As news of a coup d’état in Cameroon spreads across the country, a source at the Unity Palace has informed the Cameroon Concord News Group that a cabinet reshuffle is on the horizon as members of the president’s inner circle start strategizing on how to grant the ailing and collapsing Biya a massive victory in the 2025 presidential election.

The source, which elected anonymity, said there was panic in Yaoundé, especially after the coup d’état in Gabon which led to the ousting of former president, Ali Bongo, who had been hit by a massive stroke, leaving him paralyzed on one side of his body.

Following the coup d’état in Gabon, Mr. Biya has shaken up the military twice, taking possible suspects from strategic positions and dumping them in the periphery where they have little or no influence.

“The fear of a possible coup could be read on many faces in Mr. Biya’s circle. The president and his men do not have confidence in any of the military generals, most of whom have connections with the French and American forces,” our source at the Presidency said.

“The coup carried out by President Olingi in Gabon has struck fear in many minds in Cameroon. There is no trust between civilians and the military right now. The president is thinking of increasing the salaries of our soldiers as a way of calming down the military which seems to be harkening calls for a military take-over in Yaoundé,” the source added.

“Some news organizations are already suggesting that a coup d’état could be cheaper than the so-called democratic elections where millions of dollars are wasted, people killed, ballots printed and the same unpopular person is returned to power by crooks,” the source stressed.

“The purpose of the upcoming cabinet reshuffle is to take out unpopular ministers like Atanga Nji, the territorial administration minister, who is more of a liability than an asset to the President and the country. Others like Victor Mengot Arrey and Paul Tasong who actually have no portfolio and are not loved by their people are clearly on their way out. There are also rumors that the Prime Minister, Joseph Dion Ngute, might not go beyond 2025. He will be promptly replaced by a more popular Anglophone after the presidential poll and a list of possible candidates has already been established. The President is looking at South westerners and North westerners who are working at the international level as he plans to contract massive loans which will help in the country’s reconstruction after the poll,” the government insider said.

“The ruling party’s current concern is to win hearts and minds in the Northwest and Southwest regions where the population is anti-CPDM due to the conflict in those two English-speaking regions where more than ten thousand Cameroonians have lost their lives in a conflict which could have been avoided. In the coming months, supporters of the government will carry out provocative actions in those two regions to reignite the fighting, thereby causing separatists’ forces to become active as a means of rigging elections. We hope Ambazonian fighters will be smart enough not to fall into the trap. A peaceful northwest and southwest will definitely hand a huge victory to the opposition and this will be a huge blow to the government’s game plan,” our source pointed out.

“Though the Biya government is very unpopular across the country, many ruling party supporters are counting on a massive rigging machinery which the government is already designing and deploying. Ruling party stalwarts are all trembling and it is that fear which is pushing them into urging the desperately ill Biya to run again in 2025,” he added.

“Cameroonians are really counting on the military. The country is in a total mess. Only a coup d’état can help to bring back some sanity to our country. Corruption is rife, and the looting of state resources is taking place openly. There is nobody in charge in Yaoundé and many people want to amass more resources before any clean-up operations begin. I pray the military heeds the people’s call,” our source concluded.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-in-Chief and Group Chairman

Supporters are urging the world’s oldest leader, 91-year-old Cameroonian President Paul Biya, to run for office in the 2025 presidential election, potentially extending his more than four-decade rule.

They say Biya is the only one who can bring peace and development to the country, but the opposition says Biya must leave office after running Cameroon for decades.

Several hundred people sang in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, on Sunday, calling for Biya to accept the nomination of the Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement, or CPDM party, in the 2025 presidential election.

Biya created the CPDM on March 24, 1985, three years after his predecessor, Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, stepped down due to ill health and handed power to Biya.

Biya has been president of Cameroon since 1982 and leader of his party since 1985.

During the party’s 39th anniversary on Sunday, party officials organized rallies in all Cameroon towns and villages to ask people to support Biya as their candidate in the 2025 elections.

Senior CPDM official Fru Jonathan described Biya as the party’s natural candidate, saying there is peace, unity and economic growth in the country. Jonathan said Biya is strong and healthy.

“We think that you don’t change a winning team,” Jonathan said. “If there is any challenger, let him come up, but we have not seen any challenger who can beat our candidate, so we all rely on him and call on him to continue to rule and bring our country to emergence as that is his vision.”

Biya has not said if he will be a candidate.

Cameroon senior state functionaries appointed by Biya, along with Biya’s party officials, credit the long-serving leader for constructing at least 6,000 kilometers of roads, providing electricity and water to towns and villages, and building several hundred classrooms and hospitals.

But Cameron’s opposition and civil society disagree with that positive assessment, saying under Biya the Cameroon Bank and the Fund for Agricultural Development created to fund farmers’ projects crumbled.

The opposition also says corruption has become widespread during Biya’s rule, with Transparency International ranking Cameroon as the most corrupt country in 1998 and 1999.

Cabral Libii, 44, an opposition parliamentarian with Cameroon’s Party for National Reconciliation, or PCRN, placed third in Cameroon’s 2018 presidential elections.

Libii said Cameroonian youth will not continue to watch Biya cripple the economy, deprive civilians of their liberties and freedoms, and rule Cameroon with an iron fist while now showing signs of being ruler for life.

He said Biya is the cause of sorrows brought about by extremely high unemployment, underemployment and crises in the English-speaking western regions that have claimed more than 6,000 lives.

Libii said Cameroon opposition and civil society are organizing themselves to present a candidate to oust Biya, whom they describe as elderly and frail to the point he is hardly seen in public.

Libii said Cameroon needs young dynamic leaders to salvage the country from underdevelopment.

Opponents said many youths were hired to take part in rallies to give the false impression that Biya is popular.

Both the government and Biya’s CPDM party officials deny that civilians, especially poor youth, were hired.

At 91, Biya is the oldest leader in the world and the second-longest-serving president after his neighbor, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.

Biya’s party says he has won all presidential elections since the return of multiparty politics in Cameroon in 1990, but the opposition says previous elections have been marred by fraud.

Source: VOA

It is becoming clear that there is a massive power vacuum in Cameroon as the country’s ailing leaders are incapable of making sound economic and political decisions which can help steer the country out of the mess for which the country is now noted.

Though the country’s Territorial Administration Minister, Paul Atanga Nji, has, out of fear, banned all activities aimed at building coalitions against the crumbling Biya government, there are still huge efforts underway both in Cameroon and abroad to engineer a solid coalition which will successfully oust Mr. Biya and his corrupt CPDM party from power once and for all.

It is gradually emerging that a massive coalition is being built around Professor Titus Edzoa, who is currently in Europe to discuss various political possibilities which would lead to the building of a coalition.

The Chairman and Editor-In-Chief of the Cameroon Concord Group has welcome the  news of growing support for Professor Titus Edzoa to head a three-year transition program beginning 2025 in an inclusive government.

Speaking on Saturday in London during an event organized for Cameroon’s Diaspora and in which Biya’s succession was on the agenda, the Concord Chairman said:

“All progressive forces both in French- and English-speaking Cameroon should place their support behind Professor Titus Edzoa, as he gets himself ready to head a new Cameroon Government next year. This is an important step at a crucial moment for our divided nation.”

Chairman Soter Agbaw-Ebai added that Professor Titus Edzoa, if given the mandate, will act in the national interest of a federated Cameroon.

“Cameroon is badly in need of a smooth transition of power and many around the world believe Prof. Titus Edzoa will contribute to the quick formation of a unified and inclusive government which can address the serious security, humanitarian and political challenges facing Cameroon,” Agbaw-Ebai said.

“Professor Edzoa can be assured he has Cameroon Concord News full commitment to working with an inclusive Cameroon government formed with all blocs including the detained leaders of the Ambazonia Interim Government” Agbaw-Ebai concluded.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, a senior member of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, Cameroon’s ruling party, was reelected the country’s House Speaker of National Assembly Friday.

During an elective plenary sitting of the House in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, Cavaye was reelected with 143 votes out of 156 votes, and there were 13 void votes.

Born in 1940, Cavaye has been the president of Cameroon’s National Assembly since 1992, making him the longest-serving house speaker of the country since independence in 1960.

Source: Xinhuanet

A declaration by Cameroon’s territorial administration minister to make two opposition coalitions illegal is part of a government crackdown on opposition and dissent.

On March 12, 2024, the minister, Paul Atanga Nji, said in a statement that the Political Alliance for Change (Alliance politique pour le changement, APC), led by Jean-Michel Nintcheu, and the Political Alliance for Transition in Cameroon (Alliance politique pour la transition, APT), led by Olivier Bile, are “illegal,” calling them “clandestine movements.” The minister also referenced a recent meeting at a prison in Yaoundé between Nintcheu and Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, a leader of the Anglophone separatist group Ambazonia Interim Government, as a factor in the decision to ban the coalition.

“The government’s move against these coalitions shows how the Cameroonian authorities are moving to close down space for the opposition and for public debate ahead of the 2025 presidential elections,” said Carine Kaneza Nantulya, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately lift the ban and allow opposition parties to continue working without harassment.”

In December 2023, a prominent opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, was reelected as the leader of the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (Mouvement pour la renaissance du Cameroun, MRC), one of the most prominent opposition groups in the country. Kamto used his reelection to announce the creation of the APC.

The current president, Paul Biya, has been in power since 1982 and is serving out his seventh term. Biya, 91, was last reelected in 2018 after a contested vote-counting process. Kamto challenged the official results and declared himself winner of the election.

Biya’s 2018 election sparked a wave of political repression. After the 2018 vote, opposition-led protests occurred across the country, and the government responded with a heavy crackdown and the use of excessive force by the police, army, and gendarmes. In January 2019, Kamto and over 200 of his supporters were arrested and detained. Kamto was charged with insurrection, hostility against the homeland, criminal association, threats to public order, rebellion, and inciting insurrection, crimes that can carry the death penalty. He was freed on October 5, 2019, and the charges were dropped, though the crackdown on the opposition continued.

In early September 2020, Cameroon authorities banned demonstrations across the country after Kamto’s MRC encouraged people to take to the streets over the government’s decision to call regional elections in December 2020. Opposition parties had expressed concerns that the elections could not be conducted freely and fairly without reforming the electoral code and addressing the lack of security in the country’s minority Anglophone regions, where separatist groups and security forces have repeatedly clashed.

On September 22, 2020, Cameroonian security forces fired tear gas and water cannons and arrested over 550 people, mainly opposition party members and supporters, to disperse peaceful protests across the country. Many peaceful protesters were beaten and mistreated while being arrested and in detention.

While the majority of Kamto’s supporters who were arrested in 2019 were eventually released, 41, including Olivier Bibou Nissack and Alain Fogue Tedom, two of the group’s leaders, remain behind bars after being sentenced to seven years.

When initiating the APC in December 2023, Kamto said that the opposition should rally behind one candidate for the next presidential elections, slated for late 2025. Biya has not announced if he will run again for reelection.

Opposition groups simply coordinating activities and forming alliances cannot be considered “clandestine movements;” instead, this coordination should be considered a normal and important feature of the democratic process, Human Rights Watch said.

Activists have expressed doubts over the legality of the government’s ban. “This decision is not based on any legal texts,” Emmanuel Simh, a prominent rights activist and lawyer for the MRC, told Human Rights Watch. “No law in Cameroon prevents legally established parties getting together to establish a coalition. It’s just repression and another attempt to muzzle the opposition, to prevent it from organizing ahead of the next presidential elections.”

The government’s decision to ban the two political coalitions violates the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and the right to participate in political life . These rights are guaranteed under international human rights law including expressly in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, both of which Cameroon has ratified.

“Cameroonians have watched Biya weaken any meaningful political opposition over the course of the last four decades and this ban is yet another example of the government’s repression,” Nantulya said. “He should consider his legacy and encourage authorities to facilitate and deliver a credible election process with full respect for fundamental rights and freedoms.”

Culled from Human Rights Watch

Paul Biya, the tribal chief passing for a head of state, has faced allegations of corruption and authoritarianism during his long tenure. Critics have accused his Beti-Bulu-Ewondo government of widespread corruption, human rights abuses and political repression.  And he remains the master at curbing press freedoms.

Is Biya taking the last kicks of a dying horse? The Francophone dominated Cameroon government military is presently occupying most of Southern Cameroons. Cameroonians are being told that the dictator intends to run again in the 2025 presidential election.

Boko Haram is alive and active in the Far North region. The security situation in the East region is deteriorating. Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces have now killed more than three thousands government soldiers and police, an indication that the Ambazonia conflict is intensifying.

Meanwhile the prolonged, miserable plight of large numbers of citizens both in English and French Cameroun has grown. The on-going ill-treatment of innocent Southern Cameroons civilians in the seven year conflict is now unacceptable in the eyes of many deep within the African Union, even to Yaounde’s friends. Pretending in French speaking Cameroun that all is well, allowing crime to flourish and spread in the cities of Douala and Yaoundé, while refusing to dialogue with the jailed Southern Cameroons leaders is not the proper way to conduct politics.

Some of Cameroon’s European allies including Canada and the US, understandably, are out of patience with the government of the 91-year-old President Biya. The general consensus is that Biya should go! After 42 years in power, even prominent Francophone CPDM officials are now recalibrating their positions and saying Biya should be replaced.

We of the Cameroon Concord Group are pushing the military to begin setting out the various ways in which Cameroon as a nation could dump Mr Biya as leader. Biya is not a cure. He has never been a cure. He was never going to be a cure.

We now know that Cameroon’s presidential election is coming up next year, though no campaign has started but threats from the Minister of Territorial Administration against some progressive political parties.

The 2025 election offers the right opportunity for Cameroonians including those in the military and the National Gendarmerie to depose the Beti Monarch.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai