In Cameroon, Election’s Cameroon (Elecam) announced on December 30, 2024 the “ availability of updated lists of the electoral register “. In total, and according to these lists, 7,845,622 voters are regularly registered. The publication of these figures immediately sparked heated controversy as a presidential election is planned for the year 2025 which has just begun. Some opposition political parties accuse Elecam of truncating the reality of the figures. Explanations.
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With our correspondent in Yaoundé, Polycarp Essomba
It is Jean Michel Nintcheu, the promoter of the Political Alliance for Change (APC), declared support of Maurice Kamto in the 2025 presidential election in Cameroon who has the harshest words. The total number of registered voters, a little over 7.8 million voters, recently announced by Elecam, is, he estimates, “not than a declaration of war “. To support this assertion, Jean Michel Nintcheu first points out that the lists were not displayed as required by law.
Instead, Elecam just indicates that they “ are available for consultation “. The MP sees this process as a maneuver that is intended to be anything but transparent and denounces what he considers to be ” opacity “.
On the figures put forward, a little less than 8 million registered nationally and 26,800 in the diaspora, the opponent calls for the amputation of the electoral register for various unjustified reasons and for the complexity of registration procedures, in particular for Cameroonians living abroad.
The expert on electoral issues, Hubert Kamga, notes, for his part to be sorry, that the figures put forward by Elecam are far from the projections that the political class, as a whole, makes of the potential of voters in Cameroon, estimated to 15 million.
For the 7 months remaining between now and the close of registration operations in 2025 and before the presidential election scheduled for October, he recommends all-out mobilization to, at a minimum, achieve, or even exceed 10 million registrants.
Failing this, he suggests, the President of the Republic must urgently issue a decree making voting compulsory for any citizen having the electoral majority.