Scamming did not start today. It is as old as man. In the Bible (Genesis 25: 19-34), Jacob scammed his brother, Esau, out of his blessings, of course, with the connivance of their mother. Jacob ended up in another town when his mother told him to skip town because his brother, Esau, was planning to kill him.

The scammer left town, holding that he had found happiness. Unfortunately for him, he too would be scammed by Leah’s father who tricked Jacob into marrying Leah instead of Rachel, the woman he genuinely loved. He served as a worker to Leah’s father for seven years before he could marry, Rachel, the love of his life.

Since then, scamming has been part of human existence and Paul Biya, the Cameroonian president who prefers to live out of his country, has been scamming Cameroonians who are unfortunately gullible.

Yesterday, he scammed Cameroonians into believing that he was healthy and could still run the show even after having spent 49 days in a Swiss hospital.

Yesterday, Paul Biya was a bundle of steroids. He had been given high doses of steroids over the last week just for him to look good. A single dose of steroids can deliver over 5,000 calories and if 10 doses are taken by an old man who is not physically active, you get what Cameroonians got yesterday. He looked good but could not walk. He could not even move his legs. Does that not explain something to Cameroonians?

The lengthy empty speech to the Secretary General at the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, was Biya’s way of despising Cameroonians who in their overwhelming majority want Biya out of power. In their thinking, Biya is a wet blanket, a joy killer who has inflicted a lot of pain on his people.

Spending a long time saying nothing to Ngoh Ngoh was a huge concern to the first lady and the director of cabinet. Biya was not script-bound. Even coming down from the airplane was a whole drama. It took an hour for Biya to come out of the plane as make-up artists had to do their job, protocol officers had to ensure that things went on smoothly; the presidential motorcade had to go very close to the plane to avoid any embarrassment. Luckily for Biya, it is easy to deceive Cameroonians and that game plan of his worked well yesterday like a charm.

Chantal Biya and Ayolo were aware that Biya was acting on steroids and standing for a long time could expose their game plan to the public which was still trying to figure out why a 91-year-old man could look that strong. When he ended his empty speech, the relief on Chantal’s face was visible.

But Biya is not off the hook. He cannot take steroids for a long time. Steroids have the nasty habit of blowing up the hearts of those who abuse them. Biya is fragile and he cannot stay in the steroids zone for a long time. No one has ever succeeded to cheat nature.

The Biya drama is not new in Africa. This film has already been seen in the DRC, former Zaire, when Mobutu, the country’s dictator, died shortly after his own triumphant return to Kinshasa.

Like Mobutu, Biya returned to Yaoundé yesterday after an exceptionally long stay abroad due to health concerns. Mobutu, like Biya, was welcomed by chanting crowds which saw him as their savior. But shortly after, he was overwhelmed by events and illnesses, and had to die miserably in exile in Morocco after a prostate cancer treatment in France.

There are parallels between Mobutu and Biya. Both despised their people. Like Mobutu, Biya sees Cameroonians as stupid and not worthy of respect. Like Mobutu, Biya has ruined his country’s economy and holds that he is eternal. Unfortunately, with age, he knows his days are numbered and with health issues, he knows that anything can happen.

The fear of losing power has transformed Biya into a monster, killing and imprisoning his collaborators who have any ambitions of succeeding him.

Biya might be back, but he knows the fear of death inhabits his mind. Though he is the ultimate scammer who has scammed the country out of its resources, he lives in fear, scared of the military he has created and the diseases he has manufactured for himself due to his excessive love of power.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai