Influencer Hadja Awa Faces Arrest, Travel Ban for Criticizing Ngoh Ngoh

By Tata Mbunwe

A few days after making a scathing criticism of President Paul Biya’s close circle, vocal Cameroonian influencer, Hadja Awa, is wanted for arrest and has been slammed with a travel ban.

A warrant dated July 23 and signed by senior gendarmerie officer, Lt Colonel Biallo Dieudonne accuses Awa of making “calls for insurrection”.

The dust is yet to settle on a stark critique Awa delivered on the regime, accusing Cameroon’s powerful Minister and Secretary General at the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, of power capture.

In voice messages attributed to her, Hadja Awa is heard insinuating that Ngoh Ngoh is running the nation instead of the country’s ageing 92-year-old leader, Paul Biya.

She particularly points to Biya’s declaration of candidacy for the country’s 2025 election as a maneuver by Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh to maintain the status quo in Cameroon, a country ruled by one man for 42 years.

The nation is set to hold a presidential election on October 12 and among 82 applicants is Biya, who has typically governed from the shadows through silence and presidential decrees.

Hadja Awa is among voices that have grown louder against Biya’s continuous hold on power and she sees it as a plot by regime barons to continue ruling.

She is not alone in her thinking that it is not Biya who governs Cameroon. One of the regime’s long-time allies-turned critique, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, also stated that other people have been running the country of 27 million people, not Biya.

Tchiroma, who resigned from his post as Minister of Employment and Vocational Training last month, said Biya is incapable of governing due to his age and the country is being ruled by those around him.

Unlike Hadja Awa, Tchiroma did not call any names. However, Cameroonians have grown increasingly suspicious of Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh one of few Ministers who have the luxury of seeing Biya often.

The Secretary General at the Presidency has often played the role of Minister, Prime Minister and even the President itself, representing Biya at high-level events.

Early this July, he conducted President Paul Biya’s re-election campaign, rallying Ministers and Parliamentarians of the ruling party at the Presidency reportedly on the instructions of an ever-absent Biya.

Hadja Awa thinks Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh did this consultation and declared Biya’s re-election bid without consulting the President.

Now, she has been banned from leaving the country and is in the jaw of arrest—an unsurprising trend with critics of the Biya regime.