Tchiroma Pulled Off Plane in Yaoundé—A Regime Nervous About Its Own Shadow

Yet before the doors closed, uniformed officers boarded, asked the former communications minister to follow them, and marched him and his daughter back across the jet bridge. No warrant, no written order, not even a phone screenshot; just the phrase Cameroonians know by heart: “Instructions from above.”

Why single out Tchiroma?

Until a week ago the 69-year-old leader of the FSNC was best known as Paul Biya’s most agile spin-doctor—a man who defended the 2008 constitution change, the 2016 internet blackout and the 2018 arrest of Maurice Kamto. Now, free of cabinet discipline and declared candidate for the 12 October election, Tchiroma has discovered an audience far beyond his northern strongholds. Polling leaked to diplomatic circles shows his name climbing into the mid-teens, close enough to matter in a fragmented opposition field.

Two recent moves likely triggered the travel ban. First, Tchiroma called publicly for the Constitutional Council to restore Kamto to the ballot, framing it as a pre-condition for credible elections. Second, he hinted at joining a single opposition slate should the Council refuse. Either gesture—solidarity with Kamto or fusion of anti-Biya votes—threatens the script the regime wrote when ELECAM purged Kamto last Friday.

What the authorities achieve by grounding him

1. Signal to other “licensed” candidates. If someone as long-serving in government as Tchiroma can be immobilised without paperwork, so can anyone else. The message is: campaign inside the lines we draw, or watch your passport—and maybe your freedom—disappear.

2. Starve the news cycle. A Dakar visit would have produced images of a serving candidate kneeling at Ahidjo’s tomb. Nothing punctures the myth of Biya’s inevitability like a rival laying claim to the founding father’s legacy.

3. Test public temperature. For a jittery regime, each act of arbitrary power is also a probe: Will the streets erupt, or will fear still outweigh anger? If Yaoundé stays quiet, the government knows it can push further.

Who pulls the strings?

Interior Minister Paul Atanga Nji is almost certainly the operational hand, but the strategic decision sits higher. Biya’s inner circle has grown allergic to risk in the twilight of a 42-year reign. Their doctrine is simple: deny oxygen to any narrative that unites north and south, Christian and Muslim, francophone and anglophone. Tchiroma, a northern Fulani Muslim with long ties to the French-speaking elite, suddenly talking coalition politics with Kamto? That is combustible.

A wider pattern of pre-emptive repression

The day ELECAM struck off Kamto, police trucks sealed downtown intersections; inside twenty-four hours, gendarmes circulated a “wanted” notice for a Twitter activist accused of “incitement.” Journalists covering courthouse filings have had cameras yanked, and opposition lawyers say their phone lines echo. Each act is minor in isolation; together they map a regime that fears surprise more than condemnation.

Could the gambit backfire?

Possibly. Cameroon’s electorate is young, wired and increasingly cynical about formal politics. Kamto’s exclusion already convinced many that the election is a foregone conclusion; grounding Tchiroma may nourish a second, more dangerous idea—that normal, non-violent channels are dead. In Douala’s Ndokoti market, traders whispered today that “if they stop one more person, we close the roads ourselves.” Such talk can fade by dusk or catch fire overnight; no security memo predicts which.

The legal cul-de-sac

Tchiroma’s lawyers will demand an official travel-ban notice, but experience suggests they will hit a procedural wall: no document means no appeal. Kamto’s team, racing their own clock at the Constitutional Council, doubt the judges will break a record of loyalty now. “The law went into exile long ago,” one attorney muttered outside the courthouse.

What the regime wants—and what it fears

Biya’s entourage craves a ballot that looks plural but feels settled. They want just enough candidates to claim competition, none strong enough to force a second round or rally the streets. Above all they fear the Algeria-style scenario: disparate opposition camps suddenly marching under a single slogan, joined by ordinary citizens who no longer believe incremental change is possible.

Tchiroma’s rise from court spokesman to potential coalition broker disturbs that calculus. Blocking his flight is less about Senegal than about momentum: stop a rally before it gathers.

The choice left to Cameroonians

Within days the Constitutional Council will either rubber-stamp ELECAM’s list or stun the nation by restoring Kamto. If it upholds the ban, the spotlight shifts to the dozen “approved” hopefuls. Will they swallow their colleague’s humiliation or walk out in protest? Will Tchiroma back down or double-down? And will the public accept another lopsided contest—or decide, knife still in hand, that the meat on the table is theirs to carve?

For now, Issa Tchiroma Bakary is back at his Yaoundé home, suitcase still packed, passport still valid yet useless. The aircraft door that closed behind him at Nsimalen may prove harder for the regime to shut on the disquiet it has just amplified.