The incumbent President Paul Biya who was declared winner of the October 12 Presidential election, takes the oath of office at the National Assembly on Thursday November 6, 2025. The swearing-in ceremony is effectively the inauguration of Mr. Biya’s 8th mandate that would take him into a historical import of half a century sojourn in power. President Biya who got the coveted job of President of the Republic on a silver platter on November 6, 1982, has weathered many storms in order to maintain a firm grip on power for the past 43 years.
He survived the 1983 maneuvers, the April 1984 coup attempt, the Eastern Political winds of the 90s that swept away many presidents across the third world, the 1992 post-election crisis, the 2008 riots, the 2018 elections and the 2025 post-election crisis that continues to rock the country. In his characteristic resilience and phlegmatic manner, President Biya is maintaining his stay at the helm of a country that is seized by a wild vortex of protests over the results of the October 12 Presidential election. The country is under the spell of destruction of property, ghost towns, lockdowns, illegal arrests, false imprisonment and extrajudicial killings. That is why many observers are urging the President to initiate a programme of National Reconciliation and Appeasement that will prioritise dialogue in order to ease tensions and lay the current crisis to rest.
How Biya Came To Power
The atmosphere was ominous. The entire nation was wrapped in uncertainty and fear. Only a few people in the villages, who were privileged to have radio sets, had listened to that historic French news cast on national radio.
It was 8pm on that epochal November 4, 1982, that the presenter, Jean Claude Ottou, broke the news of President Ahmadou Ahidjo’s resignation from power. A coterie of politburo sycophants had fallen on Ahidjo’s feet, begging him not to resign. They were generously lachrymose as they let loose their tear-ducts. Their tears flowed generously as they demonstrated their love for the President. They behaved as if leaving power was equal to dying. But, Ahidjo went ahead and tabled his resignation. Doom hovered over the nation. Ahidjo was further to announce that he was handing over the presidential baton to a certain Paul Biya who was the Prime Minister at the time. As ordinary citizens embarked on a tongue-to-ear gossips as to who ‘’ the New Ahidjo” was. For 25 years, Ahidjo had been the President and the President was Ahidjo. Thus, Ahidjo was synonymous to the President of the Republic of Cameroon.
However, the anxiety died down when ‘’the New Ahidjo’’ called Paul Biya, mounted the saddle after the “I do so swear’’ ritual at the National Assembly. Anyone who saw the new president shot an envious gaze at the man of fine and equal parts. The 49-year boyishly handsome man roused the masses to frenzy when he promised to divorce with the dictatorial past of his predecessor. He said he was ushering in the dawn of a new era, an epoch of rigour and moralisation. The love affair between President Biya and the nation was smooth-sailing until 1983. Hiccups between the president and the predecessor were blown open when the fracas degenerated in the April 6, 1984 coup plot.
The virtues of a free society have not come as promised. Since then, Cameroonians went through one sad reality to the other. Citizens who had looked up to the new president for socio-economic and political salvation, have not have much. What emerged was a sustained spree of plunder of resources and aspirations of the people.
Ironically, the New deal, has turned out to be a raw deal and a nightmare to Cameroonians. Despite his many achievements critics still nail Biya for taking over a nation that is full of bounce and bravado and crowning it with characteristics of a failed state. They hardly forget that the government slashed the salaries of civil servants in 1993 by 70 percent. They hold that It is difficult to say how such a promising nation has emerged as the citadel of poverty, corruption and a major enemy to human rights, multi-faceted crises, violation the rule of law and democracy. What the New Dealers can largely be remembered for, is making Cameroonians to work for the wellbeing of the ruling class. The New Deal has produced so many emergency patriots, nouveaux riches and political parvenus who live high and big on wealth stolen from the people.
Besides that sheer conspiracy of circumstances, it looks like many of President Paul Biya’s collaborators are working hard to rid him of his desired democratic legacy. For, he said he wanted to be remembered as someone who brought progress and democracy to Cameroon. On the contrary, many of his collaborators, have been in a sustained betrayal of the trust of the Cameroonian people. The President revealed to Radio Monte Carlo in 1991, that he wanted to be remembered as the one who brought democracy to Cameroon.
Right now, the exact opposite is happening. Cameroonians are praying that the Holy Spirit should touch the hearts of the President and some of his collaborators ruling with an iron fist, so that they can use the next seven years to atone for all the sins committed against ordinary citizens by implementing reforms that will enhance the wellbeing of Cameroonians. The current wave of repression of outspoken citizens should be stopped so that history should not remember our President as the man who slapped the bloodiest rule on a hitherto peaceful nation. For, it is hard to believe that Cameroon that was the envy of many nations, is a hell of human rights violations. Thousands of lives have been lost because of the Anglophone crisis that ought to have been settled in a fireside chat in 2016.
Every attempt at providing Cameroon with good governance, democratic checks and balances, has seemingly died behind the hills of time. For the past few decades, Cameroon has gained fame as a den of conscienceless soap boxers. A few of them, very few of them can stand head and shoulder above the nation-killing prevailing vices in Cameroon.
Their policy, has been that of the lash and the whip. If the youth, complain that they are hungry, the gendarmes must come and torture them because they are manipulated by Cameroon’s enemies abroad. If citizens complain that they lack portable water, electricity, water and other basic needs. They are tortured and stigmatised as unpatriotic Cameroonians.
Unemployment and underemployment have been the bane of the youth during the New Deal regime. Unemployed as well as underemployed youth live in abject poverty. They carry blank faces, starring at nowhere. They wander instead of walking. Very young people walk around with bent shoulders that portray premature hunch backs. They are paying the price for the economic bad weather that has been the main undoing of the Biya regime in 43 years. This is the biggest irony, for, the New Deal inherited an economy full of milk and honey, natural and human resources. With such a negative balance sheet, it is incumbent on the New Dealers to fight hard to reverse the blight of leaders who met a peaceful and progressive economy, standing up and could leave it kneeling in depression, poverty and helplessness. These are the issues, critics, insist, President Biya and his government should fix in order to quite the power stage on a clean slate in 2032.
By Yerima Kini Nsom