Bakary and Bello Bouba Maigari, former ministers and ex-allies of Biya, are among the main opposition contenders.

Joshua Osih, candidate of the leading opposition Social Democratic Front, launched his campaign in Bamenda, the chief town of the English-speaking Northwest Region, which has been ravaged by an armed separatist conflict since 2017.

Separatist fighters have imposed a month-long lockdown to disrupt the election in the war-torn English-speaking regions of the Northwest and Southwest, where they are seeking to create an independent nation.

Source: Xinhuanet

As Cameroonians brace for the high stakes presidential election on October 12, 2025, the political terrain is as fractured as ever.

Calls for a united opposition have intensified, especially among the growing number of citizens desperate for political change after decades of entrenched incumbency.

At one time, all eyes turned to Professor Maurice Kamto, the man many believed could play a pivotal king-making role. Yet in a puzzling twist, Kamto has chosen to sit on the sidelines, refusing to endorse any of the opposition candidates despite the expectations placed on him.

His neutrality is deafening and dangerous.

Kamto, the leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) and arguably the most prominent opposition figure in the country since the 2018 election, has long been hailed as a beacon of hope by many Cameroonians.

His intellectual rigor, legal expertise and previous political defiance, have earned him respect and admiration. However, his recent refusal to guide voters or rally behind a consensus candidate is forcing even his most ardent supporters to ask if he truly wants change?

After being rejected from the presidential race, a controversial move that itself warrants scrutiny, Kamto found himself in a unique position. He may not be on the ballot but he still hold moral and political capital. In moments like these, true leadership reveals itself not in the pursuit of power but in how one uses influence for the common good.

Unfortunately, Kamto has refused to endorse any of the remaining opposition candidates. This decision has baffled many who saw in him a potential architect of opposition unity.

Ironically, while he criticized the two northern candidates for not consolidating their bids, he himself failed to make any unifying move. Instead of stepping up to foster dialogue, rally the fragmented opposition or point his supporters in the right direction,  Kamto has opted for neutrality, a stance that now reeks of political convenience.

This raises many questions. Can a man who has refused to support any opposition candidate still claim to champion democratic change in the country?

There is a risk of fragmentation which implies a dispersion of votes, making the ruling party a winner.

The Cameroonian opposition has long been its own worse enemy. Chronic disunity, ego problems and lack of strategic coherence have repeatedly handed victory to the ruling party. In the face of growing public discontent, Prof. Kamto’s refusal to act as a unifier at such a crucial juncture only reinforces this damaging pattern.

There is no shortage of capable candidates in the current race. However, if votes will be shared among  multiple opposition parties, the dying regime will once again find itself in a favorable position, not necessarily because it is strong but because the opposition is weak, divided and without the right mindset.

Kamto’s refusal to back even one of these candidates or to initiate a dialogue that could lead to a united front is not just disappointing. It is politically irresponsible.

For someone whose political brand is built on justice and national renewal, Kamto’s action sends a conflicting message. It is hard to decry the dysfunction of the opposition while refusing to take steps to fix it. It is hard to fight for the people while leaving them without guidance in their hour of need.

Supporters often cite Kamto’s legal background, his statesmanship and his vision as reasons to trust his judgment. But history judges leaders not just by what they say but what they do, especially when the stakes are high.

In months and years to come, Kamto will be forced to deal with the possibility that his legacy may be defined not by the battles he fought but by the one he chose to avoid.

This is not to say Kamto had an easy task. Endorsing a candidate in a competitive and ideologically diverse opposition carries risks. But leadership is about risk. It is about humility. It is about being able to demonstrate that even if he is not the one leading the charge against a crumbling goverment, the movement must go on.

Instead, Kamto has chosen to demonstrate a strange indifference the people’s wish while casting blame on others for failing to unite. This paints a picture of a man more interested in being the face of change than in actually triggering it.

Cameroon stands at the crossroads. This election could be a defining moment in the country’s democratic evolution. But progress will not come through rhetoric alone. It requires action, compromise and, above all, unity.

In refusing to endorse a candidate, Kamto has not just missed an opportunity to occupy a strategic position in the country’s political history, but has also proven to the people that their political interest is paramount.

He has actively undermined the opposition’s best shot at unseating a decades-old regime. His neutrality has sown confusion among voters and emboldened the very regime he claims to oppose.

Ultimately, the burden of responsibility falls on all opposition leaders but disproportionately on those with the stature to influence outcomes.  Kamto had and still has a chance to help shape the future but that requires setting egos aside, abandoning the illusion of being the sole savior and stepping into the role history is offering him not necessarily as president but as a true patriot and unifier.

In a political climate where neutrality speaks louder than words, Kamto’s refusal to act is being interpreted rightly or wrongly as a betrayal of the movement he helped build.  Whether this is a tactical pause or a permanent abdication of responsibility, only time will tell. As the country marches toward October 12, one truth becomes increasingly clear.

In the face of injustice neutrality is not neutrality it is complicity.

For a man of Kamto’s standing, there is a high price to pay for neutrality.

By Ntam Charles Ngeh