Paul Biya has stayed abroad for about two months after leaving Cameroon on June 7 for what his office described as a "brief private stay in Europe". The prolonged absence has revived questions in Cameroon about who is steering day-to-day authority while the 93-year-old president remains outside the country.
René Emmanuel Sadi told RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland, and was not hospitalised. Biya has been in office for more than four decades, first taking power in 1982 after serving as prime minister under Ahmadou Ahidjo, and the length of this stay has made the gap harder to treat as routine.
Cameroon and the absence
Government officials have said there is no leadership vacuum, even as Biya has remained away from Cameroon for about two months. Earlier this month, Biya approved a major military reshuffle while outside the country, a sign that authority continues to be exercised from abroad rather than left idle.
That sequence matters for how Cameroonians read the presidency. Biya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960, and in 2024 the government banned media discussions about his health, making public scrutiny of his condition more constrained while speculation persists.
Abit Riassai Acha in Yaoundé II
Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, said she voted for the first time in the 2025 presidential election and supported Samuel Hiram Iyodi, who finished eighth. She described Biya’s long tenure as part of daily political life: "Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon".
She also said, "Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it," and added, "But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed." Her remarks capture why the president’s absence has landed with renewed force among younger voters who have known only Biya’s rule.
Constitutional Council and succession
Samuel Hiram Iyodi called for parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to determine whether Biya’s prolonged absence could amount to a vacancy in the presidency. That is the clearest institutional pressure point now: whether the legal system will be asked to test a succession question, or whether officials will continue to treat the situation as normal presidential continuity from outside Cameroon.
For now, the unanswered question is where exactly in Europe Biya is staying and when he will return to Cameroon. Until that changes, the presidency remains formally intact while the governing picture is shaped by an unusually long absence, a public health veil, and a legal debate that has not yet been taken up by the Constitutional Council.
