Politics

11, July 2025

Paul Biya’s candidacy dividing the CPDM ⁰

The ruling party has had an uneasy several weeks. Ministers and party officials are now in open disagreement about the possible candidacy of President Paul Biya in the upcoming October elections.

While some see this as a diversionary tactic, for residents of the capital, the country is no longer being governed.

“This internal battle says it all, and we can say that the country is no longer governed because there’s no leader to bang their fist on the table,” says Yves Tuya, resident of Yaoundé. “The silence of the President of the Republic is what’s causing all this disorder.”

It’s an unprecedented situation for the party and is starting to raise questions about the CPDM’s legitimacy.

“We have Minister Sadi, for example, who doesn’t know what to say, and Minister Jacques Fame Ndongo trying to reassure people — but in reality, Cameroonians are not fooled,” says political analyst Landry Atangana. “Even more so, party members themselves don’t know who to turn to. And what’s most dangerous in this kind of situation is that everything depends on just one man. We are left wondering: in such circumstances, does this kind of party even still have the legitimacy to speak on behalf of the people, when they can’t even agree or speak with one voice internally?”

Inevitable transition

For Atangana, it’s clear that the ruling party is now on the verge of implosion in Cameroon, as its top officials have shown their limits and inability to prepare a successor.

“The chaos we are witnessing in the CPDM lately can be explained by three factors. First, the absence of a clear direction. Second, the lack of an identified successor. And third, the fear of a power vacuum at the top.”

This is no longer about hidden dissent, but rather an open fracture within the CPDM. According to the expert, political transition is now inevitable by October.

“Opposition parties, including former allies, have decided to reshape the political landscape in Cameroon. Whether we like it or not, the country is now facing a transition,” Atangana says.

According to observers, the breakup of the CPDM’s historic alliances and the current situation could give the opposition one last chance to bring an end to the ruling party’s 43 years of undisputed dominance in October.

Source: Africa News

9, July 2025

Political paralysis has gripped Yaoundé and it is now at a dangerous crossroads ⁰

It is difficult to say where the political chaos in Yaoundé will lead us to after very powerful political leaders from the North announced they were no longer with President Biya. It is hard to predict.

Some of Biya’s men in government are still protesting against the North and struggling to handle pressure coming from Barrister Akere Muna and Professor Maurice Kamto.

Unconfirmed reports suggest Ministers Issa Tchiroma, Bello Bouba and Mey have told loyalists to leave Yaoundé and head back to the North.

Political paralysis has gripped Cameroon and the October presidential election is fast approaching.

Biya and his Beti-Ewondo political elites have been in control for 42-years and now there are extraordinarily deep fissures with rival Fulani and Hausa parties – loyal to the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo.

The Minister-Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh with no experience of the Cameroon political story is trying to form a new coalition and breaking with the tradition that government formation and electioneering is simply the prerogative of the head of state.

Southern Cameroonians have already told Francophones to get out of their land and anger is now rising in the West and in the North.

Ngoh Ngoh is taking the last kicks of a dying horse and in doing so; he is attempting to justify the unjustifiable!

Followers of influential Minister Issa Tchiroma were not faced with tear gas and stun grenades during their political rally in Garoua recently but there’s nervousness about where this issue could lead.

The Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia crisis continues to ravage the country but the threats coming from the North and the Bamilekes seems to be intra-sectarian. The spectre of further violence hangs heavy.

In many ways, what is presently going on in Cameroon is really a power play for the spoils that come from the levers of government. It’s not a spontaneous people’s uprising.

National Assembly speaker Cavaye Djibril is appealing for restraint and de-escalation but what is happening in La Republique du Cameroun reflects the profound instability of a political system of government that was set up to serve one man-92-year-old President Biya.

Cameroon is at a dangerous crossroads.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

9, July 2025

October Presidential Election: Yaoundé has a Paul Biya problem ⁰

It began when the 92-year-old leader peed on his trousers, including on his shoes on the May 20 Boulevard in Yaoundé, the nation’s capital. Biya had refused to make the trip to Yaoundé from Mvomeka’a for the celebration but was forced to do so by his wife Chantal Biya and her acolytes in government.

Biya, the political disaster that has been around for forty-two years has recorded an excellent backward trend performance during his tenure as chief executive.

The ruling CPDM Chairman and his men set fire to every profitable government corporation that was established by the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo and corruption and dwindling profits became their hallmark.

Recent efforts led by Minister Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh to run a tribal crime syndicate that guarantees his continued stay in power are coming up short. And all this is producing tension. But it is now becoming something more brutal: a cacophony of politicians from the Northern regions outlining the myriad ways in which they dislike the 92-year-old President Biya.

Complaints have come from Minister Issa Tchiroma, who recently told the Cameroonian people that Biya is a finished man and no longer in command. They have also come from Bello Bouba Maigari who complained about the poor running of state affairs.

The mutiny deep within the ruling CPDM crime syndicate has become so open that those grousing no longer even bother to do it in private. According to Cameroon Intelligence Report sources, a group of senior government ministers including Prime Minister Dion Ngute and Justice Minister Laurent Esso are now complaining about President Biya’s shortcomings in the presence of prominent CPDM Central Committee members in Yaoundé.

Even primary school pupils are getting in on the act with several of them saying that they want to see a new head of state.

Biya’s delayed announcement on the October presidential election is now the butt of jokes.

Only Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Paul Atanga Nji and Biya’s wife Chantal still think Cameroon should be run by a living corpse. As I write, it is increasingly embarrassing for everyone in the CPDM including the Southern Cameroons comedians that their boss His Excellency President Paul Biya is being laughed at in rarefied circles, and that even his kinsmen and women now see him unfit for office.

The current situation in Cameroon is evidence of leadership failure. The question now is whether to push the idiot out before October or get a decent man like Barrister Akere Muna to challenge him.

We of the Concord Group think that Biya has no defense because his performance over a 42-year period has been dreadful. It is hard in Cameroon today to ask the question “what is the problem?” because everything is the problem!

Anti Bamileke, anti Tchiroma and anti Bello Bouba ranting is not enough to save Biya! Let him go and go now! It is no longer enough to say the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow and when the young people disagree with the corrupt leadership, they are forced to leave the country. This is exactly what is happening in Cameroon.

All of Biya’s partners in Southern Cameroons, West region and now the North have left saying that he is no longer capable of governing the country. Even more concerning is that the list includes many who were considered die-hard Biya loyalists. Even if the ruling CPDM party decides to oust Mr Biya, they do not have a clear successor. The problem with waiting to see how things develop in Yaoundé is that a young and inexperienced soldier might stage a coup and make things more complicated.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

7, July 2025

Catholic leaders say Biya should go and go now! ⁰

Father Étienne Bakaba — a journalist and singer — has urged President Paul Biya to announce his decision not to seek re-election “as soon as possible.”

In an open letter, Bakaba noted that the Cameroonian leader has become too old and frail to lead the country, stating, “You can’t do it anymore,” regarding his capacity to govern.

The priest of the Douala Archdiocese clarified that his call for the president to step aside is not based on the Constitution, electoral law, or the statutes of Biya’s CPDM party.

“It is a matter of common sense,” the priest said.

“Give Cameroonians who have a healthy ambition to instill a new spirit in a new homeland the opportunity to prepare properly for a real election, the result of which will be accepted by the sovereign people-an election without violence,” the letter states.

“It is an appeal and a prayer!”

The priest blasted Biya’s supporters who have been calling on him to seek an eighth term in office, saying that such supporters want the president “to die in power.”

He described such people as “the real enemies of Cameroon.”

“When the time comes, they will not be able to hide from history. These eternal foxes leeching cheese from the beak of the crow are doing it for themselves and not for you. Nor are they courting for the overwhelming majority of Cameroonians who bend their backs under the weight of misery, corruption, embezzlement, insalubrity, tribalism, unemployment, darkness, dry taps, crime, rape, moral and household filth, unemployed graduates,” he continued.

He noted that there were honest militants within the president’s political party who strongly believe Biya is no longer the right man for the country’s top job, but who are too afraid to speak out.

“This is not a disavowal, it’s not a betrayal, it’s pure realism. But these disciples, for fear of repression or out of modesty, don’t dare tell you to stop! At least publicly, but behind the scenes they are in the game,” the priest said.

While many in the party and in government might be too afraid to speak out, some of the President’s allies, whom Bakaba describes as “traitors and opportunists”, are already jumping ship.

He didn’t name names, but it’s likely he was referring to two cabinet ministers who recently resigned and declared their intentions to challenge their previous boss in the October presidential election.

Issa Tchiroma Bakary, the erstwhile Minister of Employment and Vocational Training, resigned on June 22, complaining that Biya, now 92-years-old, was no more in command of state affairs.

“There is no leadership,” Tchiroma said in an interview following his resignation.

“The president is absent. For 14 years, no council of ministers has been held. Four ministers have died without being replaced. There is silence from the top,” he said.

In a 24-page letter to Cameroonians, Tchiroma promised to dismantle the “broken system” which for over 40 years has bred “abuse, contempt, and the confiscation of power.”

Just days after Tchiroma’s resignation, another notable figure in Biya’s cabinet also called it quits. Bello Bouba Maigari, who has worked with President Biya for decades, also resigned as Minister of Tourism and Leisure to challenge the President in the October Presidential election.

Even as Father Bakaba says he believes that Biya is no longer able to rule, he doesn’t believe that these Ministers who have resigned can be taken seriously, and predicts their own political end had come.

He hopes Biya’s “mandate of great opportunities” as the current mandate was baptized, would finally come to an end with the President assuring Cameroonians he won’t seek re-election.

“It is a prayer and a wish. This opportunity is sovereignly possible for you. It seems to me providential for the near future of our beloved homeland, Cameroon,” the priest said.

Bababa isn’t the only Catholic priest to have called on Biya to step aside.

Bishop Emmanuel Dassi Youfang of Bafia has voiced similar concerns, telling Crux that Cameroon needs a President with “the energy to visit various parts of the country in order to keep abreast of the problems of the people.”

“I don’t think our current President has that kind of energy,” he stated.

Opposition political leader and a declared candidate for the Presidential election, lawyer Akere Muna told Crux that Biya “will do Cameroonians a great deal of good if he opts not to seek an eighth term of office.”

“He has served the nation as President for 43 years. I don’t think he has anything more to offer and I think he deserves to go home and rest,” he said.

Source: Crux

30, June 2025

Issa Tchiroma cannot lead the future. He must answer to the past ⁰

As Cameroon nears a historic presidential election, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a man whose career has been steeped in the noxious stew of breathtaking hypocrisy and betrayal, has now emerged, astonishingly, as a self-proclaimed savior of Cameroon. Tchiroma, for decades, was Biya’s most shameless apologist, the regime’s voice-box and ideological attack dog, who now seeks to unshackle himself from the very chains he spent years tightening around the Cameroonian people. Tchiroma did not merely serve the despotic Biya regime. He defended it with unmatched zeal, rationalizing repression and denying atrocities with unflinching composure. He wasn’t merely complicit; he was instrumental. He did not seek truth; he spun brazen lies. He did not serve the people; he served power. Now, with Biya’s dynasty on life support -its 93-year-old patriarch facing creeping senility, hidden behind curtains of frailty, health comorbidities, and palace intrigues – Tchiroma seeks to disown the house he helped burn, by rebranding himself before the regime’s final collapse.

After decades as the poster child of Biya’s oppressive regime, Tchiroma resigned his ministerial post in Biya’s ossified government and now seeks the highest office in the land. But make no mistake: this is not repentance – it is repositioning. Tchiroma is not a man who made mistakes. This is a man who made a career out of betrayal and political treachery. So, let history record it plainly: Issa Tchiroma Bakary is not a reformer. He is not a rebel. He is not the antidote to Biyaism. He is Biyaism’s final mutation! He is not the answer to Cameroon’s problems. He is the echo of its betrayal. Most importantly, he is not the man to bury Biya’s legacy. He is Biya incarnate – just seventeen years younger and infinitely more vicious and cynical. He who dined with the devil for decades cannot declare himself a priest at the devil’s funeral.

A Life Built on Betrayal

Tchiroma’s career has been one long performance of vaulting ambition without conscience. In a stunning display of arrogance, rife with irony and audacity, the 75-year-old former Minister of Labor and Vocational Training, began his campaign for the October 2025 presidential elections, cloaked in the language of change. But let us be clear: Tchiroma is the past pretending to be the future. His cynical political metamorphosis is not a profile in courage, speaking truth to power. It is political choreography. This is not a new dawn; it is the desperate rebranding of a loyal architect of repression; the voice of a man choking on the smoke of his own arson. His 24-page manifesto, promising federalism, jobs, and reform, is not a vision. It reads like a national obituary; an epitaph for his long-dead credibility. He calls the regime “broken.” But he was its spine. He says the people were betrayed. But he wielded the dagger. He says Cameroon needs healing. But he poured the poison. To hear Tchiroma speak today is to watch an arsonist lecture on fire safety. The hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling, incomprehensible, and devoid of any perfunctory exaggeration.

Tchiroma was the velvet voice of a brutal state. From 2009 to 2018, he served as Cameroon’s Minister of Communication; a post he wielded not to inform, but to distort. As a spokesman for Biya’s regime, Tchiroma did not merely obscure truth – he rewrote it. He legitimized repression, and glorified tyranny. He trafficked in propaganda with clinical detachment, rationalizing the regime’s failures, human rights abuses, and corrupt excesses. His every press briefing was a master class in sycophancy and state-sponsored deception. This was not ignorance; it was strategy. Tchiroma did it for power; he did it for the money! Yet, in a brazen contempt for the people, Tchiroma has offered no remorse or apologies. Not for the blood-soaked years. And in perhaps the most egregious display of moral bankruptcy, Tchiroma has never explained the embezzlement of the compensation for the victims of the 2008 Kenya Airways Flight 507 crash at Mbanga Pongo. To rob the dead is to lose any claim to the living.

The Grand North Remembers

Strategically, Tchiroma’s pivot to the Grand North – his home turf – is no accident. For decades, the region – battered by poverty, battered by Boko Haram insurgency, battered by deliberate neglect – has been treated not as a constituency, but as a voting reservoir to be drained at will. Among its principal architects of economic ruin and stagnation is none other than Tchiroma. With succession battles simmering within the ruling CPDM, the Grand North, long a loyal CPDM voting bloc, is now splintering and looks ripe for political realignment. Tchiroma hopes to position himself as its new patriarch, displacing Biya loyalists and rival power brokers like Bello Bouba Maigari. Tchiroma seeks to rebrand himself as a savior of the North, even as his legacy there is one of abandonment, elitism, and duplicity. Tchiroma is a man who stood guard while his region was turned into a militarized wasteland. His appeal to the Fulbe and northern electorate is not rooted in love; it is rooted in a cynical calculation, a desperate gamble for political oxygen in a region where his name stinks of political opportunism.

But the Grand North remembers; the Grand North remembers how Garoua, Tchiroma’s hometown, remains underdeveloped while he hobnobbed in Yaoundé. The Grand North remembers Tchiroma’s cold indifference to Boko Haram’s terror and how its youth were left to die in fields of war. It remembers Tchiroma’s silence. It remembers his complicity. Tchiroma did not merely serve under Paul Biya – he bent the truth until it broke for him. He became the regime’s most fluent mouthpiece, defending crimes against the people with a pathological liar’s cadence and a sycophant’s conviction. And where did this defense echo loudest? In the Grand North; where his silence on Boko Haram’s onslaughts and his complicity in Yaoundé’s starvation of the region became thunderously damning.

The Political Math Doesn’t Add Up

So, let the record scream: Tchiroma’s candidacy is not a rupture. It is residue. Tchiroma is not a leader; he is a chameleon, changing colors to survive. Sensing the collapse of Biya’s fortress, he crawls from the ruins, painting himself in the colors of dissent, and whispering to the wind that he has changed – that he now hears the cries he once ignored, sees the suffering he once mocked, and seeks to fix the very nation he helped mutilate. Even if Tchiroma were to secure a fractured northern bloc, it is unlikely to yield enough momentum to push him past more widely accepted opposition figures like Maurice Kamto, although Kamto’s shadow is fossilized in the architecture of Biya’s failed regime.

In truth, even if he fractures the northern vote, he cannot unite it. Even if he utters the language of change, he cannot embody it. You cannot ask for trust from a nation you helped silence. Tchiroma is not the future; and does not represent change. He represents a final, desperate mutation of the old order – a regime ghost draped in the fabric of reform. His candidacy is not a rebirth. It is a warning.

Cameroon Deserves Better Than an Unrepentant Traitor

Let us not mistake opportunism for courage. Tchiroma’s departure from government is not an act of defiance – it is an escape route. The ship is sinking, and the rats are fleeing, out of survival instinct. The youth, the Anglophones, the jobless millions – they are not waiting for a man who defended dictatorship until it became inconvenient. They are not waiting for a fossil of the old regime. Tchiroma’s gambit may inject volatility into the election, but let no one mistake his candidacy for a national rebirth. It is the final act of a consummate political chameleon, who knows only how to adapt to survive, never to serve.

Cameroon must remember, and the Grand North must remind itself: not all who speak the language of change carry its spirit. Tchiroma’s candidacy is a mask stretched over a scarred face. To hand he the presidency would not be to escape the Biya regime. It would be to extend its life by other means. Let the Grand North rise – but let it rise with clean hands and clear vision, not under the banner of a man whose loyalty was always for sale, and whose conscience always arrived too late.

Cameroon is at an inflection point. The imminent end of Biya’s four-decade dictatorship presents a rare opportunity for national renewal. But let us not confuse opportunism with bravery. Let us not confuse Tchiroma’s departure from government with dissent. This is not a man who saw the light. This is a man who felt the heat. Tchiroma does not carry the spirit of change. He is the echo of betrayal seeking redemption. But there is no redemption without reckoning. And there is no reckoning led by traitors. There is no future built by the hands that helped destroy the past. So let it be said in every region, repeated and shouted in every dialect: Cameroon deserves better than an unrepentant recycled political hack and CPDM enabler. Let the nation remember him. Let the Grand North remind him. Let the ballot box reject him. Issa Tchiroma cannot lead the future. He must answer to the past.

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai

30, June 2025

Mounouna Foutsou to lead labour Ministry after Tchiroma resignation ⁰

President Paul Biya has appointed Mounouna Foutsou, Minister of Youth and Civic Education, to temporarily oversee the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training following the resignation of Issa Tchiroma Bakary on June 24.

The announcement was made public by Séraphin Magloire Fouda, Secretary-General of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Shortly after the decision, the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Employment, Forchap Esandem Prudence Nkong, visited Mounouna Foutsou at his office. According to the Ministry of Youth’s communications department, Foutsou has already laid out his roadmap, calling for a working session with senior officials of the ministry under his temporary leadership on Monday, June 30.

“Madam Secretary-General, it is time to get back to work after the departure of our big brother. Go and share the work plan with the team,” Foutsou reportedly stated.

Tchiroma’s resignation, seen as a major political shift, signals the end of his alliance with the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM). The leader of the National Salvation Front of Cameroon (FSNC) party also announced his candidacy for the October 2025 presidential election, officially distancing himself from the regime he had supported for years.

This change in leadership at the Ministry of Employment comes amid growing signs of political realignment as the country approaches the presidential vote.

Source: Business in Cameroon

29, June 2025

Yaoundé: Bello Bouba declares candidacy for presidential election ⁰

Bello Bouba Maigari, Minister of Tourism and leader of the National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP) announced in Yaoundé that he will be challenging the 92-year-old President Biya in the upcoming presidential election.

‘I have heard you and I accept’, is how the current Minister of Tourism and Leisure officially declared his acceptance of the call from his party’s militants to stand as a candidate during UNDP’s ordinary congress held on Saturday 28 June 2025 at the Palais des Congrès in Yaoundé.

An elite bureaucrat with expertise in the economy and trade, Bello said he will establish a presidential committee dedicated to constitutional reform on his first day in office and devote his full efforts to its success.

The veteran politician however did not outline his plans for the nation and did not provide specific details on whether he intends to resign from the Biya-led government.

Political battles pursuing individual and factional interests, rather than the future of the nation and its people have reached a dangerous level in Cameroon and there are fears that Cameroonians including those in the diaspora are allowing the nation they have painstakingly built under the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo to crumble from the ground up due to irresponsible political strife.

27, June 2025

Issa Tchiroma announces presidential run after breaking with Biya government ⁰

Minister Issa Tchiroma who resigned this week on Thursday confirmed he will stand in this year’s presidential election, stating he wants to “put an end to the old system”.

Issa Tchiroma Bakary, long an ally of veteran President Paul Biya, first announced his intention to stand in an open letter posted on social media on Wednesday evening, then confirmed his ambition in a live online broadcast 24 hours later.

The former employment and vocational training minister is a well-known political figure in Cameroon and leads the Front for the National Salvation of Cameroon (FSNC), which has long been allied to Biya’s Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM).

Biya, 92, has been in power since 1982 and has yet to indicate whether he will stand for re-election in the October vote.

Tchiroma, 75, was transport minister from 1992 to 1996, then held the communications brief from 2009 to 2019, and was one of the government’s staunchest defenders.

“The time has come for the current regime to step down with dignity,” he said during Thursday’s broadcast, calling for a break with “a model in place for decades that has shown its limits”.

He also called for reconciliation in a country facing multiple crises, including insecurity in the English-speaking regions and Far North, as well as social tensions, economic concerns and a fraught political climate.

The CPDM has not yet announced its candidate, while the opposition is struggling to unite behind a consensus figure.

Tchiroma’s candidacy comes as several longstanding supporters of Biya appear to be distancing themselves from the Cameroon leader.

Source: AFP

26, June 2025

Race for Etoudi: Opposition unity at stake between rival groups ⁰

With just months remaining until the October presidential election, the opposition is again attempting to unite behind a single candidate. However, two competing initiatives, “The Platform” and “The Douala Group,” are vying for influence. This rivalry revives deep divisions that have long hindered any real prospects for political change.

Both groups are currently pushing to nominate a unified opposition candidate for the election. The Platform is a coalition of political parties formed in 2021, while The Douala Group is a newer movement driven by independent political figures.

A clash of methods and approaches

The Platform was initially created to advocate for a consensual reform of Cameroon’s electoral code. It brought together key figures from the MP, MRC, PCRN, SDF, UDC, UMS, and USDP parties. Today, under the leadership of Hermine Patricia Tomaïno Ndam Njoya, president of the UDC, the group focuses on selecting a single opposition candidate.

On the other side, the Douala Group includes figures such as Anicet Ekane, president of Manidem, Sam Mbaka, a former UDC executive, and Professor Calvin Aba’a Oyono. Others, like Henriette Ekwe and Elimbi Lobe, have since left the group. The group presents itself as an independent initiative aiming to foster a favorable “current of opinion” around the need for unity, despite internal disagreements.

Acknowledged rivalries

Both camps openly acknowledge their rivalry. “They are completely different, in both name and strategy,” said Léopold Dassi, UDC’s national secretary for communication. The Platform favors a consensual and inclusive approach, while The Douala Group adopts a more combative stance, emphasizing grassroots pressure and a reconfiguration of public debate.

On May 31, during his nomination convention in Yaoundé, Pierre Kwemo, president of UMS and a declared candidate, called on The Platform to intensify its efforts to find a unified contender. He even stated he would be willing to step aside for a consensus nominee.

A fragmented landscape and uncertain prospects

The Douala Group’s momentum emerges from a context of political disillusionment. According to Anicet Ekane, this movement is a reaction to recent failures of other opposition coalitions. These include the APC, led by MP Jean-Michel Nintcheu, and the ATP, promoted by Olivier Bilé. Both were launched in 2024 with different aims. The former centered around Maurice Kamto, while the latter was paradoxically under Paul Biya’s patronage. Both were banned by Interior Minister Paul Atanga Nji just months after their inception.

“The Douala Group is a direct consequence of those failures. They fought among themselves and collapsed from within,” Ekane said. He supports a unifying approach reminiscent of the 1992 election, when the opposition rallied behind the late Ni John Fru Ndi.

A race against time, or not

According to Elections Cameroon (Elecam), the electoral roll is expected to be officially convened by July 12 at the latest, with a July 22 deadline for submitting candidacies. While time is tight, The Douala Group’s members remain unfazed. “Time is not against us. Even last-minute withdrawals are possible. As long as ballots haven’t been printed, a candidate can step down,” Ekane argued.

Yet, the specter of division looms large. Although unity is a shared aspiration, the proliferation of structures, competing egos, and divergent agendas continues to undermine any real synergy. As Election Day draws closer, the threat of repeating past failures becomes increasingly tangible.

Source: Business in Cameroon

26, June 2025

Race for Etoudi: Issa Tchiroma resigns from government ⁰

At 76, Issa Tchiroma Bakary has voluntarily stepped down from government after serving in various ministerial roles for over two decades. The timing comes shortly after a series of strong public criticisms against the very regime he had consistently supported for years.

Tchiroma, the former Minister of Employment and Vocational Training, has recently re-emerged at the center of Cameroon’s political scene. His impassioned speech in Garoua denouncing the current administration, a subsequent meeting with the French ambassador, and now his formal resignation just months before the October presidential election have all fueled speculation about his motivations.

A Calculated Exit?

For many political observers, Tchiroma’s departure was anticipated. What has drawn attention is the dramatic nature of his exit. Some view it as a carefully planned move. One political analyst, who wished to remain anonymous, noted, “He’s staged his return to the opposition the way one would launch a campaign.”

Once nicknamed the “griot of Paul Biya” for his enthusiastic defense of the president, Tchiroma’s sudden change in tone has unsettled even his colleagues. Within Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute’s cabinet, some react discreetly, while others, like Minister Delegate for Justice Jean De Dieu Momo, have taken to social media. Momo wrote on Facebook, with an ironic tone reflecting the discomfort within the ruling elite, “My brother Issa Tchiroma really surprised me. And now, how is President Paul Biya going to look at me? As if I’ll do the same thing? Come on! You don’t do that.”

Since his return to government in 2009, Tchiroma had been one of Biya’s most vocal supporters. This new political shift is particularly striking given that between 1996 and 2009, he was among the regime’s fiercest critics. That stance disappeared the day he was appointed Minister of Communication on June 30, 2009. At the time, Jeune Afrique editor François Soudan described him as a “minister of communication in vuvuzela mode,” highlighting the dramatic nature of his political turn.

A Tumultuous Political Path

Tchiroma’s political journey has been far from straightforward. Trained as a railway engineer, he began his political activism in the 1970s with the Cameroon National Union (UNC) while studying in France. Upon his return in 1977, he worked at Regifercam before being arrested in 1984 for suspected links to a failed coup against Biya. He spent several years in detention without trial in Yoko prison.

Freed in 1990, he organized a protest in Garoua and co-founded the National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP), becoming a Member of Parliament in 1992. That same year, he was named Minister of Transport but was expelled from the UNDP in 1995 for joining the government. He later co-founded the ANDP with Hamadou Moustapha but was ousted from government again in 1996.

He returned to the political scene in 2007 with the creation of the Cameroon National Salvation Front (FSNC), and in 2009, he regained a ministerial post under Biya, becoming one of the regime’s most ardent defenders.

An Opposition of Convenience?

By resigning now, Tchiroma appears to be returning to his opposition roots. Yet his pattern of oscillating between government and opposition has created skepticism. Each withdrawal has been followed by a return; each alliance by a reversal. By blurring these lines so frequently, he has come to represent not so much change as ambiguity.

His current criticism of a system he once championed, with no admission of his own role in its governance, makes it hard to view this break as anything more than a tactical move. As the election approaches, his political reinvention seems driven less by ideological conviction than by opportunity. What emerges is a portrait of consistency in inconsistency, one that ultimately undermines his credibility.

Source: Business in Cameroon