Cameroon’s President has disappeared and citizens are being discouraged from asking why

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In a shared taxi in Cameroon this week, a man asked his fellow passengers whether they thought the 91-year-old president, Paul Biya, had finally returned to the country after a long absence.

There was a lengthy silence. After a couple of minutes, another passenger eventually spoke. “My brother, we no longer discuss such things,” he said.

Mr. Biya, who has ruled this Central African country for 42 years, disappeared from public view in early September. The government has said only that he had “granted himself a brief private visit in Europe.”

Despite obvious questions about who is running the country, Cameroon’s authorities have created a climate of silence and fear around the subject, using legal threats to discourage its citizens from sharing any rumours or opinions. Afraid of being overheard by the wrong people, Cameroonians often simply stay quiet.

One of Cameroon’s most powerful cabinet ministers, Paul Atanga Nji, announced last week that any media discussion of Mr. Biya’s health was strictly prohibited. Offenders would face “the full force of the law,” he said, ordering regional governors to set up monitoring units to track and record all media broadcasts and even social networks.

The threats are unlikely to end the rumours about Mr. Biya or the uncertainty over the country’s fate. The declining health of the world’s oldest president has been obvious for years. At international meetings, he has appeared frail or unsteady on his feet. He is often absent from the public eye for weeks at a time, usually cocooned with his entourage in a luxury hotel in Switzerland.

He has not been seen in public since Sept. 8, when he was visiting China. He had been expected to show up at the United Nations General Assembly in New York later in September and then at the Francophonie summit in France Oct. 4-5, but he appeared at neither of those events, without any explanation offered. This sparked a surge of social-media rumours, with many claiming he had died in a Paris hospital – rumours that the government angrily denounced.

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As an election approaches next year, Mr. Biya has refused to rule out a bid for yet another seven-year term, despite the questions about his health.

The lack of clarity on his future has thrown the country into uncertainty. At a time when the country is embroiled in a violent conflict with militant secessionists in two English-speaking regions, the absence of energetic leadership is keenly felt.

There is no clear political successor to Mr. Biya. If he dies in office, his legal successor is the president of the senate, Marcel Niat Njifenji, who turns 90 later this month and has himself been spending weeks in a European hospital for health reasons.

Reports have suggested that Mr. Biya’s 53-year-old businessman son, Franck Biya, is being groomed to succeed him, but mystery shrouds this question, too, with nobody knowing whether Franck will be a candidate.

As the political vacuum continues, a few opposition politicians and journalists have dared to speak out.

“This is a government that believes in secrecy and non-transparency, and does not inform Cameroonians regularly on fundamental issues which concern the nation,” said Kah Walla, a social activist and leader of the Cameroon People’s Party, which belongs to an opposition coalition.

“If you leave a void, people will fill it, so rumours start circulating,” Ms. Walla told The Globe and Mail.

“Paul Biya has been an absentee president for a very, very long time. This current absence, where we do not know whether he is dead or alive, is having some very, very dire consequences for a country, which was already in a very difficult economic, political and social situation.”

Cameroon’s people are anxious because they want Mr. Biya’s 42-year rule to end, yet there is no succession plan, she said.

“All of these factors together make Cameroonians very nervous, very anxious, because of the uncertainty of what will happen if he actually dies. And so these rumours spread like wildfire.”

Charly Ndi Chia, president of the Cameroon Union of Journalists, said the government has failed to quash the rumours about Mr. Biya.

“We, the people, are deeply concerned about his health situation and whereabouts because our security and that of the nation is determined by his state of health and performance in office,” Mr. Chia told The Globe.

Another Cameroonian journalist, whose name The Globe is withholding because he fears reprisals for his comments, said the leadership vacuum has existed for a long time. Based on his own observations at presidential events, he said, Mr. Biya is so frail he can barely climb into a car unaided. But while Mr. Biya is not running the country on a day-to-day basis, he has instilled a sense of fear among high-ranking officials, who do not dare to challenge him, the journalist said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a U.S.-based international group, is calling for an end to the legal threats against Cameroon’s journalists. The head of its Africa program, Angela Quintal, said the president’s health is of public interest. “Any misguided attempt to censor reporting about his health for national security reasons simply fuels rampant speculation,” she said in a statement.

Ndi Eugene Ndi is special to The Globe and Mail