Source : Sahel weather January 2025

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Will Paul Biya be a presidential candidate in October 2025? In Cameroon, the fog surrounding this question remains intact, rekindling debate within public opinion and the political class. This fever was first felt in the country's Catholic community. Indeed, Monseigneur Kleda, Archbishop of Douala, described Biya's possible candidacy as "unrealistic". His counterparts in Ngaoundere and Yagoua, in the Far North, followed suit. In the process, the authorities tried to bring the fever down. This is clearly why Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji met with the Vatican representative, Monsignor José Avelino Bettencourt. While the minister declared that relations between Yaoundé and the Vatican are "excellent", Communication Minister René-Emmanuel Sadi asserted that "there is no conflict between the government and religious denominations." At the end of its annual seminar held on January 11, the Cameroon National Episcopal Conference (Cenc) deplored in a message "the economic crisis and the particularly worrying situation in the country", in which Cameroonians are "forced to live with corruption and accept it as a daily reality, thus reinforcing this scourge." In a press release issued on January 9, opposition politician Maurice Kanto once again strongly criticized the electoral process. According to him, the irregularities of Elecam (the body in charge of elections) that he denounces, constitute a "serious breach of the law is likely to compromise the participation of many Cameroonians in the expected presidential election."

For its part, the RDPC (Rassemblement démocratique du peuple camerounais - Cameroon People's Democratic Rally) was quick to jump on the bandwagon. Unsurprisingly, the ruling party denounced what it saw as a campaign to "discredit the government" and "denigrate" its "natural candidate", Paul Biya. At the same time, the Council of Traditional Leaders in Cameroon - comprising three hundred of the country's traditional authorities - expressed its "firm and definitive support" for Biya's candidacy at the end of a congress on January 27. Earlier in the month, on January 10, President Biya and Toïmano Ndam Njoya, president of the UDC opposition party, met at the presidential palace to discuss the presidential election. "We were able to bring to the President's attention (...) the major current concern of the main players in the electoral process, namely an electoral system that is accepted, shared by all, a guarantor of the democratic game, credible, fair, equitable, transparent and peaceful", she said at the end of the exchange.

Hard times for human rights defenders

During the night of January 18 to 19, the premises of the NGO Nouveaux droits de l'homme - very active in the defense of human rights - were broken into. All computer workstations, hard drives and USB sticks were taken by the burglars. "This is creating a traumatic situation. For months now, we've been facing an upsurge in threats and intimidation because of our stance on civil liberties in Cameroon", lamented director Cyrille Rolande Bechon.

A few days earlier, the January 14th summons of the Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the Central African Human Rights Defenders Network (Redhac), Maître Alice Nkom, to the national gendarmerie caused controversy. Indeed, the civil society figure known for her fight for the rights of LGBT people is the target of a denunciation by the NGO Observatoire du développement sociétal (ODS) for "undermining state security" and "financing terrorism". This is because of a forum on peace and transition organized and attended five years ago in Germany. In a letter addressed to the government commissioner of the Yaoundé military court, two lawyers described the charges as "fanciful".

Finally, a week after being handed over to President Emmanuel Macron, the commission's report on France's role in the repression of independence movements in Cameroon was also presented to President Paul Biya on January 28. For two years, fourteen researchers (French and Cameroonian historians) worked to unravel the history of this dark, buried period in Franco-Cameroonian history. The conclusions of the report 1,000-page are crystal-clear: from 1945 to 1971, France did indeed wage a bloody war against Cameroon's independence fighters, once opposed to the former colonial empire.