Even as Cameroonians voted yesterday, 12 October 2025, politics in the country is still not controlled by traditional electoral politics but by the intense, intra-party succession struggles for dominance of President Paul Biya's rule since 1982. The election is largely viewed as a tool used to legitimize a prospective successor to Paul Biya, whom he would choose through internal alignment.
This is a dynamic that renders strategically placed occupants of influence and access, like First Lady Chantal Biya and the powerful administrative "gatekeeper" Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, much more crucial than legally announced political candidates. The fate of the nation is thus a high-stakes, behind-the-scenes conflict between the institutions of bureaucracy and the powerful networks of family power.
The First Lady, Chantal Biya, possesses immense soft power and is of utmost importance to post Biya strategy. Although she does not hold any formal constitutional role, her influence arises from her unmediated, direct access to the President, making her de facto the ultimate gatekeeper to the head of state.
She employs this role to construct a powerful network of loyalists and supporters among the government, ruling party (CPDM), and business community. Her primary political role is seen as upholding the interests and security of the "Biya clan" and ensuring that any succession scenario protects their legacy and assets. She represents the personal, family centered power faction, in contrast to those whose power is primarily bureaucratic.
Standing opposite to him on this high-political chessboard is the Minister of State and Secretary General at the Presidency (SGPR), Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, who was officially granted permanent delegation of signature by presidential decree on 5th February 2019, de facto granting him presidential powers to make fundamental decisions. This position is quite possibly the most powerful administrative office in the country, often referred to as the de facto Prime Minister or the administrative dynamo of the state.
The SGPR oversees information flow, controls appointment of bureaucrats, keeps tabs on high-value contracts, and oversees operationally the execution of presidential decrees. Ngoh Ngoh's mandate is operational and institutional. His ability to control the bureaucracy and influence key decisions renders him a leading kingmaker— or perhaps a candidate for succession in his own right— in the next political transition. These two figures, one who exercised power by closeness and another by procedure, are the epitome of the split within the Biya regime.
Political engagement between Chantal Biya and Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh is best understood as a cohort marked by underlying competition. While both are at the center of the current Biya regime and can be weighed strategically against actual or perceived outside threats or other powerful institutional players, their stakes actually diverge in matters of ultimate control.
Ngoh Ngoh's technocratic dominance is counterbalanced by the First Lady's use of family and personal relationships. Their relationship is one of endless, tacit maneuvering: they must cooperate to keep the Sérail functioning and to make the transition a reality, but they are also rivals competing to have their respective loyalists occupy crucial positions that will determine the balance of power in the post-Biya era. This intramural tension is the underlying motor behind Cameroon politics today as it speeds towards the next election.
Cameroon's Power Alliance: The destiny of a nation in the hands of two rival factions
Cameroon is a country of crossroads, where the transfer of power is more than a democratic ritual but actually a tenuous and subtle negotiation between a kin-based inner circle and a powerful state bureaucrat, with the military, interests of business, and party loyalists all staking out positions on this deadly chessboard. Official opposition, at least for the moment, is beyond the gates, looking on in some distance at the real game actually being played.
Cameroon's power dynamics
The supporting cast and the strategic chessboard
The rest of the groups on the political chessboard are either strategic pawns, financial rewards, or even threats in this endless game of power: The business elite and control of finances: The entanglement of state and commercial interests is represented by the likes of Finance Minister Louis Paul Motaze and jailed media chief Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga. Motaze, as a government functionary, wields huge power by virtue of his mandate to interpret and implement the government's budgetary, fiscal, financial, and monetary policy, as seen in his focus on tax incentives and guarantee funds in support of national firms.
His influence is waning, however, with rumors suggesting he and Communication Minister René Emmanuel Sadi are being pushed aside by Ngoh Ngoh's clique.
The flamboyant jailing of Amougou Belinga—arrested in 2023 and indicted over the torture and killing of reporter Martinez Zogo—is an unmistakable, factional sign of the battle lines being drawn against the business elite. Belinga himself had already employed his media empire, comprising newspaper L'Anecdote and television channel Vision 4, as a political tool, even publishing a scandalous list of alleged homosexuals back in 2006, for which he was convicted of defamation.
Loyalist gatekeepers: The older members of the ruling CPDM party, such as Jacques Fame Ndongo and Paul Atanga Nji, are the regime's public face and its internal "sheriffs." As Minister of State for Higher Education, Fame Ndongo oversees the university system, a key domain for intellectual and political influence.
Paul Atanga Nji, the Minister of Territorial Administration, has demonstrated his position as a hardline loyalist and enforcer in moves such as banning media debate about the President's health after reports of illness. The alleged offer of the Prime Minister position to Atanga Nji confirms that the incentives to these powerful loyalists are an inevitable strategy in order to gain their assistance during the next transition.
The security sector: The military establishment remains the ultimate authority of power. Figures like Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo and Israeli Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) commander Eran Moas are tasked with providing "stability and regime defence." Assomo, as Minister Delegate to the Presidency for Defence, has responsibility for laying down and giving effect to national defence policy and coordinating the law and order services.
Their loyalty will be the final, deciding element in any succession crisis. The marginalized opposition: Our poll vividly illustrates the irrelevance of the opposition in this game of power. Maurice Kamto is shown to be "marginalised and excluded," whilst the former insider, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, has defected.
Our interviews confirm that the real struggle for Cameroon's destiny is being fought not by democratic elections, but within the ruling elite itself, as the real political maneuvering is watched from the sidelines by the official opposition. The grand narrative is the tangible effort by Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh to constructively develop the power in anticipation of passing it on.
This involves consolidating his administrative network while simultaneously removing or neutralizing competitors within the state apparatus (such as Lejeune Mbella Mbella) and within the economic elite (Motaze, Sadi, Belinga). This game is being played in a delicate configuration where the clan of the First Lady remains a robust, parallel authority that Ngoh Ngoh will either have to attempt to negotiate with or eventually battle.
In one sense, this political map reveals a country at the crossroads. The passing of power is as much a democratic process as it is a quiet, subtle arrangement between a predominant, family-based inner circle of authority and the dominant chief bureaucrat of the state, with the military, economic interests, and party faithful all competing for position on this perilous political chessboard.
Other issues
Institutional resistance to succession shock Aside from the political and military leadership, the specific institutional or bureaucratic processes being strengthened to counter the shock of a sudden post-Biya conflict are still in their early stages and largely reactive. Mid-level technocrats and directorates of civil service are pushing incremental reforms in areas like adoption of e-governance (to curtail paper-based corruption) and public finances management (through institutions like the Supreme State Audit/CONSUP), but these are heavily limited by the highly centralized, personalized nature of the presidency.
While certain attempts at judicial reform have been initiated under external pressure, the system remains intensely politicized, such that no institutional mechanism currently possesses the necessary independence, transparency, or constitutional authority to operate effectively as an anchoring stabilizer against hastened institutional collapse in a succession crisis. Consequently, in the event of a sudden succession, the state lacks the robust institutional shock absorbers to prevent an immediate slide toward factional violence and political anarchy, thus making the current back-room manoeuvring all the more critical.
The future of Ambazonia
The Anglophone crisis, usually explained in terms far too simplistic as a separatist attempt, has sunk to one of high military/civilian casualties and cyclical internal displacement but continues to be short of the political pressure for a final settlement. Ambazonia's destiny hinges on a profound political split: the extremely highly factionalised separatist diaspora leadership (typically split between hardline and federalist camps) has not managed to launch a cohesive diplomatic push nor exercise concerted command over the scattered, decentralised armed forces (Amba Boys) in the field.
For the regime in Yaoundé, the war has been a unexpected political resource, an effective security sector consolidation and diversion device that has been legitimized by the budget requirements of a massive defense establishment, not something that has made a negotiated peace more urgent for the ruling class than negotiating the internal succession. Rather than demanding its settlement, this calculated management of the conflict illustrates how the Yaoundé elite's internal succession struggle is more urgent than any other national issue.
The Boko Haram insurgency in Cameroon
Prioritization of the Anglophone crisis in terms of domestic political agendas has affected national security in the Far North directly and in a negative manner. The constant, high-grade operational strain on the military and the Cameroonian security budget generated by the Anglophone crisis has evidently made counter-terrorism in the Far North more difficult.
The repeated deployment of high-quality battalions like the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) to Anglophone regions has undermined concentration and counter-intelligence capability on the northern border, thereby creating unwittingly opportunistic operating space for the Boko Haram insurgency.
This has allowed the insurgency to adopt more stable, non-temporal models of action—distant from rain-season raid dependence toward the establishment of longer-lasting logistical and ideological footholds amongst susceptible populations, further complicating the long-term security threat. Future African Tactical imitation elections: The Cameroon governing CPDM party's approach is increasingly being seen as the model for what analysts term a "constitutional coup." Such a top-down approach to "legalised authoritarianism" is being analyzed and mimicked by long-in-power regimes across Francophone Africa with similar transition issues.
This tactic relies on employing complete mastery over judicial and electoral bodies, such as the Constitutional Council and electoral commission (ELECAM), to come up with constitutionally valid, politically injurious hurdles for opposition parties. This has been used to maximum effect by the CPDM, such as by legislation keeping the opposition (such as Maurice Kamto's party boycotting past local polls, and thereby losing legal standing and representation) out and enabling constitutional extension of terms. This leaves a definite agenda for incumbents, particularly in nations like Equatorial Guinea, Chad and formerly Gabon and Togo, to disenfranchise serious challengers to power while maintaining a veneer of democratic process.
Regional spillover and stability
If the crisis of succession leads to mass violence and triggers the fleeing of elite and capital in large numbers, then the resulting flow of hundreds of thousands of Cameroonian refugees and displaced people would radically alter the present-day ethnic, economic, and political makeup of powerful neighboring states.
In Nigeria (Cross River and Benue States), the arrival would exacerbate there resource competition within host populations. In Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, where ethnic identification regularly overrides national frontiers (e.g., the Fang/Beti groups), a refugee crisis could well destabilize political patronage networks, strain infrastructure, and stoke xenophobic attacks and thereby create new regional political instability to require multinational intervention or humanitarian relief.
Such a multinational intervention would most likely take the form of an AU or ECCAS stabilisation force deployed to border areas to ensure transit corridors, backed by a heavy, internationally-supported logistic operation under UN command to manage the huge displaced population flow and halt further regional destabilisation.
Geopolitical implications
The succession uncertainty has far-reaching geopolitical implications, forcing foreign powers to have to make an immediate decision or ensure the security of their long-term economic interests. This applies to China, which is heavily invested in Cameroonian infrastructure and natural resource development, often associated with debt trap diplomacy. Foreign powers also care to secure their strategic investments and regional dominance during the intervening time.
The technological battlefield
The next war will also be fought hard in cyberspace. The machinery of the state uses sophisticated surveillance and social media monitoring technologies (occasionally procured from outside) to track activists and predict protests before they can escalate.
As a reaction, the opposition and diaspora increasingly resort to decentralised, encrypted means of communication and online disinformation campaigns to challenge the official state narrative and mobilize support so that the control of information becomes the focal point of conflict in the succession struggle.
Conclusion: The evolving political ambition and opposition challenge
Despite the entrenched elite contest for power described above, the overriding atmosphere across Cameroon is one of hope for actual political transformation. National aspiration persists despite systematic opposition marginalisation, like the continuing unconstitutional exclusion of Maurice Kamto and his party from meaningful electoral involvement.
President Biya's political base is clearly eroding, particularly as he becomes unpopular in the historically pro-presidential North and among the public at large due to decades of economic stagnation and central domination. This vacuum is being filled by such as Issa Tchiroma Bakary of the Front for the National Salvation of Cameroon, the longtime former Minister of Communication and presidential spokesman who, following his resignation from government in June 2025 after decades as a main Biya loyalist and government spokesperson, has now become oppositionist, which has gained considerable steam.
But even the long-term possibilities of a successful democratic transition are clouded by mounting fear that there will be an inability to constitute a single opposition alliance, an abiding weakness which the ruling party continues to exploit to maintain its grip on power. The lack of unity means that people are ready for change but the opposition might not be organizationally equipped to deliver it.
The big paradox of Cameroon's future politics is therefore this: while the country hungers for change, the opposition is structurally unable to deliver it, and so space is created for a post-Biya era characterized not by the ballot box, but by the backroom politics of the current elite.