The Manufactured Image of Paul Biya: A Dictator Kept Alive by Photoshop and Fear
Life is a stage, and most leaders eventually bow out, but in Cameroon, Paul Biya and the Beti-Bulu oligarchy have refused to let go of power. At 92 years old, Biya remains “in charge” not because of vitality, legitimacy, or popular will, but because of a media machine that props him up with deceit, manipulation, and manufactured images.
For over four decades, Biya has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist(1982 till date….), outlasting eight U.S. presidents, five French presidents, and four popes. Once paraded across live broadcasts alongside his flamboyantly styled wife Chantal, Biya thrived on media exposure of wealth and excess. Today, however, his physical, mental, and psychological decline has become impossible to hide. Instead of stepping aside, the regime has turned to digital trickery.
A President Rebuilt by Photoshop and Deepfakes
State media CRTV has perfected the art of deception. With deepfakes and Photoshop, Biya is digitally resurrected each time he appears. Missing teeth are magically restored. A bald head becomes full of hair, a frail, emaciated body transforms into a robust figure. Every bizarre variation of Biya is pushed into the public eye—while independent live coverage is strictly forbidden.
Instead of genuine leadership, Cameroonians are served doctored images—crafted to project strength where weakness dominates. Once a visible figure at the UN General Assembly, La Francophonie, papal funerals, and other world stages, Paul Biya is now confined within CRTV’s carefully staged cameras. Every appearance is filtered, edited, and falsified before reaching the public eye. Click here to read why Biya will never appear in scenarios where crtv is not the only media present.
In the past, Biya monopolized nearly every frame—often taking up more than 98% of shots at national and international events. Today, he is reduced to split-second cameos in public appearances where live coverage is unavoidable. Viewers who are not attentive may miss Biya’s dazed, confused, and lackadaisical steps, as CRTV swiftly cuts away to other scenes or irrelevant footage in a desperate attempt to conceal the wobbling “lion man.”
The images below capture those fleeting moments—unmasking the reality of a 92-year-old leader hidden behind propaganda.
A Symbol of a Broken State
A Symbol of a Broken State
This manipulation is not harmless theater—it is a cruel distraction from a nation in crisis. While the oligarchy spends its resources manufacturing Biya’s phantom presence, Cameroon burns. In the English-speaking section aka Ambazonia, villages are torched, civilians massacred, and more than 200,000 people forced into exile. Over 53,000 lives have been lost in a conflict fueled by the same dictatorship that refuses to acknowledge reality, let alone accountability. The rest of the country swims in abject poverty exacerbated by one of the worst infrastructures in the world with daily road accidents etc.
A young image of Biya that hangs in government offices is no longer just a symbol of authoritarian power—it is a portrait of national deception. A dictator who is feared, not respected; preserved in pixels rather than principle. Updating the young picture with Biya’s current age picture is a crime punishable by imprisonment or dismissal and imprisonment. At 92 still seeking another seven-year-mandate, he is still to be physically present on the campaign field. However, his effigies are not in short supply by his followers.
Charles Ndongo: The Regime’s Chief Propagandist
At the helm of this machinery of manipulation stands Charles Ndongo, head of the country’s iron-fisted control state radio and television channel -CRTV (Cameroon Radio and Television). Charles P. Ndongo is an unapologetic Beti-Bulu loyalist. Nicknamed “the president’s journalist,” Ndongo has shadowed Biya for decades, producing glowing reports at home and abroad to polish the dictator’s crumbling image. Protected not only with legislation(Tax payer funding), policy and punitive sanctions on editorial content delivery deviation, Crtv journalists wear the batch of loyalty to Ndongo, Biya and the ruling CPDM party. Any deviations risk military arrest, torture and a transfer to Siberia/Nkondengui – the state’s congested torture prison. A French Cameroun journalist/blogger – Paul Moutila
accuses Charles Ndongo of turning the public-funded media house into, “Paul Biya’s talking drum,”, “CRTV, funded by public money, should embody pluralism. Instead, under Ndongo, it exclusively relays RDPC/CPDM propaganda, marginalizing dissenting voices and reducing the media space to a stage for political monologue.” he states.
Since his appointment on June 29, 2016, by Biya himself through a presidential decree, Ndongo has assumed the role of chief propagandist, ensuring no unfiltered image or message of Biya ever reaches the public. His orchestrated broadcasts fabricate vitality where there is decline, loyalty where there is discontent, and strength where there is weakness.
Biya’s continued grip on power—and the nationwide climate of fear he commands—owes much to Ndongo’s stage-managed propaganda. His role in Cameroon’s history can only be compared to Joseph Goebbels in Hitler’s Germany: the architect of state lies, the guardian of a dictator’s myth, and the chief enabler of authoritarian survival.
The video below captures one of such manipulations of the public by Crtv during Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Yaoundé in July 2022.
A Symbol of a Broken State
This manipulation is not harmless theater—it is a cruel distraction from a nation in crisis. While the oligarchy spends its resources manufacturing Biya’s phantom presence, Cameroon burns. In Ambazonia, villages are torched, civilians massacred, and more than 200,000 people forced into exile. Over 53,000 lives have been lost in a conflict fueled by the same dictatorship that refuses to acknowledge reality, let alone accountability.
The image of Biya that hangs in government offices is no longer just a symbol of authoritarian power—it is a portrait of national deception. A dictator who is feared, not respected; preserved in pixels rather than principle.
Time for Truth, Time for Action
The international community cannot continue to accept doctored photographs as proof of governance. The Cameroonian people, especially the victims of state violence in Ambazonia, deserve more than a phantom president hidden behind deepfakes.
The African Union and the United Nations must stop enabling this charade. Continued silence is complicity in the crimes of a regime that survives through both brutality and manipulation.
Paul Biya’s carefully edited image may fool television screens, but it cannot erase the truth: Cameroon is a nation held hostage by a dying dictator, a complicit oligarchy, and a propaganda machine desperate to cling to power. Real change will only come when the masks, the photoshops, and the deepfakes are stripped away—and the will of the people is finally respected.
Sample Deceptive Images Pushed to the Public by Crtv and the Biya Regime
The above pictures look normal to the average viewer, but a close up of them reveal digital alterations, First the masks look faked and secondly Chantal Biya is superimposed on a male body. Take a look at the picture below:
British Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) Genocide Library 
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