Source : Sahel weather October 2024 

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In an open letter sent on October 7 to the President of Cameroon, the lawyer and candidate in the next presidential election, Christian Ntimbane, questioned the absence of the Head of State, Paul Biya, who had not been seen in public since the end of the last China-Africa summit held from September 4 to 6, 2024. In his press release, Christian Ntimbane commented on the absence of a president rumored to be “sometimes in Switzerland, sometimes in a bad state in a hospital in France”. He added: “If he's on vacation, say so. If he's ill, say so. A President of the Republic can fall ill.” That was all it took to launch yet another controversy about the state of health of 91-year-old Paul Biya, who has been in power for 42 years.

The following day, reports RFI, the US-based Africa Broadcasting Service (ABS), whose star presenter is an exiled Anglophone separatist leader, announced the death of Paul Biya. The authorities immediately retorted, declaring the news to be “fantasy and pure imagination”. In a press release, the Minister of Communication and Government Spokesman, René Sadi, stated that the President “granted himself a brief private stay in Europe”, but “he remains, as usual, and wherever he may be, attentive to the evolution of national life.” The Minister of Labor, meanwhile, was threatening. “In our institutions, there are mechanisms in place to prosecute this kind of person, because you don't announce the death of a head of state without making sure what's going on,” he warned.  Taking the tone up a notch, Paul Atanga Nji, Minister of Territorial Administration, for his part, hammered home that “any debate on the President's state of health is henceforth formally forbidden.” An injunction that was, to say the least, little heeded by public opinion, in this case the committed rapper Xzafrane. In a track entitled “Rentre à la maison président” - which has been heard over 300,000 times - the artist questions Paul Biya's absence. Finally, the phoenix Paul Biya reappeared in Cameroon on October 21, in images broadcast by the national television station CCRTV. However, there was no statement from him, either to CPDM militants - his party - mobilized on the outskirts of the airport, or to television.

Turmoil and crises in the North

In the meantime, the situation in the north of the country is far from cheerful. Firstly, in the far north, the bridge linking the center of the town of Yagoua and working-class districts such as Kaskao and Gabara collapsed under the pressure of flooding. Secondly, the deputy mayor of the Bamenda region (north-west), Joko Frida, was kidnapped and then killed. According to a local radio station, the elected official was abducted on October 26, and her lifeless body was discovered “bathed in blood (...) in the early hours of Monday morning.” In the same region, English-speaking Cameroonian journalist Atia Tilarious Azonhwi was abducted on Friday October 25. Since the outbreak of secessionist violence in 2016, the town of Bamenda has frequently been the scene of kidnappings and murders. In addition, Bamenda is one of the major cities to have been affected by a general power cut, which occurred towards the end of the month. The cause was a major incident on the southern interconnected network, which covers six out of ten regions. The towns affected were: Yaoundé, Douala, Bamenda, Bafoussam, Bureau, Dschang, Kribi, Ebolowa and Sangmelima.

In an X published on his account, the president of the opposition MRC party, Maurice Kamto, claimed that the electoral organization Elecam (Elections Cameroon), is responsible for several shortcomings in the publication of the provisional electoral rolls. According to Kamto, more than 120,000 citizens registered on the electoral lists will not find their names on the provisional lists. This is because “the provisional electoral lists illegally transmitted to the communal branches by Elecam's General Management are different from those held by the departmental branches”, he claims. He added: “This is a violation of electoral law, which seriously affects the protected rights of registered voters and directly influences the exercise of their right to vote.