Mid last week, the international news media and their much more racy social media plats ran their readers through a report of the death of Cameroonian president Paul Biya 91. But the government in Yaounde quickly dismissed the report as “fake news”. A statement from the Civil Cabinet said, “For some time now, some malicious people through social networks have tried to make people believe that the President of the Republic is seriously ill, or even passed away.The Civil Cabinet of the Presidency of the Republic wishes to reassure all our compatriots as well as the international community about the excellent state of health of the Head of State who works and goes about his business in Geneva from where he has never left since his arrival from Beijing.The Civil Cabinet … strongly condemns behaviors that abuse freedom of expression to try to disturb national and international opinion.”
True or not, Biya’s reported death was not without plausible foundation. Biya, who has been in power since 1982, has not been seen in public since leaving Beijing on September 8, after attending the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC). He had been expected to return to Cameroon in mid-September after his stay in China. Preparations for his arrival had been put in place but were later lifted when the president’s medical team advised him to remain in Switzerland. Biya has regularly undergone medical care and extended periods of rest in Switzerland. The president managed to avoid the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF) summit, and the Sustainable Development Forum in Hamburg, Germany. Cameroon Intelligence Report, an online platform, said the president had been battling heart problems and memory failure for many years. The report added that Biya’s health was aggravated by prostate cancer, which spread to other vital organs, eventually claiming his life over the weekend at a hospital in an uncertain location of Paris or Geneva.
To be sure, Cameroon has been walked severally through this “valley of the shadow of death” of its aging and frail president. In a sense, Cameroonians are resigned to the perpetuity of the Biya regime. This he has achieved through tightly controlled constitutional reforms but mainly because of a deeply divided and inept opposition. There have been occasional stirrings of dissent in English speaking North-west and South-west regions of the country but these have been easily put down by a very shrewd Biya. He has also managed to keep at bay a repeat of the circumstances that swept away the governments in neighbouring Gabon last year and Senegal last April. As someone said, “Biya and his inner circle may feel confident of avoiding such scenarios. But that will require a shrewd reading of popular sentiment, especially among youth and the middle-class in big cities such as Yaoundé and Douala.
But time isn’t on Biya’s side. And this is a big problem. There is no succession plan. Elections are due November next year. Biya hasn’t said whether or not he would run again but his supporters are crooning for him to go ahead and run. His silence has stopped potential challengers, even in the governing party, from raising their hands. Biya’s son, Franck, has been speculated as a successor but the young man doesn’t seem to want that. This is the horn of dilemma that Cameroon appears to sit on. They believe Biya hasn’t got much longer to live but what isn’t certain is what happens after his passing.
