If Cameroon’s President Is Asleep At The Wheel, Who’s Driving?

By Rebecca Tinsley*

No one could accuse 92-year-old Paul Biya of hogging the political spotlight. Cameroon’s head of state since 1982 reputedly enjoys long sojourns at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva rather than exercising his considerable power from the presidential palace in the capital, Yaounde. Like a dutiful monarch, he typically addresses his people only twice a year, on December 31 (New Year’s Eve) and February 11 (Youth Day). Concerns about his health increased when he disappeared for more than forty days in the autumn of 2024. 

On October 12^th, the elusive President Biya will seek re-election for an eighth term. Until just last week, he had not made public appearances since the country’s May 20^th national day, and, like an exotic endangered species, he had been photographed only twice. However, on September 19th he emerged from hibernation to award a gold statue to the AFRICAM commander, and two days later he began his regular migration to Switzerland, even though the election is only three weeks away.

So, who is in control? In Biya’s absence, the Secretary-General of the Presidency has been receiving delegations of traditional and regional leaders to drum up support for the president’s candidacy. Also prominent is Paul Atanga Nji, the Minister of Territorial Administration, an influential member of the ruling party, Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM).

Despite being from the North-West region, Atanga Nji has alienated his fellow English-speakers by dismissing the grievances of the minority Anglophone population during the violent nine-year crisis.

Atanga Nji’s increasingly volatile behaviour has raised eyebrows within Cameroon and beyond the country’s borders. When Biya vanished in the autumn of 2024, Atanga Nji banned discussion of the president’s health as a matter of national security, threatening that “offenders will face the rigour of the law.” 

In December 2024, he suspended three prominent civil society groups and banned two of them, citing “illicit and exorbitant funding.” Even though the suspensions were for three months, they are still in place, ten months on. The groups’ leaders have won awards for their work from the United States and Canada, but their organizations remain shuttered. According to Human Rights Watch, these arbitrary suspensions lack any lawful basis and they violate the right to freedom of association under both Cameroonian and international human rights law.

Paradoxically, while restricting NGOs for unproved financial misconduct, Atanga Nji’s own ministry has been condemned for a second year by Cameroon’s Anti-Corruption Commission for refusing to submit its anti-corruption reports. Atanga Nji’s name was also published in the Covidgate corruption report which detailed the disappearance of vast sums of funding intended to protect Cameroon’s population during the epidemic.

In the lead-up to Cameroon’s October election, Atanga Nji has been accused of meddling in the internal affairs of opposition parties with the aim of splitting any opposition to Biya’s candidature. He has also restricted and verbally attacked journalists and civil society in an attempt to crush open political debate. He is accused of manipulating political party leadership information on his ministry’s website to invalidate a popular opposition candidate, while borrowing from Moscow’s playbook and cracking down on foreign funding of NGOs. In a chilling announcement, Atanga Nji threatened an opposition candidate who had called for popular mobilization in Cameroon. The minister said, “At that moment, I come out with the blender [Molinex]. I say again in the sense of administration; to maintain law and order, it is about the blender.”

In that same July 2025 interview, he called himself the “sheriff” of the government and head of state. “The sheriff, I should also say, is someone who should be courteous, gentle but at the same time a cold monster who doesn’t have a friend and without a soul…when you fall into a hole dug by yourself, I don’t fill it with ground, I use cement.”

Given Atanga Nji’s volatile behaviour, it surprised Vatican-watchers when he was chosen as Cameroon’s envoy to the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV. At the ceremony, he provoked speculation by handing a white envelope to the new Pontiff.

There are suggestions that Atanga Nji has allied himself with Secretary-General of the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, to pull the strings in Cameroon’s top office while the 92-year-old president hibernates. There is also speculation about the role of the influential First Lady, Chantal Biya.

No reputable international bodies will be monitoring Cameroon’s presidential election because of its track record of dubious polling practices. Biya’s victory is therefore a foregone conclusion. However, citizens are entitled to know whom they are voting for on October 12. Will those around Biya follow the example of U.S. President Joe Biden’s flawed campaign, purging him at the last moment? Or will Biya hand the presidency to an unelected successor soon after the election victory? Wary eyes are on Cameroon as the Biya era continues, with the population distressed and oppressed, and the international community unimpressed.

*Rebecca Tinsley, author of  When the Stars Fall to Earth - a novel of Africa