Follow Us on Google
When the 82-year-old Joe Biden, former President of the United States, discovered in 2024 that age would no longer allow him to discharge his duties effectively, he stepped down after his first term in office to save democracy in his country. In Africa, conversely, politicians hardly consider stepping down when they are weak and no longer capable of discharging their duties effectively. Rather, they manipulate their countries’ constitutional provisions on presidential term and age limits to remain in power.
This is the situation in such countries as Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of Congo, Uganda and Zimbabwe. In each of these countries, the President is over 80 years old, tired, incompetent and, sometimes, very sick. Some of them have spent over four decades in power. Yet, they are not ready to quit the stage. I call this the Paul Biya syndrome.
Biya became the President of Cameroon in November 1982. In 2008, he engineered the abrogation of his country’s constitutional provision on presidential term limit and continued in office. Currently, he is on his eighth term in office.
At 93, Biya is the world’s oldest-serving Head of State and Africa’s second-longest-serving President. The gold medal for the longest serving President goes to Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 84. He assumed office in 1979 and is not ready to quit the stage yet.
President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda is 81 years old. He is in his seventh term in office. He probably will be in office until he dies. Alassane Outarra of Cote d’Ivoire is 83 and still counting. President Ismail Guelleh of Djibouti, 78, is in his sixth term in office having won the April 10, 2026, presidential election with a “landslide” 97.8 per cent of the vote. He has been in power since 1999.
The late former President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, was once the world’s oldest President. He ruled his country for 37 years and was forced to resign in 2017 at the age of 93. Emmerson Mnangagwa, 83, who took over from him, appears to be racing to outdo his predecessor. Under him, there is a new law that extends presidential term limit from five to seven years, effectively postponing national elections from 2028 to 2030. Besides, the new law eliminated direct popular votes through which the people elect the President. It is now the members of the parliament who have the power to elect the President.
For Cameroon, the President’s health and succession plans have become topic of discussion. Biya left his country for what the presidency called a “brief private stay in Europe” on June 7, 2026. As of press time on Sunday, August 2, 2026, Biya is yet to return to his country. This is said to be his longest known stay abroad since assuming office. The situation has led to rumours about his health and growing political uncertainty in his country.
This notwithstanding, people benefitting from the rotten system say his absence counts for nothing as he manages the affairs of the country remotely and that the state is fully functional. This is a man who is probably senile and may not even understand what is going on around him anymore.
Nigeria went down this path before. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua was not as old as Biya. But he was sick and frequently travelled abroad for medical treatment. Those who imposed him on Nigerians told us during campaigns for the presidency that he was healthy. The man even challenged any doubting Thomas to a game of squash. But not long after he assumed office his illness became very obvious.
His last hospital visit was in Saudi Arabia. He remained there without transmitting power to his then deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. This gave rise to the “doctrine of necessity”, which the National Assembly relied on to transmit power to Jonathan. Even when in his hospital bed, Yar’Adua purportedly monitored and administered Nigeria. Three years after his assumption of office, he died.
Muhammadu Buhari took us through the same route when he was President. He campaigned vigorously for the position but soon after he took office in 2015, he wished he had become President at a younger age. At 72 then, he said there was a limit to what he could do.
He was often abroad for medical treatment. Between May and August 2017, he was in a London hospital for over 100 days. We were also told that he could rule from anywhere. In July 2025, he died at the age of 82.
As for President Bola Tinubu, there is no need telling you that he has failed. Like Biya, he frequently travels to Europe, especially France, but his spokespersons will always tell us that he has either gone for a working vacation, private visit or investment drive. Terrorists’ atrocities, including killings and mass abductions, do not even stop him from travelling.
Despite removing fuel subsidy and invariably making a lot of money, Tinubu’s administration has plunged the country into a borrowing binge. Over 141 million Nigerians suffer from multidimensional poverty. That doesn’t appear to bother him or those feeding fat from him.
Speculations are rife that some of his foreign trips may be for health reasons. But in Nigeria, the presidency is run like a secret cult. Presidential aides don’t usually tell Nigerians the truth about the health status of their President. Tinubu (officially 73 years old) stumbled and fell during a reception in Ankara, Turkey, in January 2026. One of his aides, Sunday Dare, said he was in great shape. He is preparing to come back for a second term when he has shown from all indications that he is not fit to be the President of Nigeria.
If ethnicity, religion and some other parochial reasoning will permit Nigerians, they should mobilize to vote Tinubu out in 2027. He is clearly not in control and needs to go and rest for younger and more competent people like Peter Obi to come and clear the mess he has put the country into.
Activists, the media, labour unions, the clergy and civil society organizations have a lot of work to do in sensitizing people. I understand that Tinubu’s branded bags of rice are being shared in some places. People should collect the rice or any other suspicious gift, but they should realize that such things can only mitigate hunger for a few days. What usually follows is a lifetime of sorrow, hunger, acute poverty and depression.
Just as North Africans chased away their old and authoritarian leaders in 2011 in what has come to be known as the Arab Spring, let Nigerians march to the polling booths in January 2027 to show their current oppressors that Nigeria is not Cameroon where Biya can do anything he likes and get away with it.
