By Hans Ngala
After playing coy, doing mental gymnastics on Cameroonians, Biya has, in his characteristic manner, finally announced that he will be the CPDM’s candidate for the October elections.
Biya announced on Sunday, July 13, a day after announcing that voting will take place on October 12 across the country. As usual, the move reveals two things: Biya’s insatiable love for power and the gullibility (or perhaps, tolerance) of Cameroonians.
At 92, Biya is currently the world’s longest-ruling non-royal leader and will be 99 years old by the time his eighth term comes to an end in 2032 – assuming he lives that long.
Biya is a power-drunk leader who seems to fit the saying that “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad”. Biya has proven indestructible throughout his political career, though, which (apart from a few universities and limited stretches of roads), has largely proven to be a failure.
He has remained aloof from the domestic affairs plaguing the country, preferring to make only ceremonial appearances on May 20 or Youth Day addresses via state TV, CRTV while never going on the ground on the site of national tragedies such as the Eseka train derailment in 2016 and most notably never setting foot in any of the Anglophone regions since conflict erupted there in the same year, 2016.
He has, however, been desperately making attempts to immortalize himself in the collective memory of Cameroonians, going as far as having the country’s National Assembly named as “The Paul Biya Glass House”. He even has a football stadium named after him, and large billboards with fancy words from him are often spotted in prominent Cameroonian towns – all clear efforts to sanitize his waning influence and power over Cameroonians.
If Biya wins the October elections (which is very likely to be the case given his unfair advantage and control over literally every aspect of Cameroonian life), he will be 99 years old by the time his term comes to an end and he would have ruled Cameroon for exactly 50 years – nothing to celebrate in the least.
While his praise-singers in the CPDM party would give the impression that he is the best leader Cameroon could ever have, the facts on the ground say something else completely. The greatest challenge of his presidency, the Anglophone Conflict, has remained unsolved for eight years since it began. However, Biya has rushed to create a Presidential Plan for the Reconstruction and Development of the Northwest and Southwest Regions (PPRD) to begin reconstruction. This seems either like outright insanity or just sheer incompetence, given that people are still dying in these regions from the actions of both parties, and many people arrested in connection with the crisis remain behind bars. However, Biya’s charade of a reconstruction is aimed at projecting to the world that all is well, but the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), didn’t take the bait. The Council listed Cameroon as “the world’s most neglected displacement crisis” due to the political neglect by both Biya’s trigger-happy regime and international partners, the media, and a lack of humanitarian intervention. Yet, Biya is busy telling the world that he is rebuilding a region that even his incompetent government has failed to build or end its insecurity, even by diplomatic means, opting instead to use brute force and vilify the residents of these regions.
Unemployment under Biya is also a big issue. The World Bank says:
“Poverty reduction in Cameroon has stagnated over the past 20 years, with approximately 4 in 10 Cameroonians living below the national poverty line”. Yet Biya is one of the richest persons in Cameroon, wealth gotten mainly from public coffers and which he spends lavishly in Europe on his countless trips to those countries, rendering little to no accounts for his leadership.
This is the man who wants to convince Cameroonians that, at his age, when his health and mental faculties are collapsing, he wants to remain at the helm of the country. One is wont to ask, what kind of “leadership” does Biya want to talk about when he barely sounds coherent? In December 2022 (a mere two years ago) during the US-Africa Summit in Washington DC (the kind of high-profile events Biya likes to parade himself in), he made a fool of himself and the country, by seeming to fart and repeatedly asking if he could talk – a clear sign of confusion brought on by age at a time when he was almost 90 years old. This is the man trying to deceive a youthful Cameroonian populace, that he is the finest thing ever to happen to them. A tech-savvy Cameroonian populace which largely expresses itself online for fear of arrest from an anti-free speech Biya who hates leads poorly, has zero accountability, ruthlessly crushes any form of dissent, avoids any interaction with ordinary Cameroonians and knows nothing about their pains or daily struggles (because he insulates himself at The Unity Palace or is often vacationing in Europe) but wants to convince Cameroonians that he knows how they feel?
This is the very man whom Cameroonians keep tolerating, unfortunately, and allowing him to use the short-sighted, selfish, and unpatriotic people he has surrounded himself with, to keep exploiting him and ill-advising him. “Mr. President, go home and rest, that will be the most honourable thing to do”, these are the words that anyone claiming to ‘love Biya would tell him and these are not words of disrespect or hatred, these are words of love and compassion, the kind that only a dear friend who wants the best for his friend can tell him.
