Cameroon Elections: Embassy Lockdowns Loom as Diaspora Warns: Block Kamto, and We’ll Block You

London / Yaoundé – 25 July 2025 (Cameroon Concord)-Cameroon’s most outspoken diaspora network, the Collectif des Organisations Démocratiques et Patriotiques des Camerounais de la Diaspora (CODE), has issued an unprecedented ultimatum to every embassy and consulate representing Yaoundé abroad:

if opposition leader Maurice Kamto is barred from the 12 October presidential race, Cameroonians overseas will physically shut down voting and “requisition” diplomatic premises worldwide.

In a five-page “Alerte présidentielle 2025” dated 24 July and signed in London by CODE president Brice Nitcheu, the group accuses Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji of engineering Kamto’s exclusion “through intimidation, selective law-enforcement and corruption” and warns diplomats they will be personally liable for lending legitimacy to a “fraudulent poll.” 

“Any envoy who organises or endorses an election tainted by the political eviction of a major candidate will lose all recognition from the Cameroonian diaspora and face citizen blockades of embassies and consulates.” – Extract from Nitcheu’s letter (author’s translation)

The legal ammunition behind the threat

• Constitution, Article 6 & 7 – the president must be chosen by direct, equal, secret suffrage; sovereignty belongs to the people. 

• Electoral Code, Article 173 – any citizen enjoying full civil and political rights may run for president. 

• Vienna Convention, Article 41 – diplomats must respect the host country’s laws and avoid interference in internal affairs; CODE argues that supporting a “rigged” election breaches that duty. 

By invoking these texts—and listing the UN, African Union, EU, OIF and Commonwealth in copy—the diaspora aims to frame Kamto’s potential rejection as a treaty-level violation, not mere domestic politics.

Five escalation steps promised by CODE

1. Total blockade of polling inside embassies and consulates.

2. Withdrawal of social recognition from Cameroon’s envoys (“diplomatic déchéance”).

3. Symbolic requisition of embassy buildings as “people’s property.”

4. Creation of a public blacklist naming diplomats involved.

5. Civil and criminal complaints in international jurisdictions after any transition.

Nitcheu’s missive ends starkly: “The Cameroonian people yearn for peaceful change. If that path is brutally closed, they will open another.” 

Why now? A chain of “institutional tragedies” at home

• 24 July – Yaoundé: The Constitutional Council, led by Clément Atangana, declared itself “not competent” to examine Kamto’s petition on the missing national voter roll—its fifth such refusal since 2020.

• 17 July – Yaoundé: Minister Atanga Nji warned governors the government would “not tolerate any act to destabilise the elections,” pledging a “credible, transparent and peaceful” poll. Xinhua News

Opposition parties and the Catholic bishops say ELECAM’s refusal to publish the full roll violates Article 80 of the 2012 code, while rights groups call the Council’s stance a “rubber-stamp abdication.”

Diplomatic stakes

London-based analyst Dr Célestine Mboa notes that under normal circumstances diaspora protest “rarely moves chancelleries,” but CODE’s plan to physically block voting stations could force host governments to weigh public-order costs against Vienna-Convention obligations.

Historically, foreign missions have relied on Article 29 inviolability to withstand demonstrations; yet Nitcheu’s warning that embassies may be “requisitioned as sites of democratic resistance” signals a willingness to test those limits.

Government reaction

Yaoundé has not formally answered the letter. A senior Foreign Affairs official, speaking on background, dismissed CODE as “loud but legally irrelevant,” insisting Cameroon’s diplomatic premises “remain sovereign territory under international law.” Yet the same official admitted that widespread disruptions on polling day “would project an unfortunate image.”

What to watch

Concord Comment

The regime may brush off diaspora letters as noise, but Nitcheu’s salvo lands at a delicate moment: with 42-year incumbent Paul Biya seeking an eighth term, the gap between the law on paper and practice on the ground is now glaring enough to rally voters—and donors—against business as usual.

Whether the threat of embassy lockdowns sways Yaoundé is unclear, yet the letter already crystallises a wider truth: if the courts refuse to referee and the ballot box is sealed, politics will spill into the street—and, this time, onto the embassy steps.