YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – A Cameroonian priest has blasted President Paul Biya for seeking an eighth consecutive term of office.

The Cameroon president, who is now 92 and has been in power for 43 years, announced on X – formerly known as Twitter – that he will be seeking re-election when Cameroonians go to the polls on October 12.

“I am a candidate for the 12 October 2025 presidential election,” the president announced on July 13.

“Rest assured that my determination to serve you is commensurate with the serious challenges facing us. Together, there are no challenges we cannot meet,” he said. “The best is still to come.”

In a July 15 open letter, Father Paul Ajong, a priest of the Diocese of Mamfe serving in New York Archdiocese in the United States, blasted the president for that decision, saying that by choosing to run again, Biya was “mocking our pain and insulting our intelligence.”

“Paul Biya – the longest-ruling president alive today – has already clung to power for over 43 years. And now, as if mocking our pain and insulting our intelligence, he has announced his intention to run again this October 2025,” the priest wrote.

Noting that he was writing with “tears and sadness” in his eyes, Ajong regretted that he has known only one president all his life, and accused the president of conflating Cameroon for his private property.

He described Biya’s decision to seek another term as “madness (…) wickedness (…) an affront to God and to the people of Cameroon.”

“A man who has spent more than four decades destroying a nation cannot, at 93 years old, suddenly become its savior. Those who pretend otherwise are either blind, dishonest, or complicit in the ruin of our homeland. What a shame,” the priest said.

Paul Biya came to power in 1982 following the resignation of Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo. Ajong notes that Cameroon was full of hope at the time – a country blessed with natural and human resources.

Under Biya’s watch, the priest said, “that hope has been systematically crushed.”

“He has ruled through fear and repression, jailing political opponents, silencing activists, and disappearing critics,” he said.

“Kondengui Prison stands as a living hell, a symbol of his cruelty, where our brothers and sisters waste away in appalling conditions simply for daring to speak truth. I have no doubt that I will be a target too from different directions after this message. But I am not afraid of he who can kill the body and can do nothing after that,” Ajong said.

He didn’t specifically cite any names who are in jail, but the Biya government is known for jailing its critics and silencing dissent. Opposition figure Prof. Maurice Kamto, who challenged Biya in the 2018 Presidential election, spent 9 months behind bars on accusations of trying to destabilize the nation, after the opposition leader challenged the outcome of the election.

Ajong also weighed in on the on-going separatist war in the country’s English-speaking regions that has left at least 6,500 people dead in eight years of fighting.

“He [Paul Biya] has presided over the horror of the Anglophone Crisis, where entire villages have been burned to the ground, hundreds of thousands killed, and millions displaced-all because our people asked to be treated with fairness and dignity,” he said.

The priest went on to accuse Biya of failing to manage the country’s vast resources-oil, timber, gold, fertile land, for the betterment of the vast majority of Cameroonians, 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line.

“Many [live] in abject misery, while he and his family fly to Geneva and Paris to gamble, shop, and seek medical care,” he said.

He blasted the president for allowing corruption to “eat the soul of our nation,” even after promising rigor and moralization when he came to power.

Twice, in 1998 and 1999, Cameroon was ranked the most corrupt country in the world by Transparency International.

“We have wasted generation after generation of youth who are left with no future here and are forced to flee into exile, risking their lives at sea, while our hospitals collapse, our schools decay, and our roads disintegrate,” Ajong writes.

The cleric was quick to point out that his criticism of the President isn’t partisan, for the Catholic Church forbids priests from partisan politics.

“This is about morality. This is about justice. This is about the sacred duty of the Church, the conscience of society to speak when the people of God are suffering. Silence in the face of evil is itself evil,” he said.

And he isn’t alone in opposing Biya’s decision to cling to power despite his advanced years and failing health.

Omer Yusinyui, a member of the Catholic Men Association at St. Anne’s Parish in Obili, told Crux that it was regrettable that someone who came to power “before some of us were born” could still seek to stay in power.

“In normal circumstances, a man at 92 should be in the village playing with his grandchildren,” he told Crux.

“Let him go and rest and let some new blood come up with new ideas for the betterment of this country,” he said.

Catholic bishops in the country have not reacted to the President’s decision to seek an eighth term, but many of them had earlier expressed concerns about his capacity to continue holding the highest office of the land.

Archbishop Samuel Kleda of Douala had in an interview with RFI said it was unrealistic for Biya to extend his long stay at the helm of the state.

The president’s supporters however insist that he is still the man of the moment. Member of Parliament Malomba Essembe said Paul Biya is “a unifier in chief.”

“President Paul Biya is the only serious candidate we have and that is why we should give him the chance to continue to lead us in stability and on the path to prosperity,” he said.

But Ajong isn’t buying into any of that.

“How can anyone, with a working conscience, believe that a 93-year-old man who has failed for 43 years will suddenly succeed now? How can he, who has brought nothing but pain and shame for more than four decades, suddenly rebuild what he has destroyed?” the priest said.

“If you believe this, you are lying to yourself, and you are aiding this evil,” he said.