President Paul Kagame’s New Year announcement that he will run for another presidential term does not come as a surprise to anyone in or interested in Rwanda and, as others have experienced with other sit-tight African leaders, it will not be surprising if it triggers a ripple effect which leads to the reversal of the achievements the country has made under his rule. President Kagame described his decision to run again as an acceptance of the will of the people and indeed there’s no available evidence to dispute that as a fact. (3.7 million Rwandans, about 60 percent of the electorate, did sign a petition to remove the presidential term limits, the parliament passed the constitutional amendment with over 70 percent majority and it was supported by more than 90 percent of the public in a national referendum). But, while the “overwhelming endorsement” means Kagame’s decision to seek the extension of his rule is popular, it does not make it right and could go on to be his greatest undoing.

President Kagame is unarguably one of Africa’s most transformative leaders. While he deserves the stern criticisms he gets for his intolerance of political opposition, he is also worthy of the accolade he receives for leading Rwanda from being the poster boy of Africa’s failure to the shining example of the continent’s progress. Kagame’s leadership is undoubtedly among the best in a continent where many governments are plagued by corruption and ineptitude—vices that even the Rwandan leader’s toughest critics hardly ever associate with him. It is understandable, then, that most Rwandans would want such performing leader to continue and that this leader would want to fulfil the wishes of his people. But what is at stake in Kagame’s decision to elongate his stay in office is not just the satisfaction of his people’s current wishes but the preservation of his country’s path to a brighter future.

At the moment Rwanda’s future is incredibly bright. The country is largely on track to achieving its vision 2020 goals of becoming a knowledge-based, middle-income country with a highly productive private sector and very effective public institutions. Since 2001, the level of poverty has dropped by more than thirty percent, the life expectancy is double what it was in 1994, while access to basic amenities such as portable water and improved sanitation is over 80 percent. The Economy has maintained an average growth rate of 8 percent for the past fifteen years, it surpassed the 6 percent projection for 2015 by a whole percentage point and is set to maintain a 7.2 percent growth rate in 2016, nearly four percentage points higher than Africa’s aggregate growth projection for the year. All of this is Paul Kagame’s legacy, but it could soon be threatened by the extension of his rule.

Of all that President Kagame’s leadership has achieved for Rwanda, one very crucial thing it is yet to do is show that the country can continue its amazing progress without him. At the moment, everything Rwanda is all about him; he is the saviour and protector of the country, the defender of peace and stability and the lever of progress. The Rwandan machine is running on the fuel of his charisma and larger than life personality. But what happens if his life ends abruptly? Can the Rwandan institution of governance be trusted to continue the country’s widely admired path of progress and maintain its loudly praised peace and stability if, suddenly, Paul Kagame is no more? The answer is that we have no way of knowing because the Rwanda that the world has come to admire and praise has had only one man calling all the shots. The only way to test the efficacy of the institutions built by Kagame—and by extension prove durability of his legacy—is to see it thrive under the charge of someone other than him. This is why Kagame would be doing more for Rwanda by leaving office next year.

Rather than campaigning for another term in office, President Paul Kagame should be supporting a successor and convincing his people that Rwanda does not need him in office to keep moving forward. This is what true patriots do, a la Nelson Mandela. They prefer to showcase the strength of the institutions they have built rather than revel in the power that they wield. This is what informs US President Barack Obama’s statement that Africa needs strong institutions not strong men. Kagame must realize that the sustenance of societies is dependent on the former and if he truly desires that Rwanda is able to thrive long after he is gone then he should go now that his ovation is loud and that he has the opportunity to handle his exit. The popular encouragement for Kagame’s continued presidency exposes a lack of faith in the Rwanda’s institutions of the governance. This is what should actually worry the Rwandan president and it is why he should have set out to prove, with the 2017 elections, that the country can continue to march forward without him in office.

President Kagame states, in his New Year message, that he does not want to be president for life, but he actually sets this possibility in motion by choosing to go for another term in office. An extra seventeen years in power, which the amended constitution now makes possible for him, is, as a matter of fact, a life presidency. When added to the seventeen years that he would have already ruled by the expiration of his current tenure, Kagame will find himself in the group of Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gadhafi, Robert Mugabe, Sassou Nguesso, Eduardo Dos Santos, Yoweri Museveni and other African leaders of the like. Although Kagame’s reason for clinging to power may be different from that of the aforementioned rulers, the outcome will most likely be similar. He will come to see his destiny and that of his country as one and the same. This mentality is often the precursor to the destruction of the person—and or of the state–as witnessed with Gaddafi and Mugabe, to mention but a few.

One of the most important functions of term limits in the presidential system is to prioritise institutional durability over personal ambitions. President Kagame actually agrees with this, he just does not want it to apply to him. This is why the amended constitution did not do away with two term limits but only postponed its application to after his next seven year term when the presidency would become bound to two five-year terms—which Kagame is also allowed run for. Basically, the Rwandan President wants to eat his cake and have it. However it doesn’t always work that way; who is to say that Kagame’s eventual successor would not follow his bad example and amend the constitution to perpetuate himself in office. Unfortunately, it appears that Kagame has let his selfishness get the better of him as he has chosen to feed the notion of his indispensability rather than cultivate the desperately needed belief in the durability of Rwanda’s institutions of governance. By so doing, one of Africa’s most transformational leaders has gambled with all of his good works and heads or tails, Rwanda loses.