Lessons Biya should learn from Senegal.

"Cameroon: After Biya, will there be clan war?" That is the question posed recently by a report published by the respected news organ, African Report. 

It is a question that doesn't answer itself and it keeps popping up since 2008 when parliament, with an obsessed Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, majority of 153 of the 180 seats, tinkered the country’s constitution.

The constitution of 1996 limited presidential mandate to a seven-year term renewable once. Going by it, Biya’s second term under that constitution was slated to expire in 2011. Some of his party stalwarts, many now in prison, then formed a group christened G11, in preparation to succeed him under the ambit of the CPDM.

But their hopes began to fizzle out with the change of the constitution extending term limits indefinitely, which allowed the incumbent to take a world record seventh term in 2018. 

Barring health challenges, he could even extend the record to 2025, thanks to the constitutional review.

Reuters news agency reported later that: "The amendment was a major cause of riots ...that killed dozens of people. Cameroon’s security forces have been patrolling the capital, Yaounde and other cities in recent days to prevent any unrests".

When the constitutional amendment was passed by parliament, MPs from the Social Democratic Front, SDF, with 15 seats, walked out of the National Assembly in protest. 

They said parliament should not have amended the constitution that emerged from cross-party negotiations in the early 1990s.

President Biya, currently the world's longest serving "elected" leader, is not the only African leader whose constitution has been changed to increase presidential mandates, which in most democracies are restricted to one term of five years, renewable once.

In the inglorious hall of constitutional change, Alpha Conde of Guinea, Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast  and their peers of  Burundi, Chad, Togo, Egypt, Rwanda, and Uganda, have copied from the Cameroon playbook with some using questionable referenda.

Attempts in Nigeria, Zambia and Malawi were crushed by the opposition and global outcry. 

And as rumours were rife that Senegalese President, Macky Sall, would fiddle with the constitution for a third term, he minced no words in making his position crystal clear.

In a speech shared live on his Facebook account, Sall, against all expectations announced he would not be candidate at the February 2024 presidential election, "even if the constitution allows me to do so". 

The clarification on Monday ended years of uncertainty over whether he would seek to remain in power, thus ending uncertainty over his political future that had helped fuel deadly opposition protests in Senegal, last month.

President Sall, 61, was first elected in 2012 for a seven-year term and again re-elected in 2019 for a five-year term. This followed a constitutional revision of the presidential tenure, reducing it from seven as borrowed from France to five years as it obtains in most democratic and civilised countries. 

Even before climbing to the apex of government, he had campaigned against a third term by his predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade, who was in power from 2000 to 2012.

His Monday's reiteration that he won't tamper with the constitution has earned for Sall kudos around the world, including political and civil society actors in Cameroon. 

There are lessons for Cameroonian politicians, especially for President Biya, to learn from the Senegalese example. 

At this authoritative daily newspaper, we have had occasions to shower President Biya with encomiums for promulgating the liberty laws and challenging his fellow party members to gird their loins and prepare for democratic "competition". All democratic theories and practices are unanimous that the best form of power alternation, especially in Africa, where electoral flaws are legion, is to limit presidential term to five years renewable once.

In Cameroon, it is seven years and the incumbent has had seven terms with the current to expire in 2025. 

As 2025 approaches, the question on every lip has, and remains: “Will President Biya take an eighth term when it is being seen as a taboo?” 

When the question was asked in the presence of visiting French President, Emmanuel Macron, in Yaounde, in July last year, President Biya was equivocal in his answer.

Responding as to whether he would seek re-election, when his current mandate runs out in 2025, President Biya rather sounded more of a Mathematician than a politician. 

He had said then: “My mandate is seven years, subtract four from seven, and you will know when it comes to an end. Wait for my mandate to end, and then you will know if I will continue or go to the village”.

To be fair to President Biya, it must be stated that he masters the art of dribbling journalists when questions are asked about his long stay in power.

Recall that during the visit of former French president, Francois Hollande, to Yaounde, President Biya was again quizzed on his life presidency project. Rather than giving a straight and clear response, President Biya offered himself the luxury of being comical: “You know, staying in power for long is who can, and not who wants”.

In political strategising, the magic year of 2025 is just around the corner and with more than four decades in power and blessed by the Lord with long life, President Paul Biya, The Guardian Post strongly recommends, should announce his intention to take a deserved rest. 

He will of course, if he heeds our recommendation made in good faith, still remain in the limelight as member of the revered Constitutional Council and glossed with immunity as provided for by the law.

In that way, he will be giving ample room for his potential successor to prepare for the next presidential election, which he can legally convene the electorate even before 2025, rather than keeping his supporters and the rest of the country in conjecture, speculation and even a perceived plot of "clan wars".