ON THIS DAY IN 1982, PAUL BIYA BECAME CAMEROON’S PRESIDENT — 44 YEARS LATER, HE STILL HOLDS POWER
On 6 November 1982, Paul Biya took the oath of office as Cameroon’s second president, succeeding Ahmadou Ahidjo. Today, exactly 44 years later, the 93-year-old remains in power.
Generations of Cameroonians have grown up knowing no other president. Biya’s rule has stretched across more than four decades of political change around the world.
His prolonged stays in Switzerland have also drawn criticism and raised questions about his availability to govern. Earlier this year, a journey officially described as a “brief private stay” lasted more than 10 weeks before he returned to Cameroon on 20 August
Those absences have fuelled the biting criticism that Cameroon’s president has become a visitor to his own country.
But his presence in Switzerland today could not be verified. The presidency recorded him receiving Prince Albert II of Monaco in Yaoundé on 30 October.
Forty-four years after his first swearing-in, Biya’s extraordinary political longevity continues to raise a pressing question: what comes after him?