Africans support age limits on presidential terms but Cameroon’s Paul Biya, at 90, is not letting go
- Africans support minimum and maximum age limits on presidential terms, according to Afrobarometer.
- But, at the age of 90, Cameroonian President Paul Biya is showing no signs of stepping down.
- Despite supporters’ calls for Biya to run for office again, he seems to be struggling to keep up.
The world’s oldest leader, Cameroonian President Paul Biya, turned 90 on Monday and his supporters from the ruling People’s Democratic Movement party back home are already rooting for him to extend his 40-year rule with another five-year term in 2025.
There are no presidential term limits in Cameroon. Biya is the world’s second longest-serving head of state after his neighbour, Equatoguinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power since 1979.
Despite supporters’ calls for Biya to run for office again, he seems to be struggling to keep up.
Recently, a video of him on social media, which had been taken at the US-Africa Leaders Summit in December last year in Washington DC, showed a disoriented man.
But, like many African heads of state who came into power at a relatively young age, Biya is not showing any signs of letting go.
In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni (78) came into power in 1986. However, in his younger days, he said “the problem of Africa in general and Uganda, in particular, is not the people, but leaders who want to overstay in power.”
Museveni started out with promise, as a guerrilla who became a democrat as he presented a different approach to Uganda’s eccentric dictator, the late Idi Amin, who overthrew Milton Obote.
While Museveni was not involved in the second overthrow of Obote, disposed by military commanders Bazilio Olara-Okello and General Tito Okello in 1985, he took advantage of the chaos that ensued during the military council of the two army generals in a few months.
He started using the dictators’ playbook, doing whatever was necessary to stay in power, and he was not the first to do so in Africa.
Many have also seen how Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast became an example of what happens to despots when he was brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face human rights violation charges in 2011.
They fear leaving office only to wear prison garb, serving time for human rights abuses.
There have been some unfortunate ones, such as Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré in 2014 and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in 2017 who were overthrown while they were plotting more years in power.
Mugabe’s successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, 80, will this year seek to extend his stay in office by a further five years.
If he wins the mandate, he will retire at age 85 after serving the two-term limit.
Presidential term limits
A 2015 Afrobarometer survey indicated that the majority of people in 34 countries supported presidential term limits because they guarantee the transition of power.
