Cameroon, the Nation That Gave Up: A Reckoning with Cowardice
At 92 years old, Paul Biya is seeking an eighth term in office—one that would see him ruling until the age of 99. But this article isn’t just about one man clinging to power; it’s a searing indictment of an entire nation’s silence. Once a symbol of popular resistance in the 1990s, Cameroon has become one of Africa’s most passive societies in the face of a crumbling regime. Broken roads, a collapsed economy, a lost generation either fleeing or folding into despair—yet the people remain quiet. Why does a nation of 27 million allow itself to be ruled by a clearly unfit, mentally declining old man? How deep does the fear run? How much has complacency replaced courage? This article is not polite. It’s not comforting. It’s a wake-up call for a people sleepwalking through their own decline. A challenge to confront the question that now haunts every Cameroonian: how much longer will Cameroonians allow this?
POLITICS
7/20/20253 min read
Cameroon, the Nation That Gave Up: A Reckoning with Cowardice
By any reasonable measure of history, Paul Biya should be a footnote by now. A relic of Cold War politics, long retired, perhaps remembered as a man who overstayed his welcome but eventually bowed out. But no. In 2025, Paul Biya is not only still in office at the age of 92, he is reportedly preparing for an eighth term. If he completes it, he will have ruled until the age of 99. Let that sink in.
And at this point, it is no longer just about Paul Biya. It is about the Cameroonian people.
Because after four decades of rigged elections, collapsed infrastructure, economic ruin, and a government so hollowed out it barely pretends to function anymore after all that, the regime still stands. A regime that has overseen the degradation of roads so bad they swallow buses whole. A health system that cannot save the sick. Universities producing degrees with no jobs waiting at the end. A government so fossilized, it has become a global caricature. A president who can barely walk, barely speak, and occasionally soils himself in public still commands the entire machinery of a state. And yet, silence.
This is not just political failure. It is moral collapse.
From Resistance to Resignation
In the early 1990s, Cameroonians flooded the streets. The ghost of single-party rule was chased out by protests, strikes, and an awakened civil society. That courage forced multiparty democracy into existence. It was not given. It was demanded.
But what happened to that generation? What happened to that fire?
Today’s Cameroon is eerily quiet. A country of 27 million, reduced to whispers and Facebook grumbling. You see a population watching itself die slowly, daily, and in high definition and doing absolutely nothing about it. It is a kind of national paralysis. A society under self-imposed sedation.
And while people in Senegal brave arrests to defend term limits, while citizens in Kenya challenge their institutions, while Burkina Faso overthrows governments for betraying the people's will Cameroonians post memes. They laugh. They cry in private. Then they go back to waiting. For what? For Biya to die of natural causes?
The Fraud is Obvious. So is the Complicity.
There is no democracy in Cameroon. There hasn't been one for a long time. Elections are a formality, pre-scripted, and everyone knows it. The electoral system is rigged from top to bottom: the Constitutional Council is handpicked, the electoral commission is a joke, the media is muzzled, and the opposition is fragmented and watched like criminals.
Yet every few years, the people show up and pretend it’s a real contest. Why? Out of hope? Habit? Fear?
Let’s be honest: this is not a dictatorship held in place by tanks and torture chambers alone. It is held in place by apathy. It is held in place by a society that has internalized helplessness so deeply, it now confuses survival with dignity. A people so cowed by decades of mediocrity that they no longer believe change is possible even when it is happening just across the border.
The Loyalty Question
And to the so-called supporters of Paul Biya those who still chant his name, still wear his face on their t-shirts, still speak of him as though he is some father of the nation what exactly are you loyal to?
Is it to a man who cannot govern? Or is it to a country that deserves better?
You cannot serve both. Loyalty to Biya now is treason to Cameroon’s future. Let’s call it what it is. Supporting a 92-year-old man clearly in cognitive decline to rule until 99 is not political pragmatism. It is national suicide. It is the endorsement of death death of opportunity, of dreams, of pride.
Everyone Must Examine Their Conscience
This is not just about the elites. This is about the teachers who no longer teach with purpose, the journalists who no longer report with courage, the pastors who bless the corrupt, the youth who mock the system but do nothing to change it.
Cameroon’s failure is not abstract. It is the sum total of millions of daily decisions to look away, to keep quiet, to survive rather than speak, to leave rather than stay and fight.
Until every Cameroonian yes, every Cameroonian stops waiting for salvation from outside and begins to reclaim the ground beneath their feet, nothing will change. No international community will save you. No AU resolution will liberate you. No UN envoy is coming. The world has moved on. Cameroon has become its own jailer.
And that, perhaps, is the final humiliation: not that Paul Biya refuses to leave, but that a once-proud people seem content to let him stay.
