Academics disagree about re-election of 92-year-old president

The names of at least 300 university lecturers and other staff feature on a contentious list of people and organisations who are calling for the renewal of the presidential candidature of Paul Biya (92), who has been the head of state for 42 years after serving as the prime minister for seven years.

Jacques Fame Ndongo, the minister of higher education and secretary of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), features at the top of the list of Biya supporters, which also includes some prominent people from civil society.

According to the higher education minister, the university-based support for Biya is indicative of his popularity in the higher education sector.

“We are supporting President Paul Biya because he is the ideal candidate. It is the democratic right of every citizen, including those in the higher education sector, to support a candidate of their choice,” he said over state radio on 18 March.

Earlier, in a December statement, the CPDM gave reasons why Biya should be its candidate in the October 2025 elections, which included that all sections of the CPDM supported him at the party’s congress in November.

“It is the democratic right of a university lecturer, like any other citizen, to support a candidate of his choice. So, there is nothing wrong if the names of so many university lecturers and staff feature on the list of those endorsing President Paul Biya,” Professor Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, a former minister and lecturer in political science at the University of Yaoundé’s International Relations Institute of Cameroon, said in a TV debate on 20 March 2025.

According to him, the support for Biya’s candidature was “reasonable” given his investments in the higher education sector.

“Thanks to President Paul Biya, the state university system has moved from being a lone university in 1993 to 11 universities today. Private universities are also mushrooming all over the republic,” said Ngolle Ngolle.

Criticism

But those who are not endorsing the Biya candidacy have criticised supporters on the list.

“This decision [to support Biya] is dishonest. I see some political manipulation by the powers that be. Behind the scenes, these lecturers criticise the poor working environment in our universities but, in public, they say something different because they want favours,” Dr Fridolin Nke, a former lecturer of philosophy at the University of Yaoundé I, told University World News.

He noted that the additional universities that were being created had to function without infrastructure and enough staff, yet the government was unable to recruit thousands of jobless PhD holders who recently threatened to go on strike, expressing the wish for a new government to bring in fresh perspectives.

“We can only hope for much-needed reforms in the university sector when we have a new governing system in place,” Nke said.

Manipulation of public opinion?

Professor Maurice Kamto, a political leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, one of the lead opposition parties, and a law lecturer at the University of Yaoundé I, said the president and his party kingpins have been manipulating opinion groups in the past few weeks, including those of university lecturers, students and traditional authorities.

“These calls by university lecturers are not genuine, they are [the result of the] manipulation of public opinion to give a semblance of popularity. Any academic worth his salt will understand that, at 92, the incumbent president is too old to lead for another seven-year term,” Kamto told University World News.

“As elite members of society, academics have to jealously preserve their honour and integrity and not soil their reputations by selling their consciences to support anyone,” Kamto said.

According to a news report, traditional leaders and the youth supported Biya even before the list of university lecturers and some civil society supporters of Biya became public.

“Cameroonian youth from diverse backgrounds gathered at the Yaoundé Multipurpose Sports Complex in February and pledged their support as they commemorated President Paul Biya’s 92nd birthday. The youths acknowledged President Biya’s commitment to peace, security, and socio-economic progress, echoing his recent calls for youth involvement in governance,” the news report quoted the young people as saying.

Other academics have argued that universities as institutions have to work with political actors to create synergy and to ensure their higher education programmes provide the right funding and working environment in universities. However, they argue that it would be wrong for any university institution to endorse a candidate as it will have to work and live with any government that takes power.

“Universities, as institutions, can provide technical advice in shaping the higher education programme of a political party without necessarily supporting the party’s candidate for presidential elections,” said Professor Jean Bahebeck, a political activist and associate professor of surgery in the faculty of medicine at the University of Yaoundé I.

He argued in a television discussion that, as individuals, people have democratic freedoms.

“The constitution gives every citizen the freedom to choose whoever they want as leader. But people should not be forced or unduly induced to do so,” Bahebeck said.