6, November 2022
Biya’s 40th Anniversary: Meeting in Bamenda to celebrate incompetence and corruption 0
CPDM stalwarts were in Bamenda today to celebrate Biya’s 40 years of incompetence, corruption and arrogance.
Led by the CPDM Secretary-general, Jean Kuete, speakers at the event highlighted what they thought were Mr. Biya’s achievements – indeed his appalling failure – over the last four decades.
But Cameroonians cannot be fooled. The results are there for all to see. The country has been caught up in a downward spiral with corruption becoming the regime’s hallmark.
Since coming to power in 1982, Mr. Biya has legalized corruption. He and his followers hold that nothing can be achieved without corruption. They use money to buy loyalty, corrupt those who criticize the government and imprison those who refuse their bribes.
Cameroon’s jails are full of Mr. Biya’s former collaborators who have embezzled state funds and he and his wife have been involved in many financial scandals which have helped to erode the people’s confidence in the moribund government.
Regarding the economy, Mr. Biya’s government has disappointed millions of Cameroonians. Many had seen him as a savior when he came to power in 1982, but his incompetence has taken the country down the wrong path.
The country’s economy has been in a free fall in decades, spreading pain and death among desperate and hungry Cameroonians.
Millions of Cameroonian youth are without jobs and even those employed are simply eking a living. The country’s civil service is bloated with civil servants finding it hard to make ends meet.
This financial challenge has transformed many civil service workers into con artists whose main objective of joining the civil service is to line their pockets.
The regime’s failure to create jobs for millions of young Cameroonians has transformed the country into a net exporter of human capital as young Cameroonians look outwards for greener pastures.
Regarding infrastructure development, Cameroon lags behind most African countries in this regard. For forty years, instead of investing in infrastructure which could drive development and create jobs, Mr. Biya and his collaborators have transformed the country’s treasury into their personal ATM.
The country is bereft of roads, hospitals and educational facilities. Mr. Biya has created many primary and secondary schools, but these institutions only exist on paper as there is no modern infrastructure.
For tertiary institutions, there are many of them in Cameroon today, but the quality of training leaves much to be desired.
The country’s state universities have been transformed into brothels where lecturers with very high libido satisfy their sex needs. Young girls are being dehumanized and robbed of their self-esteem by unscrupulous lecturers just because there are no checks in government-run universities.
Some lecturers even demand bribes from their students, especially those seeking to defend their thesis. This unfortunate situation in the country’s state universities truly reflects what is happening in a nation where young girls are asked to have sex with company heads before they can be given jobs.
Today, even young men are required to sleep with unscrupulous employers for them to get hired. Mr. Biya and his bunch of godless, hell-bound and depraved collaborators have made of Cameroon a fertile ground for homosexuality.

Morals have simply taken French leave of the country and there are no signs that they will return even after Biya and his gangsters leave power.
Today’s meeting in Bamenda, the place where the demon-possessed CPDM was created, is indeed a celebration of evil in human form.
Incompetence, corruption and demonic powers have been firmly rooted in the country under Biya and there is no doubt that the CPDM is very pleased with its leader’s abysmal and appalling failure.
By Rita Akana and Fon Lawrence in Bamenda
30, November 2022
Biya has been president for 40 years – and he might win office yet again 0
At 89 years old, one of the oldest leaders in the world, President Paul Biya of Cameroon has marked 40 years as head of state. He assumed office in 1982.
He is the second longest serving leader in Africa. The longest is Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, in power since 1979.
Cameroon experienced a long spell of political stability under Biya’s iron hand. But this eventually unravelled when an Anglophone rebellion broke out in the south-west and north-west and when radical Islamists entered from Nigeria. Domestic pressure for Biya to accept a transition has also been persistent.
But Biya remains non-committal about relinquishing power in 2025, which would be the end of his current seventh term of office.
What explains Biya’s longevity in office and why is Cameroon unable to marshal a transition?
I am a scholar of democratic studies and regime types in Africa and a commentator on African political developments. I’m interested in why the continent is saddled with ageing presidents who ought to be enjoying their retirement when it desperately needs young, agile and innovative leaders equal to its challenges.
A bright start
Biya succeeded Ahmadou Ahidjo, Cameroon’s president from 1960 to 1982, after his surprise resignation. Ahidjo had been struggling with an economic crisis and widespread corruption. He had superintended a one party state and an exceptional centralisation of power in the presidency.
When Biya became president in 1982, he promised political liberalisation, including democracy, civil and human rights and economic advancement in Cameroon.
For a while, he worked to achieve some of these goals. The country achieved political stability and unity, and relative economic transformation through his “new deal”. There was even a momentary easing of the draconian police state.
But in the late 1990s, there was a gradual halt to political liberalisation, fiscal discipline and government accountability. This happened after the 1984 bloody coup attempt by the Republican Guards.
Biya became increasingly unyielding to political accommodation. First he purged Ahidjo’s faction within the ruling party and eventually he locked out any meaningful challenge to his leadership from within or outside the party. Ultimately though, under external pressure, he agreed to a multiparty dispensation in 1990.
This has gradually and systematically been hollowed out, creating a monolithic system that entrenched Biya in office for the last 40 years.
Biya’s staying power
Cameroon’s politics has long been dominated by Biya’s Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounaise, which rebranded from the Cameroon National Union in 1985. It had been the dominant party since 1966. After a formal opening up of the political space to multipartyism, this has gradually been weakened.
There has been a failure of political party institutionalisation. Hundreds of small parties mushroomed – 300 to date, many allegedly secretly bankrolled and controlled by Biya. They provide a façade of democratic competitiveness. In reality, they have weakened legitimate political opposition.
The absence of a united and consolidated opposition has enabled the entrenchment of a dominant party system. The ruling party has a dominant majority in both the National Assembly and the Senate (63 seats of 70). This erodes any chance of genuine checks and balance.
The party has also used electoral mechanics like redrawing boundaries for electoral advantage and in places outright fraud to expand victories and consolidate majorities.
Elections have become little more than a procedural inconvenience, where Biya runs with no possibility of losing.
For instance, in 2004 Biya won with 70.9% of the vote. After the 2008 constitutional revision to remove term limits, he was re-elected with 78% of the vote in 2011.
In 2018, he got 71.28% against his challenger, opposition leader Maurice Kamto.
Biya has created a rent seeking political class that not only does his bidding but keeps him in power with minimum resistance. Cameroon is a leading exporter of timber in Africa and fifth largest cocoa producer in the world.
The country should have enough resources to reduce extreme poverty and underdevelopment. Yet the proceeds are plundered through corruption and to maintain a clientelist network.
Politicians must show allegiance and loyalty to Biya. The alternative is being out in the cold or in jail. Biya has also filled senior positions in the administration, the military and security agencies and the civil service with people from his southern ethnic group. Most notably he has relied on the Rapid Intervention Battalion, a highly trained military commando unit, to ensure the regular army is unable to move against him.
The Anglophone conflict has also enabled Biya to deflect attention from his misrule. The violent conflict has left thousands dead in a civil war against the secessionist English-speaking regions of the country.
Biya, relying on French and recently Russian backers, used the conflict to strengthen his domestic hand and deflect international criticisms.
Another factor is the concentration of power in Cameroon. Nothing substantive gets done without the sign-off of the president. No arm of government or entity of the state has gone unpoliced, including the judiciary: judges are nominated directly by the president.
Simply put, there is no facet of public life untouched by the Biya regime.
Contemplating a post Biya era
The president’s mandate runs out in 2025, at which time he will be 92. While he has shown no signs of exiting the stage, talk of a post Biya era is rising.
Although the ruling party has not held a party congress since 2011, hence dampening the transition debate, there is periodical internal party reorganisation. The president has used it to reward and check potential threats to his supremacy.
Biya’s stewardship has long run its course. Its longevity relies on ruthlessness and political astuteness.
Sadly, the real cost is to the country’s democracy, which has long suffered fissures that can only be healed by political renewal through a change of guard. And this change is one that even Biya can do little to forestall.
Culled from The Conversation