All except one of the 12 candidates in Cameroon’s October 12 presidential election have been crisscrossing the country to woo potential voters since the official two-week campaign period opened on Saturday, September 27.

While opposition candidates have been organising public rallies across various regions, incumbent President Paul Biya— who is seeking an eighth term after ruling uninterrupted since 1982 — has not held a single campaign rally with only a week to go until election day.

This is nothing new. The world’s oldest head of State and Africa’s second-longest serving leader — after Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo — Biya, 92, is rarely seen in public, even during crucial campaign periods. Yet he remains a serial election winner, despite persistent questions about the credibility and transparency of the polls.

In 2018, Biya held a single campaign rally in Maroua, in the Far North Region bordering Nigeria and Chad, but went on to win the election with 71.28 percent of the vote.

Opposition leader Prof Maurice Kamto, who came a distant second with 14.23 percent, was disqualified from this year’s race. He has since urged Cameroonians to vote for an opposition candidate of their choice.

Biya has not publicly addressed Cameroonians since announcing his candidacy via social media in July. Instead, he has been targeting younger voters with daily posts on Facebook and X.

A week before the official start of campaigns, Biya left Cameroon for what his office described as “a brief private stay” in an undisclosed European location, while his peers headed to the UN General Assembly in New York.

He returned on Wednesday, October 1, as campaigns intensified, with those vying to succeed him holding rallies and promoting their manifestos.

Though Biya may not be physically present on the campaign trail, supporters of his ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) have been organising rallies — even in hard-to-reach areas of the conflict-plagued English-speaking regions.

At these rallies, delegated officials — mostly from Yaoundé, including government members dressed in fabrics bearing Biya’s smiling image — recount what they claim are the achievements of their regions under his regime and urge the population to vote for him again.

Biya himself is typically represented at these rallies by a large effigy, taken when the aging leader was still robust and sporting an afro. The effigy is placed in front of the high table and carried by young lieutenants during support parades.

Top government and party officials at such events often promise to relay messages to the President in Yaoundé.

At one such rally on Saturday, September 27, in Buea — the capital of the South West Region, one of two English-speaking regions that have been gripped by armed conflict for nearly a decade — Prime Minister Dr Joseph Dion Ngute, who is from the region, urged his people to vote for Biya to safeguard the privileges the region enjoys, including his own position as head of government.

Ngute dismissed claims that Biya’s age has affected his ability to govern, saying he acts as the President’s legs, going where Biya cannot.

“Those of you who are cocoa farmers, do you cut down a cocoa tree because it is old?” Dr Ngute asked, prompting chants of “No! No!”

He told CPDM supporters and sympathisers, “President Biya has made me his legs, so that where he cannot go, I would go.”

On the same day, in Bamenda in the English-speaking North West Region, former Prime Minister and immediate past President of the UN General Assembly, Philemon Yang, chaired a campaign rally.

He urged the population to vote for Biya, whom he described as an “experienced statesman” unfairly criticised by the opposition, who he said spend more time attacking the President than promoting their own agendas.

“We are not here to talk about age; we are here to talk about qualities, competencies, and abilities,” Yang said, dismissing concerns about Biya’s age and apparent inability to work.

“The opposition paints a picture of a world that doesn’t exist. They promise to take you to heaven, but they haven’t been there themselves. Most of the opposition leaders lack the experience that President Biya has.”

There are reports that Biya may hold at least three rallies before the campaign ends on Saturday, October 11, but neither his office nor the CPDM party has confirmed this.