2025 presidential: Voter registration still lagging!.

Cameroon's elections management body, ELECAM, says 7.9 million civilians have registered as voters ahead of the August 31 deadline".

Relying on Cameroon rights groups, VOA pointed out that "citizens are afraid to register because voters who protested what they claim was the stolen victory of the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement, or MRC, leader Maurice Kamto in 2018, were jailed for rebellion and attempted insurrection".

However, ELECAM has so far been intensifying efforts to boost voter registration as the annual deadline expires on August 31, countrywide.

The exercise which began on January 1, ELECAM, alongside political parties and civil society organisations, deployed a variety of strategies to ensure a substantial voter registration and uphold the integrity of the electoral process.

The initiatives included broadcasting TV spots, engaging in proximity measures, and using community radio stations and social media platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). 

The said efforts aim to keep the public informed about ongoing voter registration. 

Additionally, ELECAM has been conducting missions abroad to register Cameroonian citizens residing in the diaspora. Collaboration between ELECAM and political parties has also been key, as seen on their social media platforms, where they have been encouraging citizens to register for the upcoming elections.

For their part, civil society organisations have been active in raising awareness through campaigns and educational talks in schools, with the objective to motivate eligible individuals to participate in the electoral process.

When the Director General of Elections at ELECAM, Dr Erik Essousse, led a caravan to various public squares in Yaounde to enroll new voters, he explained that: “We want to swell up the voters’ list by registering people who have just reached the age of voting, which is 20. Like in the past, we expect the media to accompany us by encouraging all young Cameroonians who have reached voting age to show up and register”. 

“With over seven million people already in our registry, our objective this year is to hit the 7.5 million threshold, and why not even surpass it,” he added.

That is the "small number" that attracts scathing criticism of disenfranchisement engineered to rig in favour of candidates of the ruling party.

In comparison by other African standards, Cameroon, with 7.9 registered voters, doesn't get an impressive score, considering its population size, estimated at 30 million. 

Senegal, with a population of about 17.32 million, registered over 7.5 million in its last presidential election. 

Another example is Chad, whose population is estimated at 18 million and 8,237,768 people voted in its presidential election this year.

ELECAM is however not to be held culpable for low voter registration. 

It is the government that disenfranchises youth by taking the voting bar up to 20 years, instead of 18, which is the democratically starting point in civilised democratic countries.

Another obstacle is in the North West and South West Regions, where separatist war mongers who have since the conflict started seven years ago, warned residents in the two Regions from fulfilling their inalienable civic responsibilities.

At the last presidential election, only a dismal 15 percent of the population of the two restive Regions who are very politically active voted!

The vast majority stayed away for fear of violating the satanic fiat of Amba fighters, which could lead to kidnapping for ransom or even death in some cases.

There is also the accusation that results of elections in Cameroon are known before the vote, a charge that was credited to Bishop Kleba, after the 2018 presidential election.

He said at a press conference that the election results were "decided before voting took place". 

Such accusation, true or false, discourages many compatriots from registering to vote.

There isn't any iota of doubt that given the population of Cameroon, at least voter registration should be within the region of 10 million, as estimated by some civil society organisations.

Since the registration exercise should kick up again next January with elections expected in October, The Guardian Post urges the government to revise the Electoral Code and bring down the voting age to 18, to ensure youth who make an overwhelming majority of the population vote.

That will give credibility to the country's democratisation process and pre-empt violence that often characterises flawed electoral systems in Africa.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3207 of Friday August 23, 2025