Op-Ed: Old Presidents Continue to Hold on to Power as Africans Get Younger

Biya is currently favored to win reelection, especially with the exclusion of Maurice Kamto, the closest challenger in the previous presidential election. Kamto's candidacy was hindered by an internal party rift, as the country's electoral body, ELECAM, excluded him because a rival faction of his party had endorsed another candidate. The 71-year-old was unlikely to unseat Biya, considering the growing indifference towards the electoral process among many Cameroonians.

"We stopped relying on the government for anything years ago," commercial motorcyclist André Ouandji recently toldThe Guardian UK, representative of the political apathy towards the prevailing state of things. Nearly half of the eligible voters abstained from the 2018 elections, a rate that could be repeated later this year in a country where over 60 percent of the population is aged 26 and younger.

As early as 2024, Biya supporters began touting a new term for the nonagenarian. In the months that followed, rumors about his health dominated local conversations after the president had been out of sight for months. The health concerns will continue to persist, especially as many would like to see better, more efficient leadership that improves their daily lives. Although it has the second-best performing economy in Central Africa, approximately one-third of the population lives on less than $2 per day, youth unemployment rates are 70%, and the majority of the country's workforce is informally employed.

Most of Cameroon’s population has only known Biya as their leader, and many were either not born yet or were adolescents when the president orchestrated a constitutional reform in 2008, which removed presidential term limits and granted him immunity for life. Amidst civil demonstrations that were forcefully repressed by state forces, the legislature, dominated by the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (RDPC), approved the term removal that has kept Biya in power.

Nominally, Cameroon is a democracy, but it bears hallmarks of an autocracy. After Biya’s first decade in power in a single-party state system, Cameroon began holding multiparty elections in 1992, and the incumbent has won every one under constant allegations of rigging and electoral fraud.

Cameroon's style of superficial democracy is widespread across Africa, a political system that caters to ruling parties and individuals, where politicians and elites can bend democratic processes to their will. It inevitably leads to leaders who eschew the central idea that a government system for the people, by the people, demands that being in political office shouldn’t be an eternal birthright for individuals and/or political parties.

Last year’s extensive run of elections across Africa showed that incumbents will do anything to remain in office. The persecution of opposition candidates, electoral fraud, and other unsavory tactics often mar reelection bids. In the case of long-term and older leaders, these constant acts of repression often create the kind of disillusion that’s mainly associated with autocratic regimes.

As a Nigerian, I have a genuine fear that President Bola Tinubu, who partially campaigned on the rhetoric that it was his turn to rule after serving as political godfather for his underwhelming predecessor, could not only win reelection in 2027 but also seek to extend his time in office beyond the constitutionally allowed two terms. Some observers and analysts share similar concerns.

Tinubu, 73, is presiding over a severe cost-of-living crisis. Still, it feels like the country’s institutions cater to Tinubu as a singular force, from the legislative hurriedly bringing back an archaic national anthem to the renaming of structures for the president. Although he has vehemently denied claims that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is planning to establish a one-party state, the APC-dominated legislature could ensure that the president remains in office beyond his 70s.

African leaders are adept at copying the templates of their counterparts, providing ambitious individuals seeking eternal rule with a path to follow. Octogenarian leaders like the Republic of Congo's Denis Sassou-Nguesso and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, as well as Djibouti's 77-year-old ruler Ismail Omar Guelleh, are essentially democratic strongmen who have remained in power for decades by manipulating their countries' respective systems.

Taking it a little further is Togo's Faure Gnassingbé, who wormed his way into office through a constitutional coup and has bent the country's constitution to keep him in power for the foreseeable future. Last year, Gnassingbé, a 59-year-old, engineered a constitutional revision through the legislature that created a new role, granting him executive power in perpetuity.

In 2016, five years after his eventual entry into office and already elected to a second term, Ouattara presented a new draft constitution, which passed a public referendum, despite concerns about transparency. While the new constitution kept term limits, it scrapped the age limit of 75 for presidents. The Ivorian president, now 83 years old, is seeking to remain in office for an additional five years.

Ouattara successfully ran for a third term in 2020, with the constitutional court ruling that the new constitution effectively resets term limits. This means his current bid for a fourth term is permissible, as reelection would constitute his second term under the new constitution. While that has led to dissatisfaction among many Ivorians, what's also concerning is the marginalization of candidates who could offer meaningful opposition and potentially unseat the incumbent.

Multiple potential candidates have been barred from running for office, including Gbagbo and former youth minister Charles Blé Goudé, both of whom were convicted for their roles in the post-election crisis in 2010. More contentious is the barring of opposition leader Tidjane Thiam, expected to be the strongest challenger. Thiam's candidacy was ruled ineligible by the court because he took up French citizenship in the 1980s; the Ivorian constitution doesn't allow candidates with dual nationality to contest elections, except when they were born to parents from other countries.

Thiam, who was born in Côte d'Ivoire and served as a top government official in the 1990s, revoked his French citizenship in February, but the judge in his case ruled that it was too late for him to contest it. It echoes the 1995 election, when Ouattara himself was barred from running for president, after the Ivorian legislature passed an electoral code that ruled out candidates if either of their parents wasn't Ivorian.

Ouattara has won the last two elections by a landslide. The weeding out of strong opponents sets the stage for a repeat of the previous election, which was boycotted by the opposition and saw nearly half of registered voters abstain from the polls. Opponents have criticized Ouattara's bid for another term, challenging its constitutionality and the general ethics of it, especially after the president had previously stated he wouldn't run for a third term but eventually did, and is now seeking to remain in power for much longer.

Damana Adia Pickass, vice president of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), founded by Gbagbo, said Ouattara has "deceived the entire nation."

As urgent as the upcoming presidential election is, it's worth keeping an eye out for what happens next; perhaps a Biya-style attempt at abolishing term limits could be in play by Ouattara and the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP).