Amid rumours of ill health

President Biya and Chantal Biya on arrival at Nsimalen airport

Biya returns home apparently hale and hearty!
President Paul Biya and his wife Chantal Biya returned to Yaounde on Friday, 27 March 2015, after a 1-month stay abroad
By Ojong Steven Ayukogem in Yaounde
President Biya alighted from his plane on Friday 27 March 2015 looking apparently healthy, strong and spritely. He was returning to the country after a 1-month stay in Europe. In a rare show of warmth, Paul Biya wore a broad, revealing smile as he stepped down from thechartered aircraft that flew him and his wife home. He sustained the smile  as he shook hands with the state dignitaries that had lined up at the  airport to welcome him. Biya remained unusually lively and warm even during the traditional airport audiences that he granted. 
    Observers were quick to note that the president’s mood was unusual. Many said President Biya always wears a serious look whenever he is travelling abroad or returning to the country. His seriousness is usually all the more during the drama that is always acted when he gives last minute instructions to his collaborators at the airport. But this time around it was a re-born President Biya who alighted at the Nsimalen Airport; warm, lively and all smiles, commentators observed.

    Yet some analysts contended that the president’s sprightliness, even if feigned, was understandable. He had to prove to the world in general, and his detractors of Le Monde especially, that far from what they speculated in their newspaper columns, he was in fact, hale and hearty. His wife too.
    Barely a forthnight after President Biya left the country accompanied by his wife Chantal, for a “short private stay” in Europe, French newspaper, Le Monde, reported in its online edition on Friday 13 March 2015, that the presidential couple left the country unconditionally, to consult doctors in Europe for serious illnesses.
    Le Monde affirmed that President Biya, 82, was suffering from prostate cancer; that he was hesitant to submit himself to surgery advised by his doctors. Le Monde said the president and his wife were using their “private visit” in Europe since 2 March to seek medical help for terminal ailments. It maintained that while President Biya was hesitant to undergo an operation, his wife was in Neuilly, France for a “reconstruction” surgery following a 2013 cervical surgery that kept her away from home for many months.
    Later, in a corrected version of their story on 14 March, Le Monde removed mention of “prostate cancer” and other details including a claim that the presidential couple owned a home - the Maillot Villa in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, in Paris France, and that the first lady was to undergo a “reconstruction” cervical surgery.
    Le Monde’s claims despite the corrections did not leave Cameroonian authorities indifferent. Sources said President Biya in particular, did not take the claims kindly; he promptly instructed his collaborators to order Le Monde to withdraw its story without further delay.
    Back at home, Communication Minister, Issa Bakary Tchiroma, wasted no time in debunking the claims by Le Monde. Tchiiroma rallied the national and international press and told them that Le Monde’s allegations were not only “false” but were “abject, ill-fated and malicious.” He said Le Monde’s only intention was to cause Cameroonians to turn against their Head of State, whose health and that of his wife was in no circumstance as to be worried about.
    Issa Tchiroma wondered allowed why an otherwise credible, respected and authoritative newspaper like Le Monde, should suddenly go so low as to publish unverified information.
    In his response to Issa Tchiroma, Le Monde’s editor instead advised Cameroonian authorities to say where exactly their president was in Europe and what he was doing rather than get worked-up over a newspaper report.