Cameroon takes unusual step of insisting its president has not died

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Cameroon President Paul Biya is alive and in “excellent” health, the central African country’s government has said in an attempt to quell intense speculation about the wellbeing and whereabouts of the world’s oldest leader who had not been seen in public for more than a month.

The 91-year-old, who has been in power since 1982, has not been pictured since attending a China-Africa summit in Beijing at the start of September.

He missed the UN General Assembly meeting in New York at the end of last month and cancelled a planned appearance at last week’s International Organisation of La Francophonie summit in Paris.

The Paris no-show in particular raised eyebrows, given his country’s warm ties with France and his presence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in the city in July.

The head of the cabinet sought to explain Biya’s absence by saying the president was in Geneva, the Swiss city where he spends a considerable amount of his time. Indeed, Biya’s visits to Geneva are so common that he has earned the nickname “President of the Hotel InterContinental”, a reference to the luxury accommodation where he is said to base himself while in the city.

That Biya did not make the short flight to Paris fuelled speculation in his home country that he was seriously ill, or even dead.

The Guardian Post, a respected newspaper in the capital Yaoundé, channelled the national mood on Tuesday when it splashed its front page with the headline: “One month after China-Africa summit: Biya’s whereabouts unknown!”

“Biya’s government doesn’t communicate much. That’s always been the case for the past 25 years of his travels,” said a political consultant with ties to the Biya government. “But there’s something different this time.”

The clamour was such that the Cameroon government was forced to issue a statement late on Tuesday, with spokesperson René Sadi saying Biya was on a “brief private stay in Europe” and would return to Cameroon in the “next few days”.

The cabinet secretary also sought to “reassure all our compatriots as well as the international community about the excellent state of health of the head of state”.

He continued: “For some time now, a few people, malicious through social networks, have undertaken to make believe that the president of the republic would be seriously ill, or even passed from life to death.”

The statements are unlikely to quell unease in Cameroon, where the nonagenarian president has become an increasingly isolated figure, with only a small band of advisers and family members, including first lady Chantal Biya, having unfettered access to him.

Cameroon, which has had only two presidents since becoming an independent country more than six decades ago, is beset by a long-running secessionist war between government troops and English-speaking guerrilla fighters seeking an independent state along the border with Nigeria.

Cameroon is also in a part of Africa where Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, Sudan, Niger and Gabon have suffered coups since 2020.

Under the Cameroon constitution, the president of the senate would become head of state in the event of the president’s demise. That would be 89-year-old Marcel Niat Njifenji.

“Their hand has been forced,” the person familiar with the government’s thinking said of the government’s statement insisting Biya was alive.

“There are worries that if something were to happen, who would take over? Biya has centralised power so much around him that all the potential presidential hopefuls are either in jail or — because he’s been there so long — they’ve passed away.”