He succeeded Ahidjo as president upon the latter's surprise resignation in 1982 and consolidated power in a 1983–1984 staged attempted coup in which he eliminated all of his major rivals.

[8][9] Because Biya is a Catholic from the southern region of Cameroon, it was considered surprising that he was chosen by Ahidjo, a Muslim from the north, as his successor.

[15][16]Under his rule, the country adopted a structural adjustment plan submitted to it by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, which involved privatization, opening up to competition, and reducing social spending.

[18]In the October 1997 presidential election, which was boycotted by the main opposition parties, Biya was re-elected with 92.6 percent of the vote;[19][20] he was sworn in on 3 November.

[22][23] Biya won another seven-year term in the 11 October 2004 presidential election, officially taking 70.92 percent of the vote,[24][25] although the opposition again alleged widespread fraud.

[27] On 12 June 2006, he signed the Greentree Agreement with Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo which formally put an end to the Bakassi peninsula border dispute.

[30][31] In his victory speech, Biya promised to stimulate growth and create jobs with a programme of public works which would "transform our country into a vast construction site".

[50]: 289–90  On 10 October 2002, after more than eight years of hearings and deliberations, the court ruled in favour of Cameroon, instructing Nigeria to withdraw immediately from the region.

[51]: 54 Although Nigeria initially protested the decision, and although it caused significant unrest in Bakassi, Olusegun Obasanjo's regime largely cooperated with the ruling.

"[55] At the request of Biya and Obasanjo, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan established the Cameroon–Nigeria Mixed Commission to negotiate a smooth implementation of the International Court of Justice's 2002 ruling.

The commission's responsibilities included demarcating the entirety of the Cameroon–Nigeria border, facilitating cross-border cooperation and troop withdrawals from Bakassi, and protecting the rights of locals.

[56] From around 2013, bilateral relations increasingly emphasised joint counterterrorism actions against Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa, alongside other regional security initiatives, especially in the Gulf of Guinea.

Although Biya made some efforts to open up the political environment, his regime still retains clear authoritarian characteristics and has largely bucked the trend toward democracy in Africa since the 1990s.

"Tyrants, the World's 20 Worst Living Dictators", by David Wallechinsky, ranked Biya together with three other leaders in sub-Saharan Africa: Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, and King Mswati of Swaziland (now Eswatini).

Biya regularly spends extended periods of time in Switzerland at the Hotel InterContinental Geneva where the former director Herbert Schott reportedly said he comes to work without being disturbed.

[61][62] In February 2008, he passed a bill that allows for having an additional term in office as president which was followed by civil unrests throughout the country.

The main violent riots took place in the Western, English-speaking part of the country starting with a "strike" initiated by taxi drivers in Douala, allegedly causing more than 200 casualties in the end.

[68] He was subsequently given a two-year prison term on charges of "insult to character" and organizing an "illegal demonstration" for attempting to hold a public reading.

[68][69] He was freed on 2 May 2011 when the London chapter of International PEN agreed to pay his fine in order that he might seek treatment for his worsening health condition.

[70] In February 2014, French citizen Michel Thierry Atangana was released from a makeshift Yaoundé prison where, under Biya's orders, he had been arbitrarily detained for 17 years under false claims of embezzlement because of supposed closeness to presidential candidate Titus Edzoa.

[73][74] In 2016, Cameroonians in the nation's capital city of Yaoundé criticized Biya's reaction to the country's worst train crash in which 79 people died.

[78] In April 2017, a Cameroonian journalist working for Radio France Internationale, Ahmed Abba, was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment by a military tribunal for failing to report acts of terrorism.

[81] During 2016 and 2017, under Paul Biya's reign, large scale protests broke out among Anglophone Cameroonians in the area of the formerly British Southern Cameroons.

[82] During this time, Anglophone separatists claim that government forces murdered protestors en masse, and committed crimes against humanity, including genocide.

A June 2018 report by the BBC News found a widespread pattern of villages throughout the Southwest Region being burnt, including one video of men wearing government-issued BIR (Bataillon d'Intervention Rapide) equipment.

[88] Biya became a naturalized citizen of France when he studied there, but he later relinquished his French citizenship when he returned to Cameroon to serve in government positions.

Brenda Biya, who is also a LGBTQ activist, publicly revealed her same-sex relationship with Brazilian model Layyons Valença on 5 July 2024.

She reportedly accused Valença of sharing the photographs "for the attention of social media followers and even extort money" on TikTok.

[103][104] On 9 October, the Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji banned media outlets in the country from discussing the president's health.

[105] On 21 October, Biya was shown on state television arriving at Yaoundé Nsimalen International Airport following his return from Switzerland.