Kamto Verdict Delayed: Atanga Nji Issues Crackdown Warning Ahead of Council Ruling

Almost on cue, Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji blasted out an “URGENT” communiqué threatening instant arrest for anyone who demonstrates, gathers, or merely shares “destabilising” content online. Postponement in the courtroom, intimidation in the streets: the Biya regime’s two-step remains depressingly familiar.

Delay as a tactic, not a necessity

Inside the marble hall of the Palais des Congrès, judges claim they need “additional document verification” before deciding whether Kamto stays on the ballot. Yet the case file has been picked clean: rival affidavits pored over, statutes quoted to exhaustion. The extra 24 hours look less like legal prudence and more like political choreography, giving security forces time to suffocate any show of public support.

• If Kamto is cleared, the regime faces the prospect of a real contest against a candidate who already proved in 2018 he could capture the urban vote.

• If he is barred, government spin doctors will cite judicial impartiality while police sirens drown out the inevitable anger.

Either way, the state wants the streets empty and social media silent when the gavel finally drops.

Atanga Nji’s communiqué: criminalising the conversation

The minister’s note, splashed with a red URGENT stamp, reads like a licence to repress:

• Unauthorised gatherings — defined loosely enough to include two friends with placards — will trigger “immediate arrest and prosecution.”

• Digital dissent is framed as sedition: anyone calling for “disobedience, revolt or violence” online will be traced and charged. Given past practice, a hashtag counts as evidence.

• Security deployments are “reinforced” around “strategic sites” nationwide. Translation: gendarmes on every corner, checkpoints miles from the capital, and plain-clothes agents in taxi ranks scrolling through passengers’ phones.

Atanga Nji couches all this in the language of stability, insisting that peace is a “precious asset no citizen is authorised to compromise.” But peace enforced by fear is not peace — it is a muzzle.

A regime addicted to the strong-arm

Cameroon has seen this choreography before:

1. Legal ambiguity inside the chamber.

2. Show of force outside.

3. Communiqué framing repression as patriotism.

The formula worked when the electorate was less connected, the economy less desperate. It is wearing thin in 2025. University graduates drive motorbike taxis; civil servants queue for fuel; entire regions endure blackouts. Against that backdrop, threatening to jail people for a retweet feels not protective, but predatory.

Voices refusing to be hushed

• Kamto’s camp calls the postponement “delay by design,” warning supporters to expect both a legal and a street battle.

• Youth collectives urge silent vigils — black T-shirts and zipped lips — daring police to arrest citizens for merely standing still.

• Rights lawyers document roadside “fines” and phone seizures, preparing dossiers for foreign partners who increasingly see Atanga Nji’s ministry as Cameroon’s Ministry of Intimidation.

Countdown to 3 p.m.

Between now and the verdict, three questions loom:

1. Will the Council risk public outrage by cutting Kamto out of the race?

2. How far will security forces go to enforce today’s communiqué? Yesterday’s tear gas could become tomorrow’s mass detentions.

3. What happens the day after? Even a favourable ruling will land in an atmosphere already poisoned by surveillance and threats.

Paul Biya’s government seems convinced that oppression is cheaper than reform. History suggests otherwise: suppressed voices eventually find a louder register. Whichever way the Council rules at 3 p.m., the real verdict on this election will be rendered by citizens measuring the ballot box against the brutality deployed to control it.

Cameroon Concord will be on the ground — in court, at checkpoints, and online — to document every minute until the judges speak, and every consequence once they do.