By ALICE NJI
The dust is yet to settle on the aftermath of the Presidential elections in Cameroon that took place on Sunday October 12, 2025 with 12 candidates with incumbent President Paul Biya who has been in power since 1982 seeking reelection against 12 other opposition figures eying the Unity Palace.
The Presidential race had opposition figures like Issa Tchiroma Bakari, of Cameroon National Salvation Front, CNSF; Hon Osih Joshua of the Social Democratic Front, SDF; former Bar President, Barrister Akere Muna of Univers Party; Hon Cabral Libii of PCRN party, Bello Bouba Maigari, of NUDP, and Serge Espoir Matomba of PURS, among others.
When the Constitutional Council declared results in favour of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, party’s candidate, incumbent President Paul Biya, on Monday October 27, 2025, supporters of Issa Tchiroma Bakari, the frontline opposition candidate in the race claimed their candidate was the most popular and favourite and had won going by results from the return sheets presented by their polling agents from the various polling stations across the national territory. They decried electoral fraud and rigging and immediately took to the streets throughout the national territory, following calls from their presidential candidate who came 2nd with closed to 37.7% of the vote’s counts, according to official results.
The protest saw looting of business places, road blocks, lockdown and ghost towns. Following strict instructions from the Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, the military and security operatives descended on the protesters with teargas, water cannons, tortured, arrested and detained above 2,000 in the Yaounde Kondengui and Douala New Bell Prisons respectively as documented by human rights groups, while the whereabouts of others still remains cloudy.
The main challenger of incumbent President Paul Biya was placed under ‘house arrest” by the population in Garoua, for fear that the military could arrest and whisk him to the dreaded Kondengui maximum security prison in Yaounde.
While most CNSF frontline supporters in the likes of Georges Anicet Ekane, Professor Aba’a Oyono and Djeukam Tchameni were arrested in Douala, ferried to Yaounde and detained at the Secretariat of Defense, SED, the CNSF presidential Candidate, Issa Tchiroma, who claimed to have won the election, fled out of the country. Georges Ancient Ekane died in detention.
At press time, while the detained protesters were standing trial at the Yaounde military tribunal, government, through security and defense forces had launched a manhunt for many others in the likes of Ayuktabi Belinda Egbe and Junior Ndiba Mukete, Muea-based frontline supporter of Issa Tciroma Bakari of CNSF of who has gone underground as they have been declared wanted. An arrest warrant was issued against them, shortly after the results were declared on Monday October 27, 2025.
Reports say Junior Ndiba Mukete was arrested by some military men in uniform at the entrance of their home in Muea, Fako Division of the South West Region. This was while he returning from a campaign rally orgainsed by the frontline opposition presidential candidate for the October 12 Presidential poll. According to eyewitness accounts, there was a serious standoff between Junior Ndiba and the military who apparently insisted on conducting a search on him which he resisted, thus causing the military to tag him as “a supporter of the opposition”.
THE SUN gathered that Ndiba was arbitrarily arrested and whisked to the Buea Gendarmerie Legion, tortured, detained and only released after the election.
The military keeps making impromptu checks at their Muea residential area just to arrest and prosecute him. Family sources have hinted that they are constantly being harassed and molested for them to disclose his whereabouts, which, unfortunately, remains cloudy.
It should be recalled that this is not the first time Junior Ndiba Mukete is facing such challenges with security forces. The former worker of a community-based organisation, DOMAF, a vocational training organisation for young people who find it difficult to attend school due to the armed-conflict, in Muyuka, South West Region saw himself entangled as a victim of circumstances amidst the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions. Reports say Junior Ndiba sometimes between 2019 and September 2025 was summoned by the separatist fighters regarding the curriculum of DOMAF, while government security forces have arrested, tortured and detained him under cruel and inhumane detention conditions severally for siding with separatist fighters and financing their activities.