2025 presidential: Nintcheu crusades Kamto-led coalition to challenge Biya.

Vocal Member of Parliament, MP, and erstwhile Littoral Chairman of the Social Democratic Front, SDF party, Hon. Nincheu Jean Mitchel, has said a Prof Maurice Kamto-led opposition coalition is the best possibility of defeating President Paul Biya in 2025.

The MP made the assertion in an interview granted Pan-African news magazine, Jeune Afrique. In the exchange first published on Friday November 17, Hon Nintcheu said anything outside the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC-led coalition, with Kamto as candidate, will not succeed in defeating Biya in a presidential poll.

He expressed the view that such a Kamto-led league will produce political fireworks akin to the 1992 presidential poll; which saw the putting in place of the SDF-led Union for Change, which gave the Biya regime a run for their money. 

The MP, who maintains that the SDF won the 1992 presidential election, said if the setting he is foreseeing squares up with Biya in the next presidential poll, Cameroonians should expect a new president.

According to Hon Nintcheu, there is no real opposition political voice against the Biya regime except Prof Kamto’s Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC.

Hints on coalition with Kamto

He hinted that the now resurrected, Front for Change in Cameroon, FCC, which he helped create in 1992, is considering entering into an alliance with the MRC to strengthen the forces against Biya.

Within this thinking, Hon Nintcheu said through such collaboration, there will be the rebirth of a frontal opposition front to eject Biya from power through the ballot box.

Without the 1990-type vibrant opposition, when the late Fru Ndi was at the apogee and a political sensation, Hon Nintcheu holds the unshaken view that none of the myriad of political parties in Cameroon can defeat Biya in 2025. 

Remembering bond with Fru Ndi

As to how he joined the FCC, Hon Nintcheu said the political configuration is not new. He revisited its creation before delving into how he became close to Fru Ndi, to the extent the FCC signed an alliance with the SDF.

“The party I'm joining is not new. I created it in 1992. It was legalised while I was in detention following a protest. I then supported Ni John Fru Ndi in the presidential election, by being his campaign manager for the Littoral Region. A relationship of trust was born between him and I, so much so that we signed a formal alliance with the SDF in 1996," Hon Nintcheu told Jeune Afrique.

SDF now an empty shell

Restating that his close to three decades membership in the SDF ended following disagreements over political line of actions and relations with the Biya regime, Hon Nintcheu said the SDF has lost its flair. 

With the demise of Fru Ndi and the recent election of his fellow MP, Hon Osih Joshua, as the new SDF National Chairman, Hon Nintcheu quipped that the opposition party is now an empty shell.

"It is only more recently that there had been differences on the political line and on our relations with the powers that be. With the FCC, we have decided to return to a frontal opposition to the government, which means leaving the SDF, which today is like an empty shell," the vocal MP declared.

I made Osih

Hon Nintcheu also said in the Jeune Afrique interview that it was thanks to him that Osih found himself within the SDF in the Littoral Region. He recounted that Hon Osih had tried severally and failed in his native South West Region to shine politically.

"He was previously the party boss in the South West Region, where he ran for parliament several times, unsuccessfully. It was thanks to me that he was parachuted into the Littoral Region of the SDF and became Member of Parliament. 

In 2018, we chose him because we wanted to bring new blood to the Cameroonian political scene," Nintcheu recounted.

Blames Osih for devastating 2018 results

The now leader of the FCC, said during the 2018 presidential poll, Hon Osih gave them the impression he had kept enough money to bankroll campaigns. 

Going by Hon Nintcheu, it was all a bluff. He claimed that when the time came for campaigns, Hon Osih had nothing to fund the show and as such, there was no grassroots momentum in wooing voters. 

This, he said, happened, despite the positive appraisal of Osih’s candidature by Cameroonians that year.

Hon Osih, he remarked, “gave us the impression that he had significant funds in reserve to invest in the campaigns, but that was a bluff. The campaign was catastrophic, with no deployment on the ground, no means to mobilise voters… Hon Joshua Osih was an empty shell”.

I was wrong to believe in Osih

In the same exchange, while asserting that the late Ni John Fru Ndi stepped aside from the Presidential race under pressure, Hon Nintcheu, nonetheless, said: “I believed in Hon Joshua Osih but I was wrong to trust him”.

To recall that on March 24 this year, the National Executive Committee, NEC, of the SDF excluded Hon Nintcheu and a host of others known as G27+, comprising some 33 party heavy-weights; for engaging actions contrary to Article 8.2 of the political configuration’s constitution. 

The team had pushed for the auditing of the party’s management of funds for the 2018 presidential poll and subventions from government.  It also challenged the last shadow cabinet of the party which the late Ni John Fru Ndi, appointed while serving as chairman.