It was founded by Adamou Ndam Njoya, a former Minister of National Education under President Ahmadou Ahidjo, on 26 April 1991.
[1] In the May 1997 parliamentary election, the UDC won five seats,[2] all of them in Noun Department in the West Province.
[3] It then boycotted the October 1997 presidential election, along with the Social Democratic Front (SDF) and the National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP).
Adamou Ndam Njoya and John Fru Ndi failed to agree on the designation of an all-opposition single candidate for the presidential election of October 11, 2004.
Njoya was re-elected for another five-year term as CDU Chairman at a party congress in Yaoundé, attended by about 3,000 delegates, on 30 November–2 December 2006; there was no challenger for the position.