2026 must be Cameroon’s year of moral rearmament, Batonnier Akere Muna

In his New Year Speech, Bâtonnier Akere Muna, an unbending anti-corruption crusader and an unsuccessful candidate at the flawed October 2025 Presidential election, lamented: “For too long, we have witnessed a slow erosion of integrity in public life. We have slowly put in place a system in which the rich and powerful cannot be held accountable. We tolerated bad governance and corruption because they felt far from us—or because “that is how things are done. “If we truly want a different future, 2026 must be our year of moral rearmament…”

Fellow Cameroonians and friends at home and abroad,
Happy New Year. As we turn the page to 2026, I extend my heartfelt wishes for peace, health, and
renewed hope to every family, in every town and village, and across our diaspora.
This past year tested us. It stirred expectations for change and still confronts us with a painful impasse.
I do not stand here to relitigate the disputes of the season we are living through. Instead, I want us to
ask a deeper question: What has this moment revealed about who we are—and who we want to
become?
For too long, we have witnessed a slow erosion of integrity in public life. We have seen scandals around
public works, procurement, and admissions to our most prestigious schools. We have watched
nepotism and tribalism creep into hiring, promotion and public contracts. We have heard troubling stories
from strategic sectors—oil, energy, mining, and beyond—where opacity breeds impunity, and impunity
breeds poverty.
International observers have warned about our increasing debt burden, money laundering, and the high
cost of secrecy. Close to thirty years after we put the requirement for asset declarations in our
constitution, there is still no legal framework for its implementation. None of this is news to us. We have
known it. We have lived it. We have slowly put in place a system in which the rich and powerful cannot
be held accountable. A system in which those who work for the citizens give the impression of working
for themselves.
And yet, too often, we shrugged. We tolerated bad governance and corruption because they felt far
from us—or because “that is how things are done.” Then, when the same virus touches our electoral
processes, we awake in anger.
My friends, we cannot have clean elections in a culture that tolerates dirty habits. We cannot demand
purity in elections while accepting shortcuts in all other aspects of the management of our nation. The ballot
is a mirror; it reflects the values we practice every day.
If we truly want a different future, 2026 must be our year of moral rearmament. Not a partisan project.
Not a weapon to attack each other. A national awakening—guided by conscience, by what is sacred,
by a shared commitment to truth, fairness, and the common good. Some of you know that in the recent
season, I chose unity over ambition because I believed our country needed one voice to channel the
desire for change.
For close to three decades, I have worked to promote good governance and fight corruption. I will
continue to do so—with humility, with perseverance, sometimes at great risk and sacrifice but always
with an open hand to anyone ready to build across regions, language, religion, gender, and tribe. Our
diversity is not our weakness; our silence in the face of wrongdoing is.
Let 2026 be the year we put the most vulnerable at the centre of our choices; the year we ask, in every
decision, “What country are we leaving to those who come after us?” If we do this, then whatever the
headlines bring, we will have taken back what no one can steal: our moral compass.
This year of reconciliation must begin with a clear and courageous act: the release of all those arrested
in connection with the October elections.