Rémy Nama has spent the known part of his career in the legal services of the Presidency. Since Friday 16 October he has presided over the body that will rule on disputes from the coming legislative elections and that would have to declare the presidency vacant if that moment came.
Decree No. 2026/334, signed on Friday and published by the Presidency, appoints him President of the Constitutional Council with immediate effect. It refers to a second decree of the same day, No. 2026/333, appointing two members of the Council; Abdoulaye Daouda joins at the same time. Two of the eleven seats were empty. Bah Oumarou Sanda, the Council’s dean, died in Yaoundé on 7 August aged 86. Clément Atangana, who had led the Council since it was set up in 2018, died at the American Hospital of Paris on 4 October aged 85; his body arrived in Yaoundé on Thursday. Since 5 October the oldest member, the anthropologist Paul Nchoji Nkwi, 86, had been acting president.
The procedure mirrors February 2018, when Paul Biya appointed Atangana a member and then, by a second decree the same day, president.
A career at Etoudi
Public traces of Rémy Nama are few, and the two clearest lead to the General Secretariat of the Presidency. Decree No. 2013/428 of 28 November 2013 named him the Presidency’s representative on the board of the Parc national de matériel de génie civil, the state civil engineering equipment agency.
The most precise detail comes from the legal affairs weekly Kalara. In June 2021 it reported that Nama had been acting head since 2018 of the General Secretariat’s judicial affairs division, a team of magistrates that prepares files on the courts and the judiciary for the head of state. The post had been empty since its holder, Jean Foumane Akame, was appointed to the newly created Constitutional Council. According to Kalara, Nama hoped to be confirmed. On 9 June 2021 the job went instead to Awala Wodougué, whom Kalara described as Nama’s senior colleague.
The parallel is plain. In 2018 the head of that division joined the Council as an ordinary member. Eight years later, the man who stood in for him there becomes its president.
His age has not been made public. MMI found no public statement or signed writing by him, which leaves little to go on in predicting how he will run the Council.
What lies ahead
The first step is formal. Members of the Constitutional Council take their oath before Parliament sitting in congress. In 2020 the constitutional lawyer Joseph Owona, appointed on 15 April to complete Foumane Akame’s term, was sworn in on 12 June. No date has been announced for Nama.
He does not receive a fresh six-year term. A member who replaces a deceased colleague completes the term already running. Atangana and Bah Oumarou Sanda were both reappointed for six years by decree on 18 January 2024, so unless he is reappointed, Nama will sit until January 2030.
His first heavy caseload will be electoral. MPs’ mandate has been extended to 20 December 2026. Article 15 of the Constitution requires a new Assembly to be elected between 40 and 120 days after an extension ends, which places the vote between 29 January and 19 April 2027. The Council hears challenges to candidacies and then to the conduct of the vote, and proclaims the results. In 2020 it received 39 petitions on candidacies alone, with no more than ten days to decide each. Municipal disputes go to the administrative courts; councillors remain in office until 28 February 2027.
The second matter has no date attached. Law No. 2026/002 of 14 April 2026, which amended the Constitution, created a vice-presidency appointed by the head of state. If the presidency falls vacant through death, resignation or permanent incapacity declared by the Constitutional Council, the vice-president serves out the term. The text sets no deadline for filling the post, and Paul Biya, 93, has not filled it. If a vacancy arose today, the President of the Senate would act as interim and a presidential election would have to be held within 20 to 120 days. The Council under Nama would declare the vacancy, then rule on disputes in that election and proclaim its result. Cabral Libii of the PCRN, since 17 September, and Denis Emilien Atangana of the FDC, on 14 October, have publicly urged Biya to appoint a vice-president. Libii accuses figures inside the regime of blocking the appointment.
An institution already under challenge
Nama inherits a court whose impartiality the opposition has questioned since its first year. In 2018 Atangana’s repeated rulings of “irrecevable” (inadmissible) during the presidential dispute earned him the nickname “Monsieur irrecevable”. In 2025 the Council upheld Maurice Kamto’s exclusion from the presidential race, then declared Biya the winner with 53.66 per cent against 35.19 per cent for Issa Tchiroma Bakary. Tchiroma’s camp did not petition the Council, saying the outcome was settled in advance. After the proclamation, a video circulated in which Atangana, glass in hand, welcomed the victory of his relatives’ candidate; he said he had been attending a meeting of a non-political association. In April 2025 Kamto had already condemned the appointment to the Council of Monique Ouli Ndongo, a former RDPC senator and member of the party’s Central Committee.
Nama has served for at least thirteen years in the services of the head of state who has now appointed him. His public record says nothing about how he will preside. Petitions over legislative candidacies, expected early in 2027 if the timetable holds, will produce the first decisions on which to judge him.
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