On Oct. 12, citizens of Cameroon, a Central African country with a population of 30 million, will vote in a presidential election. Irregularities have already marred the process, including the misuse of state resources and interference in opposition campaigning—which will all but certainly be followed with the manipulation of results—a blend that has reliably delivered for the ruling party. Therefore, the likely victor is long-term incumbent Paul Biya of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), who at nearly 93 is the world’s oldest head of state. A win would continue his more than four-decade grip on power, having been president since 1982, and mark his sixth electoral victory since the introduction of multiparty rule in Cameroon in 1990.
The election comes amid concerns about Biya’s ability to govern—and, indeed, to stay alive at all—during the forthcoming term, which would end when he was 99. Biya’s own daughter has called for people to vote against him. He is visibly aged, encapsulated by his apparent difficulty walking and a viral hot mic moment in 2022 where he expressed confusion about his whereabouts. The day official campaigning started, Biya was in Switzerland on a private stay. The purpose of the visit was unannounced but allegedly for medical care, only compounding suspicion. Moreover, a multitude of crises are brewing, marking a stark departure from Cameroon’s reputation as a stable outlier in a tumultuous region.
Nevertheless, a Biya victory is all but certain given the CPDM’s grip on state institutions and the opposition’s inability to coalesce. However, the election has unearthed long-ignored fissures within the CPDM and Cameroonian society as a whole. While the election may postpone the painful question of Biya’s succession, it has sharpened deep fissures in the ruling party and society that will make the process far more volatile and destabilizing when it inevitably occurs.
In the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions, decades of systemic marginalization and government brutality led to demonstrations in 2016 by teachers and lawyers to preserve the status of English in their institutions, evolving into a war of secession the following year. In the Far North, extreme poverty and a disproportionately securitized response have allowed extremist militant groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province to remain stubbornly entrenched. Urban gangs and femicide, among other forms of violence, have surged.
Multiple crises since Biya’s last election in 2018 have left the government paralyzed, and the risks far exceed normal challenges. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of delayed payments to teachers and decrepit facilities caused reoccurring strikes since 2022. A shortage of national ID cards forced the government to overhaul the system and Cameroonians to restart the process after years of waiting. The backlog has left hundreds of thousands of people unable to access services and rendered them vulnerable to exploitation. Poverty has increased, coupled with slow economic growth, and the resource-rich country relies heavily on importing food and other essential necessities.
Amid all this, Biya has been strikingly absent. This is even the case by his standards, where Biya delivers three annual addresses and has collectively spent more than four years abroad. Since the 1980s, the majority of this was spent in one location, the InterContinental Geneva, for medical care and in a personal affection for the city. The visits were so frequent that it was often said Biya ran Cameroon from Switzerland, while official statements claimed he was on a “brief private visit.”
Recently, Biya has begun to disappear entirely, causing speculation about his whereabouts and rumors of his death. The government’s actions have deepened speculation, as in 2024, when Biya disappeared for more than a month. Amid speculation that he had died, his health was declared a “matter of national security,” and discussion of it was criminalized. While Biya eventually reemerged, the episode exacerbated concerns about his health and ignited speculation and competition over who would succeed him.
In 1982, Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, resigned because of his ill health, and Biya, then prime minister, succeeded him. While Ahidjo tolerated little dissent and enacted a one-party state in 1966, establishing his Cameroon National Union (CNU) as the only party, Biya consolidated power even further, replacing the CNU with his CPDM.
Fallout including coup attempts ensued, sending Ahidjo and his allies into exile or prison, and Northerners were purged from the military. Thereafter, Biya cemented a personalistic grip on power, with the state centered on him. This codified a reorientation of the state from Ahidjo’s North to Biya’s Southern homeland.
Nevertheless, Biya appointed officials from different regions to party and government positions to provide a semblance of representation. They were meaningless, with the appointees being symbolic stalwarts who lacked standing and the capacity to mobilize. This allowed Biya to centralize power but proved lacking after the introduction of multiparty rule in 1990.
Cameroon is a hugely diverse country, with more than 250 ethnic groups falling into five ethno-regional categories. In the first multiparty presidential election in 1992, the three main parties had distinct support bases. Biya’s CPDM drew heavily from the South and East. In contrast, the main opposition, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), drew near-unanimous support from the Anglophone regions and the West, while the National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP) did the same in the North.
While Biya managed to win the election with nearly 40 percent of the vote amid irregularities, the CPDM won fewer votes than the SDF and UNDP combined. This demonstrated to Biya that to maintain power, arrangements with other ethno-regional bases were needed. Subsequently, Biya forged a pact that restored alliances with Northern politicians who had been estranged from Biya following his fallout with Ahidjo and successfully mobilized support for the UNDP in 1992. The main figures were Biya’s successor as prime minister, Bello Bouba Maigari, and businessman Issa Tchiroma, who were respectively exiled and imprisoned in the 1980s. Over the coming decades, they were appointed to government positions and ensured that the North voted for Biya.
The reliable pool of voters, patronage politics, and electoral manipulation allowed Biya to contrive a victory in every subsequent election, with no opposition candidate winning more than 20 percent. This, alongside a crackdown on dissent and his use of government resources to divide the opposition and civil society, ensured Biya’s near-unquestionable grip on power.
For decades, the fact that a successor to Biya would be necessary was ignored. Discussion of the topic within the party was barred, and it stopped holding elective leadership conferences. It was all but enshrined that Biya would lead the CPDM for life, and it would use all means necessary to maintain its grip on Cameroon.
While there were always musings about who would succeed Biya, much of it was done by candidates seeking to position themselves. Those gaining too much attention oftentimes quickly found themselves suddenly removed from their positions and imprisoned on curious charges.
The government and party are a one-man show with no understudy, and Biya has been missing a lot of performances—with state functions suffering badly as a result. Since 2021, four ministers have died and not been replaced due to both Biya’s absence and party officials positioning themselves. Similar dynamics occurred in the trial of the 2023 murder of radio journalist Martinez Zogo, which morphed into an opportunity for regime figures to pursue vendettas by steering the investigation toward their political opponents. Internal power struggles also caused delays to appointments in state-owned entities.
Simultaneously, ambitious politicians have worked to position themselves within the CPDM as potential successors—which can be a risky business under an autocrat, even a decrepit one. Initially, a movement formed around Franck Biya, the president’s son. Speculation emerged that he was being groomed when he returned to Cameroon in 2020 and became an advisor in the presidency. However, ambitious party figures demanding a regional transition in power expressed uneasiness about a dynastic transition, and Franck later retreated from public life.
More recently, CPDM figures and groups co-opted by it criticized a potential Biya candidacy, and some expressed explicit opposition before he announced his bid in July. This year, a CPDM councilor legally challenged Biya’s party chairmanship and called for generational change. While a court challenge by a local official may seem inconsequential, it is representative of internal border grievances and marks an unprecedented move by a CPDM figure to challenge Biya’s standing
However, the foremost challenge has been the collapse of the presidential majority alliance that has kept Biya in power. In June, Biya allies Maigari and Tchiroma announced their own candidacies for the presidency. The two were integral to the CPDM winning in the North, and their departure largely eliminates the party’s ability to do so.
Biya will still likely win despite all this. The party and state have rallied around him, and the leadership of the supposedly independent state bodies responsible for managing the election, Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) and the Constitutional Council, attended campaign events. The use of state machinery to stifle opposition has continued. Immediately after Tchiroma declared his candidacy, the government reportedly barred him from holding rallies in his northern stronghold in an effort to stymie any momentum and restricted his movements by preventing him from leaving the country, which is critical for opposition fundraising.
Moreover, ELECAM has rejected the candidacy of Maurice Kamto, the main challenger to Biya in 2018 and who can mobilize key voting bloc, removing the best-positioned opposition candidate. Kamto is ethnically Bamileke, a group that comprises more than 20 percent of Cameroon and dominates commercial trading but has long been subject to political exclusion and hate speech; anti-Bamileke rhetoric has grown since Kamto was targeted by the government.
Despite the authorities’ best efforts, there are many opposition candidates. But the opposition is divided and unable to agree on a consensus candidate. A combination of government manipulation and clashing personalities has prevented the opposition from uniting behind a single candidate, even when the CPDM is at a deeply vulnerable point.
A Biya victory would only compound future uncertainty and the risk of instability. If Biya begins another seven-year term in November, he will likely die in office. The Cameroonian Constitution stipulates that afterward, the Senate president will become acting president and an election must be held within 120 days. Senate President Marcel Niat Njifenji is 90 years old, making him unlikely to hold the presidency for long.
Regional divisions are seething inside the party. For decades, party leaders have expressed misgivings that the South, Biya’s home region, disproportionately benefited from state and party resources. Any effort at managing these tensions has been squandered in recent years, with figures from the first lady to the secretary-general of the presidency engaging in power struggles focused on Biya’s successor being from their region.
While the mirage of Cameroon being relatively stable was punctured, fissures have emerged in recent years that were suppressed or ignored for decades. Divisions between Southern and Northern populations, rooted in colonialism and fundamentally about the distribution of resources and power, have reemerged. These divisions fueled violence and tensions across Cameroon for decades until Biya co-opted Northern leaders and subdued mobilization. The collapse of the CPDM’s alliance with Northern parties has aggravated these historical divisions, with figures decrying the lack of progress seen in return for supporting Biya and demanding that power be returned to them.
Returning Biya to power merely delays the succession question and exacerbates the infighting that has already halted state functions and unearthed decades of grievances. A unified opposition or a dignified exit could have produced a very different result.
Instead, Biya is now poised to die in office, with a deeply uncertain succession crisis looming at a time when tensions in the country are at their most inflamed in decades. The circumstances are now perfectly aligned for the succession to be immensely destabilizing with wide-ranging impacts, a situation that was tragically avoidable.
