05/10/2026
CLÉMENT ATANGANA IS GONE: POWER ENDS, DEATH DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE
Clément Atangana, the pioneer President of Cameroon’s Constitutional Council, is dead. He died on October 4, 2026, at the American Hospital in Paris, France, aged 85.
For many Cameroonians, Atangana will be remembered not simply for the office he occupied, but for the controversial electoral decisions over which he presided. In the October 2018 and 2025 presidential elections, the Constitutional Council under his leadership rejected all petitions challenging the election. The Council subsequently proclaimed Paul Biya winner while Issa Tchiroma Bakary and Maurice Kamto rejected the official outcome and maintained that they had won.
His death comes barely a year after that bitterly disputed election. I will attach the video of Atangana celebrating after proclaiming Biya’s victory. For those of us who believe that the victory of the Cameroonian people was stolen, that moment remains difficult to forget.
Now Atangana follows other towering figures of the Biya era who departed in 2026: Marcel Niat Njifenji, the former President of the Senate, who died on April 11, and Cavayé Yéguié Djibril, the longtime former Speaker of the National Assembly, who died on May 6.
There is a message here for everyone who still holds power.
No matter how powerful you become, no matter how long you occupy an office, no matter how much you manipulate institutions, defend corruption, frustrate justice or use your position against the will of the people, there is an end.
Power ends.
Titles disappear.
The applause stops.
And death does not ask whether you were President of the Senate, Speaker of the National Assembly, President of the Constitutional Council, minister, judge or ordinary citizen.
Nobody is above death.
Those who still have the privilege of serving Cameroon should therefore remember that public office is temporary. What remains after you are gone is the record you leave behind and the judgment history makes of your service to the people.
LEGENJU MEDIA