Over the last couple of months, Cameroonians have been very busy discussing the country’s presidential elections scheduled for October 2025, with many focusing on the incumbent believed to be 92 years old.

Focusing on Mr. Biya who has ruled the country for 43 years is a huge mistake on the part of Cameroonians, especially young Cameroonians who hold the solutions to the problems facing the country.

At 92, it is impossible for anyone to change their ways and focusing on Mr. Paul Biya’s age instead on the issues hurting most Cameroonians is the wrong way out of the political and economic issues which have lingered and festered for 43 years.

Biya’s has the right to run like any other Cameroonian who is eligible. The issue should be if he will be able to address those tough and challenging issues such as insecurity, unemployment, poor housing, a declining economy, lack of infrastructure, tribalism and corruption which have stubbornly refused to set Cameroonians free.

Even those on the opposition need to be carefully examined and scanned through some of the best political analysis to determine if they are capable of delivering the goods as they are promising.

While Biya has already proven his incompetence or competence depending on who is evaluating him, many on the opposition have never really been tested, with some having worked with Mr. Biya for decades, making it hard for anyone to dissociate them from the Biya era which has hurt many Cameroonians.

One of those who have collaborated with Mr. Biya for decades is Bouba Bello Maigari, the UNDP chairperson. Bello has served under the country’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, and Paul Biya. Though he has been in the corridors of power for decades, he has not posted any impressive results in any ministry he has headed.

He has led the ministry of tourism for a long time and that ministry clearly needs an extreme makeover. No tourism facilities have been developed during Mr. Bouba Bello’s time at the ministry of tourism and even those developed long before he became the minister of tourism have crumbled and are in need of rehabilitation.

These are some of the issues young Cameroonians should be considering when choosing the person who will be their country’s next president. Choosing a leader is not about emotions and tribe. It is about who has a great development agenda that will liberate young Cameroonians from their damnation. Cameroonians are hurting and they need a savior who will be selfless, dynamic and determined to change the development script which has left many Cameroonians in abject and humiliating poverty.

Another candidate who needs to be x-rayed is Mr. Issa Tchiroma Bakari who served under Paul Biya as the minister of communication and minister of vocational education. As the minister of communication, Issa Tchiroma spent his time antagonizing Cameroonians and openly telling them that he was appointed by Mr. Biya and not by Cameroonians. The Internet is awash with videos of him declaring that there was no Anglophone problem in Cameroon and even stressing that asking for federalism was a crime punishable by the country’s laws.

Today, he has walked away from his famous alliance with the ruling party, the CPDM, and he is telling all sorts of stories about a system he loyally and proudly served. He now claims to be a federalist who can solve a problem he once said was non-existent. Is this the man who can change a country that is in dire need of an extreme political makeover? It is up to Cameroonians, especially the youths who are in the majority, to make a determination as to whether Mr. Tchiroma is the man who can serve their interest.

If Mr. Tchiroma claims that Mr. Biya is not the person to engineer the type of change Cameroonians need, how qualified and different is he when he has served Mr. Biya for decades?

There is also the chairperson of the Social Democratic Front, Joshua Osih, who has been in parliament for a long time. He has some experience under his belt. His knowledge of the legislative process is commendable but there are doubts about his ability to steer a country like Cameroon which is mired in challenging issues in a different direction.

Joshua Osih is a likeable person but he lacks the charisma and presidential presence which can galvanize the country’s youths. Cameroonian youths are those who will determine the future of the country. That is, if they have their voter’s cards and have developed a different mindset. They can either settle for old ways or seek new paths which will bring about sustainable development in the country.

The choice is theirs and the future belongs to them. They can either make the future attractive by making wise choices or they can be stuck in their old ways which have robbed them of their happiness and dignity. There will always be alcohol and food but will they be able to live a dignified life?

Another player in Cameroon’s political game is Prof. Maurice Kamto who seems to have a huge following, especially out of the country where many of those rooting for him will not vote. Elections get won when party supporters vote and not when they spend their time on social media riling up virtual crowds, many of whom do not have voter’s cards.

Prof. Kamto is presidential, he has sound knowledge of the law, but he has made massive political blunders which might result in his expulsion from the 2025 presidential elections in Cameroon. Keeping his party, MRC, from the last municipal and parliamentary elections is turning out to be his greatest undoing.

Even if he succeeds to have alliances with other parties which may give him a chance to run, there are still many issues he has to address. His party, MRC, seems to be more regional than national and there are huge accusations against his party being a tribal outfit which might hurt him in a big and bad way.

Cameroon is at the crossroads. The country’s future is really bleak. This year’s presidential elections might steer the country in a new and different direction.

Many analysts hold that the ruling CPDM led by the incumbent, Paul Biya, will still win the elections, especially as the party has the resources to conduct a real national campaign.

In all fairness, the CPDM is the only real national party as it has served as a state party for decades, but given the internal divisions which are tearing the party apart, its edge over other parties will surely be eroded.

Today, the party’s chairman, Paul Biya, is nowhere to be found, with many CPDM insiders insinuating that he has been worn down by age and ill health.

The public disagreements between the Secretary General at the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and Rene Sadi, the government’s spokesperson speak to the power tussle that is signaling the end of a reign that has been marked by dictatorship, intimidation, corruption and nepotism.

Rene Sadi is not only fighting the secretary general, he also has a bone to pick with Prof. Fame Ndongo, the country’s higher education minister who is a staunch supporter of President Biya and his wife, Chantal Biya, who is currently being accused of pulling the strings behind the scenes as her husband struggles with poor health and old bones.

There is also Laurent Esso, the country’s justice minister who is struggling with poor health. Years of stress and the burden of power have reduced Mr. Esso to a colony of diseases. He too has an axe to grind with Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh-a pawn of Chantal Biya who wants to keep Mr. Biya alive for her to continue enjoying the benefits of a first lady.

While the games are taking place behind the scenes, the country’s youths must not forget about the critical role they have to play in this year’s presidential elections. They must understand that in Cameroon, those who vote are not those who count the votes. They must therefore be very vigilant to ensure that their votes count. Cameroon’s future is in their hands and they must not open themselves up for exploitation.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Editor-In-Chief

After 43 years of zombified rule, Biya’s candidacy at 93 years, is a declaration of war on Democracy

There are tyrants – and then, there is Paul Biya, the nonagenarian necromancer of Yaoundé, who has shamelessly decided to plunge the grotesque theatre of Cameroonian politics into yet another farcical act of brigandage-the world’s oldest head(ache) of state has announced his intent to cling to the presidency once more, seeking an eighth term at the antediluvian age of 93; when most men kneel before memory and prepare for judgment. There are tyrants – and then there is Paul Biya, the decomposing sun-king of Mvomeka’a; who has made a mausoleum of the Cameroonian presidency, embalmed in arrogance, hubris and mummified in deceit. Like a moth drawn to the flame of self-deification, Biya stumbles forward, blind to the rot he has sown across 43 years of zombified rule. Biya’s candidacy is not courage. It is not continuity. It is not service. It is vanity wrapped in delusion; a final insult hurled at a people he long ceased to care about. Let no one be fooled by his empty phrases and digital proclamations. The emperor has no vigor, no mandate, no soul. Only a seat he refuses to vacate. He rules not as a leader, but as a fossil clinging to the illusion of motion, while the nation stumbles from one avoidable tragedy to the next. It is not only time for Biya to step down. It is time for his memory to be expunged from the pantheon of history. Let future generations learn of him only as a political poltergeist, who mistook a nation for his armchair, and ruled until time itself rejected him. And let the Cameroonian people, especially the youth, rise up at last, to bury this era of gerontocratic tyranny and claim the national rebirth and new dawn they have long been denied.

This is no longer governance. It is taxidermy in motion – the marionette-like twitching of a regime so old, so ossified; it has forgotten the difference between life and performance. And yet, the frail, aged despot shamelessly dares to whisper on social media: “Rest assured that my determination to serve you matches the urgency of the challenges we face,” adding sarcastically that: “…The best is still to come.” No, Mr. Biya. You are now the challenge; you have nothing more to offer. This latest insult to national dignity – a 93-year-old autocrat seeking an eight extension of his personal kingdom – is not an act of ambition. It is a declaration of war on youth, on democracy, on the very idea of national renewal. The justification is laughable: “numerous and insistent” calls by people from all regions in Cameroon and the diaspora. Which people? The hungry, poor and destitute masses who are scavenging for survival? The displaced IDPs and victims of Boko Haram? The war-orphaned Anglophone children? Or the cabal of sycophants fattened on patronage and corruption; the same parasites,greedy for another drop of the poisonous nectar the regime offers them? Which people? He dares to call it “service.”But his service is not to the nation; it is to the great altar of self-preservation, where he burns time, dignity, and present and future generations for the sake of his own shadow.

The Cadaver in Chief

There is a cruel poetry to the sight of a man who has become a waxwork of his former self; a living corpse and walking relic presiding over the funeral of a nation, under the guise of leadership. Paul Biya, has mutated from president to pharaoh entombed in the presidential palace, ruling through silence, absence, and “on-high instructions” whispered decrees. He governs not from Yaoundé but from his Mvomeka’a palace, or the marbled suites of Geneva’s Intercontinental Hotel, while Cameroonians sleep in darkness, choke on dust, and bleed in the streets of Buea and Bamenda. His rare public addresses are relics, his political instincts reduced to mechanical repressions. If governance is an act of presence, of listening, of sacrifice; then Biya has not ruled Cameroon in decades. He has haunted it. Under Biya’s gaze, Cameroon has not lived. It has endured. The country has become a mausoleum of squandered opportunities, shattered dreams, and broken promises – a land where roads dissolve like sugar in rain;

where hospitals resemble war zones; where students graduate into despair; where the Anglophone regions smolder in genocidal silence, and innocent blood is the mother tongue. Forty-three years of corruption, embezzlement, tribalism, nepotism, poverty, bad governance, and fatalism – and now he is asking for seven more?

Biya’s governance is an entrenched dictatorship kept alive by bureaucracy, brutality, and ritualized elections and nourished by apathy, silence, and the poisoned loyalty of cowards in tailored suits and agbada. He has never truly led; only loitered. He has not presided; only sat, slept, and signed useless decrees, appointing his Beti kith and kin to all commanding heights of authority positions in the army and public service. What began in 1982 as a hopeful transition from Ahidjo has festered into a monarchical parody, where term limits were abolished, institutions hollowed out, and elections turned into ceremonial endorsements of despotism. In Biya’s Cameroon, ballots do not measure the peoples’ will. Biya imagines himself eternal, and sees the presidency as his personal inheritance, not a trust of the people. He has turned Cameroon into a caricature of post-colonial failure; a textbook example of how a nation dies – not by war, but by the glacial tyranny of tired old men who mistake power for purpose.

A Dynasty of Decay: this Is Necrophilia

Biya’s 2025 re-election bid is not an act of patriotism. It is a necromantic spectacle – the dead ruling the living; a grotesque attempt to stitch eternity into the skin of one man, while 27 million Cameroonians decay under the weight of his denial. What man seeks to rule until he is a centenarian corpse propped up by protocol and improvisation lies and official deception? Which country of sound minded people will allow such a mockery to continue? This is no longer tyranny; it is senile theocracy, with Biya as its high priest, chanting decrepit slogans over a nation in chains.

Biya’s legacy is a nation betrayed with abusive patronage and ethnic-inspired clientelism as the official currency of governance. A bilingual state fractured into violent conflict due to his lethargic indifference to Anglophone grievances; a youth majority strangled by unemployment and hopelessness; a judiciary in chains, a legislature emasculated, a cabinet neutered, a press gagged. Over $300 million in public funds looted annually, according to various watchdogs, while hospitals rot and schools crumble. He has not merely misruled; he has institutionalized failure. Cameroon under Biya is a living contradiction: rich in resources, poor in purpose; blessed in geography, cursed in leadership. His CPDM co-travelers have also perfected the art of doing nothing, besides looting the public treasury. This is not stagnation. This is national asphyxiation.

The End of the Farce

Biya fancies himself immune to the fate of Ali Bongo, toppled next door by a fed-up military after a fraudulent election propped up another decrepit dynasty. He believes his regime is eternal. But power decays faster than flesh, and no throne lasts forever. Paul Biya is not the president of Cameroon; he is its plague, its undertaker, its oldest curse, which doesn’t deserve to be eulogized. Let his statues fall like ash, let his portrait rot in moldy government offices, let history remember him not as a statesman and father of the nation, but as a human vampire.

So, let his 2025 re-election bid be the final insult. Enough is enough! Let the youths, awakened from forty-three years of coma, rise like rivers after drought, and nail the coffin of this regime shut. Let the bell toll not for Biya, but for the rebirth of a republic that was never allowed to breathe, never allowed to dream, because one man refused to die – or quit the stage even after the curtains were down. The sword of history is unsparing. And when it falls, it does not ask for clarifications. To the elites of CPDM, to the doddering politburo of geriatrics who toast champagne while the people drink from dry taps -take heed. There comes a day when even the most docile nation remembers how to roar. Even termites know when to abandon a collapsing pillar. And so, we say: Go, Paul Biya. Go – not with thanks, not with fanfare, but with the full weight of our rage, our grief, and our judgment. Go before the wind of history blows you away like the dust of all failed emperors. Your time is not just over. It is damned.

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai