By Etienne Mainimo Mengnjo
The Social Democratic Movement (SDF) has called has made resounding statement concerning the country. In a press conference that took place on Thursday July 23 in Yaounde, the SDF through the National Chairman of the SDF, Hon. Joshua Osih among other things called on government to disclosed true state revenue, and warn against tempering with Legislative and Municipal Elections Dates among other things.
Revisiting the just-ended June Ordinary Session of Parliament, Hon. Osih said that since the SDF questioned the Minister of Finance on the issue of gold, what began as simple questions has become a matter of state. Noting that the scandal is now public and that inquiries have been opened, he called this a victory for his party. “The SDF will follow this enquiry to the very end,” he said.
While indicating that every gram of goal that evaporates between declaration and foreign registries is stolen from a school, a hospital, a road and more, he said the revenue declared by the government from oil and mining, including gold, is not accurate. “The SDF demands the true figures of State Revenue,” he said, adding, “Stop indebting the people and give us the true figures.”
He also said that during the last session, the SDF tabled five private member bills on questions critical for the nation, but the bills were refused a place on the agenda. “They were simply buried,” he said, citing Legislation on femicide, infanticide and the implementation of Section 66 of the Constitution among others.
After the government forced through a constitutional revision in April 2026, a revision the SDF opposed not merely by voting against an appointed vice president, Hon. Osih said the party drafted a democratic alternative and tabled it for amendment, but that historic text was also pushed aside.
Given the current climate, he urged all Cameroonians of voting age to register on the electoral rolls before the register closes on Aug. 31. “A voter’s card costs nothing; its absence costs everything,” he said.
Turning to the Legislative and Municipal Elections scheduled for early 2027, Osih declared without ambiguity: “Do not touch the date of the Election again.” He stated that any attempt at a further postponement under any pretext whatsoever will be treated by the SDF as an unconstitutional confiscation of the people’s mandate.
“And because this danger concerns every democrat, I solemnly call, from this platform, on all opposition political parties, to unite on this single, minimal and non-negotiable demand: the election must hold as currently scheduled with guarantees of transparency,” he said.
Hon. Osih noted that the National Assembly and the municipal councils are already operating on extended mandates imposed on the people, and he said every additional postponement is a confiscation of the people’s sovereignty.
In the present context, with the absent head of state, a vacant vice presidency and an unresolved succession, he said it would be worse still: the deliberate transformation of a latent crisis into an institutional void.
On the decade-long Anglophone conflict, Osih cried out that “a child born in Kumbo the year it all began turns 10 this year, with no school to receive him or her.” Acknowledging that the toll is a national shame, he described the war as useless because after 10 years, no one has won, no one can win and everyone has lost. “The greatest scandal of this 10th year is not only the suffering – it is the habituation to the crisis. The SDF refuses that habituation,” he said.
He pointed to the same plan the SDF presented to Cameroonians during the 2025 presidential election: 100 days to end the violence in the Northwest and Southwest. He said its architecture is public and its logic is simple.
“The SDF calls on all the living forces of the Nation and on all our compatriots to mobilise, in unity and determination, to carry the forces of change to victory,” he said.
He called on the entire national community to commit fully to the great democratic remontada that awaits everyone on Feb. 7, 2027. “And to every citizen: Power to the People begins with your council. Your council is the road to your farm, the market, the water point, the health centre, the birth certificate,” he added.
As for the president’s extended stay abroad, Osih said that although no constitutional provision sanctions the duration of a stay abroad by the president, the SDF finds it indecent and contemptuous that no official communication has informed the people of the reasons for the extension of the president’s short private stay abroad.
“The SDF draws the attention of the President of the Republic to the fact that, in the political and republican sense, it can be affirmed that he is in the service of the State and of the Cameroonian people, and that he cannot exempt himself from the rules applicable to all citizens,” he said.