Yaounde – For 43 years, Paul Biya has held Cameroon hostage—ruling not as a president but as a criminal mastermind cloaked in the robes of statehood. From the moment he ascended to power in 1982, what was once a hopeful post-colonial republic steadily mutated into a hollow dictatorship sustained by fear, violence, systemic corruption, and international complicity. His rise was not an evolution of leadership—it was a hostile takeover of a nation’s soul.
It all began with the slow and methodical erosion of pluralism. Upon taking office, Biya eliminated political diversity by consolidating power under the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), which became the sole legal party through laws disguised as reform. What emerged was not a democracy but a one-party police state, where opposition was criminalized and elections were reduced to rituals of affirmation. He surrounded himself with sycophants—military generals, business moguls, foreign lobbyists—all of whom drank from the cup of his favor while the people starved on the peripheries of power.
With the CPDM as his political instrument, Biya created a machine of patronage and terror. Electoral commissions were stacked with loyalists. Opposition parties were infiltrated and weakened from within. Electoral violence became routine. Through carefully orchestrated electoral fraud, he won election after election with implausible margins, turning the ballot box into a stage of political theater.
Legalizing Tyranny
In 2008, Biya executed one of his most blatant political crimes: he amended the Cameroonian Constitution to eliminate presidential term limits. The very principle of democratic transition was thrown into the abyss, legalizing what would become his lifetime rule. This maneuver, pushed through a rubber-stamp parliament, ignited nationwide protests—protests that were crushed with brute force, resulting in dozens of deaths. The constitution, once a symbol of national aspiration, became a contract of servitude.
Paul Biya’s regime has silenced opposition not just through laws, but through bullets, abductions, and assassinations. One of the most chilling examples is the political extinction of Titus Edzoa, a former ally who dared challenge Biya. He was arrested under fabricated charges and rotted for years in prison. His political career—erased. His voice—buried. Like Edzoa, dozens of others have disappeared, been jailed, or killed. What Biya cannot defeat at the polls, he eliminates in the dark.
Civilians, too, have suffered at the hands of military tribunals—kangaroo courts masquerading as legal institutions. Journalists such as Amadou Vamoulké, Kingsley Njoka, Mancho Bibixy, Thomas Awah have been jailed for daring to speak. Their only crime? Telling the truth. Their punishment? Torture, solitary confinement, and years behind bars without trial. Others, like Paul Nkemayang Fuanyi have been killed. Under Biya, truth is treason.
Ambazonia – A Campaign of Extermination
Perhaps the most damning of Biya’s crimes is his war on the people of Southern Cameroons—Ambazonia. When English-speaking Cameroonians rose peacefully in 2016 to demand basic rights, Biya responded not with dialogue, but with a scorched-earth campaign. He ordered internet shutdowns in the Anglophone regions, plunging millions into digital darkness in a bid to silence dissent and cripple coordination.
What followed was a campaign of genocide in all but name. The Piyin, Bali, and Ngarbuh Massacre of 2020 saw women and children slaughtered in cold blood by Biya’s soldiers. Entire villages have been burned to the ground. Elderly men and nursing mothers have been executed. The military—especially the elite BIR forces—have become death squads. Arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and torture in black sites such as SED and DGRE are now routine. These acts are not isolated incidents; they are state policy, directed from the top, with Biya’s signature all over them.
Even abroad, Biya’s reach has been lethal. Ambazonian activists and political exiles have been kidnapped in foreign countries—Nigeria, the UAE, and elsewhere—rendered to Cameroon with the help of foreign governments, only to be tortured and silenced. These extraordinary renditions violate every principle of international law and human rights. But because foreign powers have lucrative oil and military contracts with Yaoundé, they look away.
Domestically, Biya has turned state coffers into a personal bank. Oil revenues and natural resource wealth have been funneled into Swiss bank accounts, French villas, and American properties. During the COVID-19 pandemic, international aid intended to save lives vanished into the shadows—billions gone, and no one held accountable.
Meanwhile, he has surrounded himself with a web of nepotism. His son, Frank Biya, is being groomed in full view of the nation to inherit the crown, transforming the presidency into a monarchy of shame. Merit is dead in Cameroon. Loyalty is the only currency.
All of this has happened in plain sight. Biya has refused to comply with international treaties, including the Convention Against Torture. His courts are rubber stamps. His legislature is ornamental. His security forces are a private militia. And still, at 93 years old, after 43 years in power, he seeks another seven-year term.
Let that sink in. A 93-year-old man who has ruled for nearly half a century, who has rigged every election, destroyed every institution, and brutalized every voice of resistance, now wants more.
What tribunal can stop him? What election can unseat him? What opposition leader can outmaneuver a regime built on fear, bribes, and guns?
A Final Hope?
In Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, young military officers finally stood up. They looked around and saw that their presidents were not leaders but looters. They looked at the corpses in the streets and the hunger in their people’s eyes, and they acted.
Cameroon’s military must now make that choice. Will they continue to defend a tyrant who has turned them into instruments of terror? Or will they reclaim their honor and align with the people? The army swore to defend the nation—not the dictator. The people are not the enemy. Paul Biya is.
It is time. If elections and courts are no longer paths to freedom, then perhaps the barracks hold the key. Like in the Sahel, Cameroon’s salvation may lie in the courage of its young officers. The mission is not to seize power for power’s sake, but to end a reign of terror and restore the will of the people.
Biya’s 43-year rule is not a presidency. It is a criminal enterprise—systematic, brutal, and relentless. And it must end. By any means necessary.
