“What Shall We Do Now? — Wait for Another Seven Years?”

A month after Cameroon’s disputed 2025 presidential election, Millan Atam, Chairman of the Southern Cameroons Alliance (SCA), says the country remains trapped in a familiar cycle of “hope, outrage, and surrender.”

“I deliberately waited this long before writing,” Atam explains. “Not because there was anything left to observe, but because I wanted to give the process a fair chance, to see if history might surprise us. But alas, it has not.”

President Paul Biya has once again declared himself winner — a result the opposition immediately rejected. For many citizens, Atam notes, life has quietly returned to “survival mode.”

The Politics of Self-Deception

In a biting critique, Atam calls Cameroon’s elections “theatre,” accusing both government and opposition of perpetuating an illusion of democracy.

“Every politician who participated knew the ending before the curtain rose,” he writes. “By running, they helped legitimise a process that was never meant to change anything.”

He lists the familiar pattern: 1992, 2004, 2011, 2018, and now 2025 — each cycle ending with Biya’s continued rule.

According to Atam, Biya’s 2025 victory extends his tenure toward an unprecedented half-century in power.

“If this new term runs its full course,” Atam says, “he will have been in power structures for 70 years — seventy years of one man’s shadow over a nation.”

The “Accidental Revolutionary”: Issa Tchiroma Bakary

Atam devotes a section to Issa Tchiroma Bakary, the opposition candidate who broke with Biya after decades within the regime.

“I have called him an accidental revolutionary — a revolutionary not by conviction but by circumstance,” Atam writes.

While acknowledging Tchiroma’s controversial past, Atam argues that his defiance has unintentionally exposed the fragility of Cameroon’s political system.

“He did not enter the race as a liberator,” he adds, “yet he has exposed the lie of a democracy that cannot even tolerate its own loyal sons when they break rank.”

For Atam, Tchiroma’s rejection by the state may represent “a crack in the fortress of tyranny through which light can begin to enter.”

A Nation Trapped in a Seven-Year Cycle

Atam describes Cameroon as “a people condemned to repeat history every seven years” — the interval of Biya’s presidential terms.

“Every time, after the dust settles, we hear the same refrain: ‘Let us wait for the next elections,’” he writes. “Wait — as if oppression ever fell on its own.”

This “endless waiting,” he warns, has become a national habit that substitutes patience for action.

The Southern Cameroonian Perspective

For Southern Cameroonians, Atam argues, the election merely confirmed what they already knew: change will not come from Yaoundé.

“There is no democracy waiting in the ballot box,” he says. “Our struggle stands as proof that freedom is never given; it is taken, earned, and defended.”

Still, he urges strategic reflection within the independence and federalist movements.

“If the francophones have once again chosen to wait, what shall we do? Shall we also wait — another seven years — for a miracle that will never come? The answer is a big fat no.”

Atam calls for renewed unity under the SCA’s Permanent Solution Framework, which seeks to align all “genuine actors” behind a shared pursuit of dignity and self-determination.

From Waiting to Acting

The author warns that without decisive change, Biya will reach 70 years in government, and Cameroon will face another repeat of 2032.

“History will not forgive those who keep waiting,” he insists. “Our future will not be decided in Yaoundé’s voting booths but in the collective will of a people who choose strategy over sentiment, and action over illusion.”

Atam concludes with a question that doubles as a challenge:

“So what shall we do now? Certainly not wait for another seven years.”

MMI News