By Ndi Afesseh
This was during a consultation meeting with members of Elections Cameroon –ELECAM on Saturday April 26, 2025 at the auditorium of the Regional Assembly, Bamenda, as the northwest region prepares for the upcoming elections cycle.
Dr. Enow Abraham Egbe, president of ELECAM passionately appealed to all north westerners especially the youths to promote peace, drop their weapons and use the ballot paper instead as the best and most peaceful way to bring about the change they yawn for. He called for collaboration between all stakeholders to ensure a peaceful, inclusive and successful elections in 2025 and 2026.
The consultation was characterised by frank exchanges between the representative of political parties (mostly the SDF) administrative, municipal, traditional and civil society representatives and the media on election risk management and the state of affairs of the electoral process in the region.
The meeting identified, discussed and proposed possible solutions to internal and external risk that may pose obstacles to the smooth running of the upcoming presidential, and municipal and parliamentary elections in 2025 and 2026.
After identifying the different risks that could possibly affect a peaceful, inclusive and transparent elections in the region, the participants gave several recommendations. This included the regular attendance of information meetings, making available electoral law throughout the electoral process for easy reference, creating multiply voting sites and increase training of polling agents, put in place clear and concise mechanism for conflict resolutions before, during and after the elections, hold actors of election malpractices accountable. For better participation in the process it was also proposed that elections be mostly organized in the dry season, political parties should stop influencing ELECAM officials and the enforcement of elections laws especially those concerning financing of parties strictly applied.
The recommendations also called for security officials to be educated about the entire process, called for military and secessionist fighters to respect and protect voters, for the state and communities to provide security and an enabling environment to hold elections and the protection of the cyber space from external attacks.
To the media, it was recommended that it should sensitize the population and grant unbiased access to contesting parties, avoid hate speech, should be empowered for effective and balance reporting, be given resources especially to the private press, increase sensitization and dissemination of information through proximity radios, appropriate national structures should identify and delete fake news.
All the stakeholders also recommended that the remuneration for ELECAM staffs be increase to combat the influence of political parties and above all to ensure that minutes, polling returns and other documents are signed by all commission members.
In an earlier presentation by the regional Head of ELECAM NWR, Mr. Mbowoh Elvis, the stake holders were given actual data on the state of affairs of the region.
According to the statistics, by the 31 December 2024, the region had over 621,000 voters on the electoral register with Mezam and Bui leading in terms of registered voters with above 203,000 and 104,000 respectively. So far 15,730 persons have been registered in 2025, representing 35% of the target. The data shows that they are more women (54%) than Male (46%) in the electoral register and that many cards are still to be picked up by the owners.
The President promised to find solutions to problems that are within the competent of ELECAM and to channel the rest to the appropriate authorities.
This is the third consultation between ELECAM and elections stakeholders in the Northwest. The last was in January 2025.
