By Franklin Sone Bayen
Ahead of the 2004 presidential election, SDF’s Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam (RIP) told me, boastfully and happily, that the SDF candidate Ni John Fru Ndi, would come second ahead of opposition coalition candidate Adamou Ndam Njoya. That implied Mbah Ndam knew and was comfortable that incumbent president Paul Biya would win. That was my first direct experience with political half-aim.
I was a young political reporter and editor at The Herald newspaper then. Fru Ndi had walked out of an opposition coalition effort because Ndam Njoya had been chosen as the “consensual candidate”. Though the political and civil society leaders involved concluded that Ndam Njoya was the man with the profile for the job at the time, Fru Ndi’s entourage said it was inconceivable for Ndam Njoya, leader of a “small party” to clinch the coalition ticket over Fru Ndi, leader of the biggest opposition party at the time.
Not everyone running for President really means to be President. Or rather, many run for President to “win” as little as nowhere near elective office even at the lowest level. By the way, only one out of the lot makes it at any election. For many, it is beyond being able to win. They know they really cannot win. Ostensibly, the most selfless of them run to set an agenda by floating their ideas for more serious candidates to adopt them for the wellbeing of citizens. Matter of fact, many only step into the fray to seek for notice. They engage the race for other purposes.
Take the trouble to count presidential aspirants around the world across human history and possibly less than one percent of names on ballots have ever won anything, not even significant votes. The man called Apostle Ambe Valentine Ngwa might just have avoided that, but for his troubles with an early declaration, and smart calculations, he might have secured a political future.
Dr Nick Ngwanyam, a current affairs commentator, might have captured – with apparent marksman precision – what could have been the calculations of this eloquent TV personality who is also a Pentecostal preacher. Ambe declared to run early but, falling short of fulfilling the conditions to appear on the ballot, he announced he was withdrawing from the race to throw his weight behind SDF’s presidential candidate, Joshua Osih, whom he says embodies the vision he has for Cameroon.
Ambe said his bid for the presidency has been frustrated by the impossibility of obtaining the signatures of personalities (senators, first-class traditional rulers, etc) across the ten regions to make up the required 300 to be eligible as an independent candidate.
Who is surprised? Who, except no one, not even Ambe himself really thought he would be an eligible candidate without a political party nomination? He clearly knew he would not be on the ballot. He obviously declared to run for other purposes than to actually run for president. Ambe says he made phone calls to personalities
across the regions of the country to obtain their signatures. Just phone calls! Not as much as field tours to meet – not just call – personalities around the country!
Nevertheless, Nick Ngwanyam says, with that act of endorsing Osih, Ambe might have secured a political future, and thus gets elevated to the high stage to travel, eat, lodge, speak and commune at the same level on the campaign trail as Osih, a non-negligible presidential candidate.
And, Ngwanyam adds, after the election, should Osih win, Ambe may stand a chance to become minister or should Osih fall short, Ambe might hope to be propelled to a high-profile political career from the top in the SDF and may eventually run for mayor of Bonaberi in Douala where he lives. Hence, he might have declared to run for president to end up as mayor.
I recall how humorist, Koukam Narcisse used Ni John Fru Ndi’s traditional appellation “Ni” to mock him. (The word “Ni”, used to refer respectfully to an uncle or any senior in the Ngemba languages spoken in several villages in Bamenda and its environs, means “neither/nor” in French.)
Koukam mocked Fru Ndi for all his political bravado and achievements with a massive political party SDF, as being “Ni John, Ni Fru, Ni Ndi, Ni Maire, Ni Député, Ni Président.” (Neither Mayor, nor MP, nor President.) At least, by Nick Ngwanyam’s projection, Apostle Ambe could reap the benefits of his early announcement of a run for the Presidency by grabbing a mayoral seat. Ambe won’t be the first.
In 1997, UPC’s Henri Hogbe Nlend and NUDP’s Bello Bouba Maigari secured ministerial positions under Biya; the one by running for president perhaps to lose, the other by not running to inconvenience Biya and be rewarded. In that election boycotted by the three most vibrant opposition candidates at the time (Fru Ndi, Bello Bouba Maigari and Adamu Ndam Njoya), one of them, Bello, tiptoed backwards and worked his way into the Government as Minister of State. Fifteen years earlier, he had been made prime minister in the first government after Biya became president in November 1982.
Across decades of Cameroon’s political history, politicians and civil society actors have reaped political benefits by their posturing either by running or not running, either by endorsing candidates or offering to be counter-forces or nuisances to potential winners to the benefit of the incumbent.
Such was the case of certain early UPC militants in the 1970s who were lured into the government by pioneer President Ahmadou Ahidjo after the revolutionary party had been subdued with the execution of its last leader, Ernest Ouandie, in 1971. (Um Nyobe and Felix Moumie had been eliminated earlier.)
As a result, Augustin Frederick Kodock was appointed to several positions including Director General of Cameroon Airlines and at the African Development Bank, sponsored by the Ahidjo government. Mayi Matip was elevated to Senior Vice Speaker of the National Assembly under long-serving House Speaker, Solomon Tandeng Muna.
After the 2018 presidential election when MRC’s Maurice Kamto gave President Biya a real run for his money and even claimed stolen victory, Barrister Jean de Dieu Momo was appointed into the government as reward for his spoiler job alongside the G-20. Momo, a Bamileke like Kamto and himself a presidential candidate in 2011, did not run in 2018. He was rather among 20 or so spoiler political and civil society actors who declared they were supporting Biya. Of them all, Momo got appointed into the government thereafter.
In 2022, Nkongho Felix Agbor “Balla” turned down his announced co-opting into the SDF Shadow Cabinet by then leader, Ni John Fru Ndi, with the obvious backing of then Vice Chairman, Osih. Now, with Balla’s endorsement of Osih for president earlier this year, the SDF presidential candidate said upfront that Balla would be his Minister of Justice should he win the Presidency.
Several other candidates in this 2025 presidential race are obviously not running to win but to position themselves for eventualities. They thus use the election as a positioning test, whereby candidates size their bite by their percentage score which is the equivalent of territory captured by armed groups in an armed struggle to weigh their negotiating position during eventual talks.
With 83 individuals submitting files this year to the elections management body, ELECAM, Cameroonians had before them individuals with different motives from doing a dress rehearsal to testing their potentials for future elections by demonstrating their political weight to secure a place on the negotiating table in case political deadlock necessitates a consensus government or a “government of national unity”. Or even just to get their public service debts paid like Leopard Bessiping.
Some presidential aspirants are under pressure from party militants to berth ministerial portfolios for them to have their own “chop farm” like UPC Kodock loyalists or like Charly Gabriel Mbock under Hodge Nlend or like the entourage of Bello Bouba and Issa Tchiroma enjoying privileges at their ministries. Such is the mindset when chances of regime change appear bleak to supporters and they resort to “wetin man go do” (or a sense of resignation), settling for less than the presidency.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author, Franklin Sone Bayen, is a freelance journalist in Cameroon. He has worked for local and international news outlets, including Radio France International (English), Radio Vatican, Voice of America (where he also did a stint with the Daybreak Africa team at the headquarters in Washington) and Seattle Post-Intelligencer where he worked in 2006 as an Alfred Friendly Press Fellow. He can be reached via email at sonebayen@gmail.com or WhatsApp at +237 656 969 090 or via direct calls at +237 6 74 74 95 75
