Hot SourceCameroun’s President, Paul Biya, won election for the 8th term, writes AUSTIN ISIKHUEMEN
Cameroun went to the Presidential polls on 12 October, 2025. There were two main candidates. The seating president who farted publicly and did not know where he was during the Africo-America summit in Washington was still a candidate. It did not matter that he is 92 years old. Paul Biya, had been in power since 1982 and has become virtually a resident of Switzerland. For as long as Chantal, his spouse, who carries the equivalent of three ladies’ coloured wigs on her head wants to retain power, so be it!
The second most viable candidate, a seasoned politician from Garoua in Northern Cameroun, – Isa Tchiroma Bakary – ran on the platform of FSNC. Until a few months ago, Tchiroma was a minister under the same Paul Biya. Tchiroma himself is 79 years old but has promised to do a single term and be a transition president. A presidential tenure in Cameroun is seven years. By the time the tenure to be ushered in by this election ends, Paul Biya would be 99 years old while Tchiroma would be 86.
Africa has had very old men whole refuse to let go of power. Mugabe, Museveni, Mobutu, and several others. But Mandela came and showed an example of how politics ought to be played, no matter how important you think you are to the process. He did one term and voluntarily relinquished power to the younger generation. South Africa is still alive today in Mandiba’s absence. In Cameroun’s case, there is a Chantal playing the role of Mrs Grace Mugabe. And there are powerful men who are benefitting from the status quo who dread the loss of power and influence and the riches that the current corrupt system gives them. It is this gang of beneficiaries that is making change impossible and fighting to make the corpse walk in Yaounde.
A little bit of background. When the plebiscite was done in 1961, South West and North West Cameroun (then called Southern Camerouns) voted to join Francophone Cameroun rather than Nigeria. These two regions are English-speaking. The rest of the English-speaking Camerouns opted to join Nigeria. The Cameroun of 1961 was a federation. But on 20 May 1972 after a plebiscite, the French -speaking majority pushed through a constitutional amendment which made the country a United Republic, abolishing federalism. Buea, which was the second administrative city, lost its status. The semi autonomous governance that a federation guarantees was abolished and the Anglophones became two out of ten regions and suddenly began to feel what it is to be a minority in a French-speaking country that is only multilingual in name!
The first President – Ahmadou Ahidjo – was from the North. He overstayed in power too. By 1982, he was deceived, some say with French connivance allegedly, to relinquish power. Told he had a few months to live on health grounds, he gave up power to Biya, his prime minister. Later, he was said to have realised he was deceived. He was said to have made unsuccessful attempts to redress the subterfuge. He was accused of plotting to remove Biya in 1984 and sentenced to death in absentia. Ahidjo died at 65 in Dakar, Senegal in 1989. Biya did not even allow his body to be brought home for burial.
Over the years, Cameroun has been ruled as a French-speaking territory. For many years, there was only one university and all teaching was in French. Many Anglophones had to come to Nigerian universities after wasting some years battling with French language. Politicians from the English-speaking regions faced language and minority obstacles as well as deliberate marginalisation by the powers that be.
Cameroun’s political problems are complex. Apart from the claimem oppression of the Anglophone minority by the Francophone majority, there is also the North- South divide. Ahidjo was a Northern Muslim, Biya a Southern Christian. Even among the Anglophones, the South-West with capital at Buea, feels threatened by the more populous North West with its capital at Bameda which has a sizeable settler population in the South due to the joint political role Buea had played in the past.
While the North-West would prefer a regional arrangement where the two Anglophone regions form one entity, the South-West prefers a return to a Federation where each region in the country would have its own governor as obtains in Nigeria. This situation is further complicated by the location of oil wells in South West around the Limbe (formerly Victoria). So, oil politics is also rearing its head in Cameroun. The government in Yaounde, who’s leader resides in Switzerland and visits once in a long while, handpicks and empowers surrogates who help perpetuate its misgovernance and oppression while they allegedly get massively rich in the process.
Added to this mix is the realisation by the Anglophones that they can even fight for freedom and have their own country free of the Francophone yoke! This is what has led to the violent Ambazonian insurrection which the Yaounde government has been unable to extinguish. As usual, while thousands die and children are out of school for years, African Union and neighbouring countries pretend that nothing is going on.
President Paul Biya’s current seven year tenure is ending and the election held on 12 October, 2025. At 92, he was expected to step down and anoint a successor. He is old, frail and is barely able to walk. He stays with his beautiful wife in Switzerland. Surprisingly, it was announced that he would be running again. Throughout the electioneering campaigns, he was nowhere to be found. At times, his effigy and that of his wife were carried around by his CPDM campaign party militants (as they are called yonder!). The man only showed up on the last rally at Maroua to read a dour written speech with his wife leading the cheer leaders and helping arrange the speech pages so he doesn’t start reading the one he had completed.
The only serious candidate, Isa Tchiroma Bakary, was his minister who decided that only an insider like him, who benefited from the system and also knows it well, is best suited to unseat the incumbent. He campaigned throughout Cameroun and provided a pathway to a transition to a prosperous future for Cameroun. He offered CHANGE as a mantra and an imperative. He promised to do a single tenure and be a bridge between this old era of gerontocrats and a future that belongs to the youth. The fact that he speaks English fluently appealed to the Anglophones who have never head their head of state speak English! He was the only serious candidate in my view as I followed the campaigns on Camerounian social media. The rest candidates just made up numbers and it was clear they would merely be footnotes in the election.
The elections of 12 October 2025 gave some hope for change. Cameroonians went out to vote. They collected ballot cards of different colours for each candidate and party, went into a cubicle where they put their choice into an envelope, then came out to publicly slide it into a plastic ballot box. The counting at the end looked transparent, with public tallying on a chalk or white boards for all to see. All the ones I saw had Isa Tchiroma Bakary leading by a wide margin. I can not claim to have seen all. But it was obvious that Tchiroma was coasting home to victory and the joyous celebrations in the streets attested to this. Change was in the air and it was palpable.
Tchiroma’s speeches and publications of most of the vote tallies from most of the population centres that would ultimately determine the outcome has been regarded by government mouthpieces, especially cantankerous minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji, as illegal. While Tchiroma claims he won by about 54%, beating the “ancestor” to a distant second position with less than 40%, there are rumours that the constitutional council, led by another ancestor, is soon to release a rigged result that leave the 92-year- old firmly on seat as President! Nji is spitting fire and brimstone in favour of the status quo while his mates should be running to replace Biya!
Cameroun is seating on a keg of gunpowder. Their ELECAM is about to produce another SCAM. And it did. What is Africa Union doing when these shenanigans are happening? Did they send an observer mission? How can an electoral commission return results that show that even in the Anglophone regions fighting an insurgency against Paul Biya massively voted for him while the live public counting showed otherwise? If Cameroun implodes, can Nigeria accommodate the refugees that would pour into our country?
Tchiroma looks like someone ready for a showdown. He could not have been offered the position of Prime Minister if he did not win the election. Even France is said to have offered mouth-watering monetary incentives and security guarantees to Paul Biya and members of his government to allow a transition. Nji and others are playing war drums and threatening Tchiroma and his supporters with arrests . The constitutional council has announced the election results. Paul Biya, worlds’s oldest leader, has been declared the winner, his 8th term as President!
Africa appears to be leaving Cameroun to handle its affairs while France’s President is pussyfooting due to his own issues at home. Staying with this fossilised incumbent is a bridge too far. Its western neighbour Nigeria, has had ten leaders since Biya came into power in the Shagari era. Biya will be there after President Tinubu completes a second tenure. Haba!
· Isikhuemen writes from Lagos
