By Yerima Kini Nsom
The Governor of the Adamawa Region, Kildadi Taguieke Boukar, has expressed worries over the dwindling fortunes of the ruling CPDM party in the region.
His worries are the main menu of a correspondence he sent to the Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, recently.
In the letter, the Governor says only few CPDM officials have been engaged in the mobilisation of voters since the electoral registers were opened in January this year. He says the nonchalant attitude of CPDM officials was quit disturbing.
The Governor seemingly penned the correspondence with the concern and frustration of a CPDM militant, holds that while CPDM officials in the area are lying on their laurels, while opposition parties like the NUDP and the SDF were gradually conquering the political terrain.
According to him, such parties are using a door-to-door strategy to drum on the voter registration campaign. Citing the SDF, for example, he reveals that the party’s officials have embarked on targeting students and other vulnerable social groups, promising to end their suffering if they are voted into office. The Governor says there is a yawning gap between the CPDM and other parties in the region because the CPDM politico-administrative elite have not been carrying out credible political and social activities in favour of the local population.
The Civil Administrator expresses disappointment that, even during the party’s anniversary last March 24, only a few militants showed up. To him, only few militants were mobilised to issue a motion of support to President Biya. The Governor equally regrets the death of one the party’s bigwigs, Mohamadou Abbo Ousman, who used to move and shake the CPDM, making sure that everything worked on well for the party in the region.
As to why the party was declining in the region, the Governor cites internal conflicts that include ethnic animosity, religious differences and sociological frustrations, saying they are the bane of the party’s progress in the Adamawa region. He says the CPDM is fast losing the terrain in Mbe, Bankim, Ngoundere III and Ngan’ha. In such a situation, he remarks, the party will lose out if nothing is done this electoral year.
He proposes to the party hierarchy to bring in new popular figures backed by the base to counter the UNDP party’s momentum in the field. To him, this should be done of either by registering a large number of voters or luring away NUDP supporters with the goal of swaying traditional allies to the CPDM side.
“We are monitoring the party officials and alerting them to the risks and cautioning them about their inaction,” partly reads the Governor’s letter to the Minister. The use of the first person’s plural – “we” in many parts of the correspondence, observers hold, unveils a hitherto thinly veiled fact-that civil administrators in Cameroon are militants of the ruling party. Again, it washes ashore the emptiness of the neutrality claim by the Ministry of Territorial Administration that has been using its partisan hue to ban rallies of the opposition and disrupt their activities.
This correspondence adds flesh to the claims of former Governor, Abakar Ahamat, in a recent publication that many civil administrators in Cameroon are people who usually contribute in rigging elections for the ruling CPDM party.
It is this partisan behavior of the officials of the Ministry of Territorial Administration fuels the conclusion by some critics that there can never be free and fair elections in Cameroon. Recent media reports highlighting the fact that names some well-known people who died long ago, still feature prominently on the voters’ lists. The names of some people who died between 2021 and 2024 still feature on the electoral list.
Some of them are: Joseph Owona, former Minister and erstwhile member of the Constitutional Council, Joseph Marie Bipoun Woum, former Minister and former Member of the Constitutional Council, Bernard Njonga, civil society personality and David Eto’o, the Father of international soccer star and current President of FECAFOOT, Samuel Eto’o.
Given this development, the Chair of the opposition MRC party, Prof. Maurice Kamto called on the Director General of Elections at ELECAM to resign. He holds that by refusing to publish the national voters’ lists is an indication that ELECAM has no intention to organise free, fair, inclusive and transparent elections. As time ebbs away to the presidential election next October, a total of 7,845,622 Cameroonians out a circa 30 million have registered to vote. According to statistics published by ELECAM, 4,207,957 men have registered against 3,637,665.