Cameroon’s PCRN Faces Tribalism Accusations as Internal Crisis Deepens

email facebook twitter Cameroon’s Party for National Reconciliation (PCRN), a political party that places “national reconciliation” at the heart of its name, is seeing its internal crisis take an increasingly identity-based turn. In a statement titled “Warning,” dated October 5, 2026, in Douala and signed by Christian Ndjock Nkongo, national secretary for political affairs, human rights and freedoms, the party turned accusations of tribalism against its opponents.

The PCRN said it was extremely concerned about threats, intimidation and ostracism directed at some of its members, particularly those from the “Bamileke West,” as well as their relatives. According to the party, they have been criticized for, “as Bamileke, supporting a Bassa” and for denouncing the “political missteps” of Maurice Kamto, the former president of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM), who is from the West Region.

The PCRN described the situation as “an unacceptable drift that is by no means marginal.” It called on the Cameroon Human Rights Commission to intervene and said it would refer the matter to the “competent authorities.”

The statement follows the resignation of 65 registered members of the PCRN’s Douala V Sable communal subcommittee, most of them from the West Region. Their resignations came on the same day as that of lawmaker Nourane Fotsing.

In her resignation letter sent to national president Cabral Libii (pictured) on September 26, 2026, Fotsing denounced what she described as an identity-based retreat within the party. She cited repeated attacks against her from within the PCRN and denounced remarks targeting her community of origin.

According to Fotsing, those remarks came from PCRN members and officials after she accepted an invitation from the First Lady to attend the New Year wishes ceremony at the Unity Palace.

Fotsing also criticized the party’s governing bodies for failing to respond. She denounced what she viewed as a double standard, pointing out that the PCRN leadership itself had made several visits to the Unity Palace without, according to her, facing comparable criticism.

The party leadership’s response was brief. The PCRN acknowledged receipt of her resignation without addressing the allegations in detail, describing them as “staggering” before wishing the lawmaker “all the best.”

Her departure forms part of a broader series of defections. It came almost exactly one year after the resignation of her husband, Firmin Bouler Fotsing, who has been described as one of the party’s financiers.

Other party officials from the West have since been reported to be considering their departure. On the same day Nourane Fotsing broke with the PCRN, Justin Nkakeu Aimé Ledoux, a local party official in Douala, also announced his resignation.

But the PCRN’s “Warning” creates a political difficulty of its own. In denouncing the politicization of ethnic identity, the party itself places ethnicity at the center of its argument. It names specific communities, describes alleged pressure against Bamileke members and, in an official document, frames the dispute around support for a Bassa leader and the West Cameroonian origins of some party members.

More importantly, the statement does not address Fotsing’s accusations, even though they specifically targeted PCRN members and officials. At this stage, the party leadership is denouncing what it presents as an external threat without publicly addressing the internal grievances raised by one of its former prominent figures.

The statement also provides no detailed factual evidence. It names no victims and gives no specific locations or dates. The alleged threats may be real, but at this stage the statement reads more like a political counteroffensive than a documented warning. Just one week earlier, an entire section of the party in Douala V had walked away.

Community Federalism: The Original Source of the Problem?

Suspicions of tribalism surrounding the PCRN are not new. They have followed Cabral Libii since he made “community federalism” one of the party’s ideological pillars. In 2019, in his contributions ahead of Cameroon’s Major National Dialogue, Libii presented this form of regionalization as a restructuring of the country’s regions. He argued that their boundaries had been drawn according to political calculations, with little regard for historical, sociological and anthropological realities.

Libii rejects the unitary state, which he describes as a colonial relic, and proposes reorganizing Cameroon into 30 autonomous community-based regions. The proposal has attracted considerable criticism. Some critics see it as placing identity above citizenship and accuse the PCRN leader of retreating toward his own political stronghold.

Libii rejects that characterization. He maintains that his proposal does not promote identity-based isolation but instead aims to better organize coexistence among communities and their respective identities.

Doubts have now reached some of his former loyalists. Faycal Hamadou Demaissala, once a close adviser to Libii, recently publicly distanced himself from the proposal. “No to community federalism. I defended it yesterday; my thinking has evolved, and I stand by that,” he said.

Now a member of Yérima Dewa’s ACC, Demaissala advocates a state strong enough to guarantee national unity but sufficiently decentralized to place trust in local territories. He says he refuses to choose between a state that concentrates all power and a republic organized around community affiliations. It is a politically significant repudiation from a former Libii ally.

The PCRN now finds itself trapped in an increasingly visible contradiction. The party that carries “national reconciliation” in its name is seeing its internal crises described in ethnic terms by both those who leave and those who remain. Departing members accuse the party of an identity-based retreat. The leadership responds by alleging ethnic persecution from the opposing camp. In both cases, community identity has become the central lens through which the dispute is viewed.

That may be the real political cost for the party. The PCRN has accumulated departures since the presidential election, and each new defection revives the same question: can Cabral Libii’s party still embody national reconciliation when its own divisions are increasingly viewed through the prism of tribalism?

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