President Paul Biya has lost a longtime political ally in the country’s northern regions less than three months before the parliamentary and municipal elections scheduled for February 7, 2027. Hamadou Moustapha, a minister attached to the presidency and leader of the National Alliance for Democracy and Progress (ANDP), died on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, at his home in Odza, Yaoundé, after a long illness. He was 81.

His death comes at a time when political alliances are shifting across Cameroon’s three northern regions. In 2025, Bello Bouba Maigari’s National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP) and Issa Tchiroma Bakary’s Cameroon National Salvation Front (FSNC) ended their alliances with the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) ahead of the October presidential election. Moustapha, by contrast, continued to support Biya.

During political consultations at the presidency in July 2025, he confirmed that the ANDP would back Biya’s candidacy. “I am a loyal ally,” he declared at a time when the departures of Bello Bouba Maigari and Issa Tchiroma Bakary had raised questions about the loyalty of the CPDM’s political partners.

Born on May 11, 1945, in Maroua, in Cameroon’s Far North Region, Moustapha began his administrative career in the late 1960s. On April 5, 1972, under President Ahmadou Ahidjo, he was appointed a special adviser at the presidency. He became deputy finance minister in June 1975 before serving as minister of urban planning and housing from 1979 to 1983.

With the return of multiparty politics, he joined the UNDP and became its vice president. Elected to the National Assembly in March 1992 on the opposition party’s ticket, he accepted a position in Biya’s government that November as deputy prime minister in charge of urban planning and housing.

His decision to join the government created tensions within the UNDP. In January 1995, the party expelled him alongside Issa Tchiroma Bakary. The two men subsequently helped establish the ANDP, with Moustapha assuming its presidency.

He remained deputy prime minister until December 1997. On December 8, 2004, he returned to government as a minister attached to the presidency, a position he held until his death nearly 22 years later.

Source: Sbbc