Minister Of State, BELLO BOUBA MAIGARI, Designated UNDP Party’s Candidate For 2025 Presidential Election

“I Have Accepted The Proposal To Be Your Presidential Candidate”, Bello Bouba

 An Enlarged Meeting Of The Central Committee Of UNDP, That Met As Planned In Yaounde On June 28, 2025, Decided That The Party Should Put Up A Candidate For The Presidential Election. That Also Means An End To The CPDM – UNDP That Was Signed In 1997.

 UNDP Leader,  BELLO BOUBA, Who Is Minister Of State in charge of Tourism And Leisure, Is Expected To Tender His Resignation From Gov’t. However, BELLO Bouba Has So Far Not Said Anything About His Expected Resignation

 ‘Union Nationale pour la Democratic et le Progres’, UNDP, that is, the National Union for Democracy and Progress, NUDP, which has since January 1992 been led by BELLO BOUBA MAIGARI, and which since 1997 has been in an alliance with the ruling CPDM Party, has finally decided to break up the alliance with the ruling party, and designate its National President as the party’s candidate for the 2025 presidential election.

It should be noted that since the CPDM and UNDP signed an alliance after the 1997 presidential election, and in line with the terms of the alliance, the UNDP has always been supporting the candidate of the CPDM (Paul Biya), at presidential elections. This was the case with the 2004, 2011 and 2018 presidential elections. But the party has today, June 28, 2025, decided to put an end to that long alliance, less than four months to the 2025 presidential election, expected to hold in October.  To be precise, the decision was adopted by an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the UNDP that held behind closed doors in Yaounde, today, Saturday, June 28, 2025.

   The Enlarged Meeting Of UNDP’s Central Committee

It would be recalled  that Decision No.2025 / 05/ D/ PN/ UNDP that was signed by the National President of UNDP, Bello Bouba Maigari, on June 6, 2025, convened an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the party on June 28, 2025, at the Yaounde Conference Centre. The Central Committee meeting of the UNDP was according to the release, to be exceptionally enlarged to include members the National Advisory Council, as well as members of the Permanent Secretariat of the Committee of Directors, and annex organs.

The agenda of the meeting was not disclosed in the communiqué. However dependable sources in the Central Committee of UNDP, confirmed to The Mentor News that the main item on the agenda of the June 28, 2025 enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the UNDP, would be to decide whether the party should terminate the alliance with the CPDM, or continue with it. To continue with the alliance would have meant that the party will again support the CPDM candidate, at the 2025 presidential election. But if the majority of members at the June 28 meeting were to decide that enough is enough, and that UNDP pulls out of the alliance with the CPDM, then the party would unlike in the last three presidential elections, not support the CPDM candidate at the 2025 presidential election.

“I Have Accepted The Proposal To Be Your Presidential Candidate”

Today (Saturday, June 28, 2025), the enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of UNDP met behind closed doors, and decided that the party should end the alliance with the CPDM.  However, the National President of the UNDP, Bello Bouba Bouba Maigari, that personally readout the decision to the media, did not directly talk about the breaking up of the alliance with the ruling CPDM. Rather, he said the enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of UNDP, after deliberations behind closed doors, decided that the party should put up its own candidate at the 2025 presidential election, and then made  it known that he was that candidate. “I have accepted the proposal to be your presidential candidate”, he said. Of course, the decision by UNDP, to send in a candidate for the 2025 presidential election, automatically means a disruption of the alliance with the CPDM. However Bello Boba did not say anything about the –CPDM – UNDP Alliance to the press.

The long serving Chief Communication Officer of UNDP,  Peter KUMA KOMBAIN that The Mentor News contacted by telephone, confirmed that  the party has decided to put up a candidate for  the 2025 presidential election, and that the National President of  UNDP, Belo Bouba Maigari, will be the party’s candidate. Kombain disclosed that at the enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the UNDP, the Youths and Women’s wings of the party both separately proposed Bello Bouba Maigari as the party’s candidate at the 2025 presidential election, and that the rest of the members of the enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the party also endorsed the proposal.

Asked if the designation of a candidate by UNDP for the 2025 presidential election did not thus mean an end to the alliance between the party and the ruling CPDM, the Communication Officer hesitated, and then said: “Well, I don’t think that is a question you should ask me.  You can make out the answer to the question, yourself”.

Bello Bouba Expected To Resign From Gov’t

Meanwhile following the decision by UNDP to terminate the alliance with the ruling CPDM, the National President of UNDP, Bello Bouba Maigari,  Minister of State  in charge of Tourism and Leisure, who has been in Government since 1997 as part of  the terms of  the alliance, is now expected to quit the Government in the coming days. He is expected to present his letter of resignation to the President of the Republic, Paul Biya, though certainly not directly. However, it should be noted that Minister Bello Bouba has so far not said anything about that. While talking this afternoon about UNDP’s decision to send in a candidate for the 2025 presidential election, he did not say  whether he would now resign from Government or not. But normally, he has to resign.

Another Northerner Designated To Temporary Replaced Issa Tchiroma In Gov’t

It would be recalled that Bello Bouba’s northern brother and National President of FSNC, ISSA TCHIROMA BAKAR, who has resigned from Government, deposited his resignation letter with the Prime Minister, Chief Dr Joseph Dion Ngute, on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, for onward transmission to the President.  Then on Friday, June 27, the  Prime Minister on the “high instruction” of the President of  President of the Republic, designated the Minister of Youths and Civic Education, Mounouna Foutsou, “to ensure  the continuity of public service” at the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training, which Issa Tchiroma Bakary left without a minister, following his resignation. So Mounouna Foutsou now runs two ministries.  It was no coincidence that Biya chose another northerner to be the temporal replacement of Issa Tchiroma Bakary. That is the way the President has been operating for years.

  Increasing Discontent In The UNDP Over The Alliance With CPDM

Meanwhile, unlike Issa Tchiroma Bakary, not much is expected to be heard from Bello Bouba Maigari, as to the reasons why UNDP has decided to finally end the over 25 yea alliance with the CPDM. Bello Bouba is known to be a politician who does not talk much, and likes to keep many things discreet.

Whatever the case, one of the  things that has pushed the hierarchy of the UNDP to adopt the decision to break up the alliance between the party and the ruling CPDM, is the increasing discontent in the UNDP over the alliance with the CPDM.  Many UNDP militants especially at the base or grass root, were questioning what the party has been benefitting from the alliance with the ruling CPDM. The UNDP militants at the base had reportedly been mounting pressure for an end to the alliance with the CPDM.

Also, many senior members and officials of the UNDP were blaming the CPDM for not respecting the terms of the alliance. They said while the UNDP on its part had been doing everything, to effectively and totally respect the terms of the alliance that was signed with the CPDM in 1997, the CPDM on its part had for quite sometimes now not been respecting the terms of the alliance. Even the CPDM – UNDP Platform had become more dead than alive, as meetings that were supposed to be holding between the two parties to discuss issues about the functioning of the alliance, rarely held.

As regard appointments into Government, it should be noted that at the beginning of the alliance, four members of the UNDP were appointed into Government. It had since been reduced to barely two; a Minister and a Secretary of State.

An Increasing Sense Of Awareness By Youths Of The Grand North

It should be noted that the UNDP Central Committee meeting this year, held within a backdrop of an increasing sense of awareness by youths of the Grand North, whose eyes are now opening to the stark reality of the situation of their three regions. High unemployment rate, high rate of poverty, high rate of illiteracy especially in the Far North Region, high rate of misery,  bad state of roads, absence of portable water in most parts of  the Grand North, underdevelopment of the Grand North,  and so on, and so forth.

The increasing sense of awareness of youths of the Grand North is thanks among things, to the sensitization campaigns being carried out by some political activists like Guibal Gatama  of the pressure group known as “10 million Nordists”, and Abdouraman Baba, as well as by an increasing number of civil society organizations.  The political activists, the civil society organizations and the youths of the Grand North, are all blaming the situation (misery and underdevelopment) of the Grand North, to the ruling CPDM party and Government, and many no longer want to see anything, especially their northern parties and leaders, associated with the CPDM.

That is why some members of the Central Committee of the UNDP who hail from the Grand North, in last few months reportedly cautioned the party’s leadership behind the scene, that if the party did not put an end to the alliance with the ruling CPDM, the party ran the serious risk of losing many militants as well as becoming the target of attacks by activists in the Grand North.