When Cameroon’s opposition leader Issa Tchiroma Bakary quietly slipped into The Gambia last month, it brought to an end weeks of media speculation over his whereabouts and who had the clout to keep him hidden.
After he fled Cameroon in the aftermath of the disputed 12 October presidential election – a race that handed Paul Biya yet another term and triggered a wave of arrests, intimidation and disappearances – rumours swirled about where he had gone.
It emerged that despite surveillance of his Garoua home and Yaoundé offices, Tchiroma managed to slip out nearly three weeks after the vote, using seasonal movement along the poorly monitored Benue River to head towards Nigeria.
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Cameroon: How Issa Tchiroma Bakary. escaped to Nigeria
But the revelation that Tchiroma had been in The Gambia for more than two weeks under official protection raised questions about the government’s initial secrecy and why the small West African state would take the risk of sheltering a Cameroonian dissident.
The Gambia’s information minister did not respond to our request for comment.
Two government sources point to one explanation that a cross-border Fulani network spanning Cameroon, northern Nigeria and The
Fulani figure with a vast cross-border reach
Tchiroma’s Fulani identity sits at the heart of the story. For years, he has cultivated influence that extends far beyond Cameroon’s northern regions.
In the tense run-up to the October vote, insiders say he cast his net deeper into the Senegambia region, mobilising support within elite circles connected to the transnational Pulaaku movement, a loose but influential network promoting Fulani cultural renewal and political solidarity.
‘He had built a political constituency across the Fulani world, people who felt personally invested in his safety’
Analysts say his growing involvement with these networks gave him a protective infrastructure that would become critical the moment the post-election crackdown began.
“He was never operating only within
Cameroon’s borders,” says Sam Mbeng, an activist in the southwestern Cameroonian town of Buea. “He had built a political constituency across the Fulani world, people who felt personally invested in his safety.”
This web of cultural and political alliances became the lifeline that eventually pushed him
