By Tata Mbunwe
The Social Democratic Front (SDF) has formally accused elites of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement party of collaborating with Ambazonia separatists to stuff ballot boxes in the English-speaking regions during the October 2025 presidential election.
In a resolution issued at its National Executive Committee meeting on February 7, the SDF acknowledged that there was “massive fraud” in the country.
This was particularly in the two Anglophone regions, where armed conflict prevented most voters from turning out, but official results showed massive victories for President Paul Biya.
The results, widely viewed by Cameroonians as rigged declared the world’s oldest President Paul Biya as the winner with 53 percent, instead of Issa Tchiroma Bakary, who is believed to have won the vote.
The SDF’s candidate, Joshua Osih, secured a mere 0.90 percent of the vote and came sixth out of 12 candidates in the official results proclaimed by the Constitutional Council on October 27.
The SDF, which is one of Cameroon’s main opposition parties, appeared to be attributing its humiliating defeat to ballot fraud and the Anglophone Crisis, as most of the party’s supporters are based in the Anglophone Regions.
It condemned “CPDM elites from the North West and South West region who worked together with separatist armed groups and armed bandits to stuff ballot boxes in these regions”.
The SDF also condemned the government for failing to create an enabling environment for voter participation in the Anglophone regions.
It called on the judiciary to hold individuals implicated in election fraud to account.
Election fraud was widely reported in the October 12 vote. MMI revealed several instances of ballot stuffing and intimidation of opposition representatives in the English-speaking regions, where Biya got his resounding victories despite very poor voter turnouts.
Both the government and African Union observers, however, maintained that the election transpired freely and transparently, without any incidents.
Despite condemning fraud, the SDF did not state whether it accepted or rejected the official results proclaimed by the Constitutional Council.
The party had dispatched thousands of election observers across most of the 31,271 polling stations in the country and abroad to monitor the election and report results in due time.
But no mention was made of what became of these polling agents and the results they brought back. The party simply noted that it ratified the election report presented by its national campaign manager, without revealing details of the report.
Observers had expected the SDF to tally all results it obtained from these polling agents in order to prove the official results wrong, or right and to corroborate or refute Issa Tchiroma Bakary’s claims of having won the vote.
When this did not happen, many were disappointed and some began accusing the SDF’s chairman Joshua Osih of receive a bribe of 1 billion francs CFA from the government.
The SDF strongly refuted this allegation and empowered its legal advisers to “pursue the matter until justice is served” after they filed legal action in Yaounde and abroad against individuals accused of defaming the party.
Looking forward, the SDF signalled its determination to “restore the image of the party, the truth of the facts, and lay to rest past grievances and forge ahead with a spirit of solidarity and determination.”
The party is now preparing for the 2026 legislative and municipal election and to win back municipal councils and parliamentary seats lost to the CPDM in the Anglophone regions.
The SDF called on “members who wish to stand as candidates in the upcoming 2026 legislative and/or municipal elections to indicate their interest with the various party structures as soon as possible.”
The party will definitely not be joining Issa Tchiroma Bakary in his boycott of the local elections, which may be taking place in May.
Tchiroma stated that his FSNC party, which controls some councils and parliamentary seats in the northern regions, would boycott the election because participating would mean legitimizing the CPDM-led government, which he maintained lost the 2025 election.
