At 92, Paul Biya has spent nearly half his years on earth as president and is Africa’s second-longest serving leader, behind only Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. If he wins an eighth seven-year term in the Oct. 12 vote, he could govern until he’s nearly 100.

During his decades in power, the Central African nation of nearly 30 million people has struggled with challenges from a deadly secessionist movement to chronic corruption that has stifled development despite rich natural resources like oil and minerals. At least 43% of the country’s citizens live in poverty as measured by core living standards such as income, education and health, according to U.N. estimates.

Biya is likely to extend his 43 years in office

Biya is rarely seen in public and critics say his capacity to govern has been severely limited by his age.

Still, he’s likely to prevail over the 11 other candidates in the race, especially after Biya’s most threatening rival, Maurice Kamto, was barred from running. Katmo ran against Biya in 2018 and won 14% of the vote.

The election commission said it disqualified Kamto from the race because the African Movement for New Independence and Democracy party that sponsored him was also sponsoring another candidate. Kamto’s lawyers and the party’s president denied the claim, calling the decision politically motivated.

Most of Cameroon’s past elections have faced questions of credibility, with election authorities often accused of working in favor of Biya. Some of the election officers previously served in other roles in Biya’s government. A two-term presidential limit was removed through a parliamentary vote in 2008.

In the nation’s capital, Yaounde, Elvis Nghobo, a food vendor, said the election has ended even before it started. “It is needless voting when it is clear that Paul Biya will always be declared winner,” said Nghobo, 34.

Still, a united opposition could have a chance to defeat Biya, analysts say.

The opposition is divided

After a record 83 candidates applied to run, election authorities approved 12, including Biya, to appear on the ballot.

All 11 opposition candidates agree on the need to unite behind a single leader, but they’re struggling to agree on who that should be, with formal campaigning due to start on Sept. 27..

In a recent post on X, Kamto likened the election to a penalty shootout in a soccer match and urged the candidates to find the best kicker.

“Choose from among yourselves, or at least from among the most experienced, the kicker who has the best chance of scoring the liberating goal,” Kamto said.

Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a long-time Biya ally who quit his government post earlier this year to run in the election, was designated as a consensus candidate by the Union for Change 2025, an alliance of at least 20 political parties and several civil society groups.

However, the other candidates have so far either rebuffed or ignored the move.

“We have only one objective: To liberate Cameroon from the system that has strangled it for more than 40 years,” Bakary said at the time.

Tomaino Ndam Njoya, a mayor and only woman in the race, said in a recent statement that she is open to backing a consensus candidate. That would be “the price to pay to finally offer the Cameroonian people the change they expect and deserve,” she said.

Analysts say the opposition is still weak

The candidates appear to be more concerned with “individual political survival than with driving meaningful collective change,” said Munjah Vitalis Fagha, a senior politics lecturer at Cameroon’s University of Buea.

The lack of a key challenger for Biya shows how weak the opposition has been over the years in Cameroon, said Wilson Tamfuh, professor of public and international law at Cameroon’s University of Dschang.

“There would be no need for an opposition consensus if an opposition party had become strong enough in its own right to overcome the ruling party,” Tamfuh said.

-AP

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In June 2004, on returning from yet another extended stay abroad, Cameroon President Paul Biya came down from his plane and poked fun at rumours he was dead.

“People are interested in my funeral,” he told reporters. “I’ll see them in 20 years.”

That was 21 years ago, and the world’s oldest serving head of state still has no plans to go anywhere.

On Sunday he announced on X he would run in Cameroon’s presidential election scheduled for October 12, seeking an eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.

Biya has held a tight grip on power since taking over as president in 1982 from his one-time mentor Ahmadou Ahidjo, whom he later sidelined and forced into exile.

Now, an unprecedented public outcry in the press and on social media since his announcement suggests cracks in that power base, and doubts in his ability to keep going, may be growing.

“Nous sommes foutus” (“We are screwed!”) was the front-page headline in Monday’s edition of Le Messager newspaper next to a picture of Biya.

The cocoa- and oil-producing Central African nation faces a host of economic and security challenges, notably a conflict with Anglophone separatists and threats from Nigeria-based Islamist fighters in the north.

Meanwhile Biya, 92, remains largely out of public view, spurring widespread speculation over who is really in charge.

“Most of us don’t believe Biya is actually running the country anymore. His decision to run again, if it’s really his, shows just how out of touch the system is,” tech entrepreneur Rebecca Enonchong told Reuters.

Communications Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. He has previously said Biya is in good health and that speculation to the contrary was “pure fantasy and imagination” by critics aiming to destabilise the country.

Last year, the government banned public discussion of Biya’s health – though that order has been largely ignored by Cameroon’s vociferous press.

CALLS TO STEP ASIDE

Cameroon has had just two presidents since independence from France and Britain in the early 1960s and is likely to face a messy succession crisis if Biya becomes too ill to remain in office or dies.

In 2008, Biya signed a constitutional amendment removing a two-term limit for the presidency.

That paved the way for landslide wins in 2011 and 2018, according to official figures, though his opponents complained of irregularities including ballot stuffing and intimidation, which the government denied.

Not much has changed since the last vote, both on the security front and for Cameroonians grappling daily with poor access to basic amenities from roads and water to electricity and waste management.

“These issues are not new. They have simply intensified because the situation keeps worsening,” said Pippie Hugues Marcelline, research policy analyst at the Yaounde-based Nkafu Policy Institute, a think tank.

What is different this year, Marcelline said, is “the level of engagement and awareness” about Biya’s performance.

“A president needs to be seen in charge and in control. The absence of the president from the public is enough evidence that age is not on his side.”

Prominent human rights lawyer Alice Nkom published a video last week on YouTube appealing to Biya to step aside.

“The legs are no longer holding up, the brain is no longer working. I’m telling you this because I’m in this situation, because I’m in my 80s,” she said.

“I know what has changed in me and what I can no longer give to Cameroonians.”

Perhaps more worrying for Biya, two former allies have recently quit the ruling coalition and announced plans to run in the election separately.

Enonchong, the tech entrepreneur, told Reuters she did not think Cameroonians would accept another Biya term.

But analyst Raoul Sumo Tayo said that, despite the many obstacles, Biya should not be counted out.

“The ruling party can successfully rally the administrative elite and utilise outdated electoral practices,” he said, referring to what he described as fraudulent tactics.

“It might just secure an eighth term for Paul Biya.”

Reuters

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