ADDIS ABABA, Nov 30 (NNN-ENA) – The African Union (AU) and its partners, commended recent measures taken by Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, to defuse political tensions in the West African country’s troubled Anglophone regions.
This came after a meeting between the AU Commission Chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat, and Cameroon’s president Biya, accompanied by the Secretary-General of the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF), Louise Mushikiwabo, and the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Patricia Scotland, on the current political situation in Cameroon.
The AU and secretary generals of the OIF and Commonwealth welcomed the convening of the Grand National Dialogue, which ushered in a new dynamic and which recommended, inter alia, the acceleration of decentralisation, the special status of the North West and South West regions, and the review of the education and legal systems, including the measures taken by President Biya to defuse political tensions.
Earlier last month, the West African country organised a national dialogue, to end a separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions that have been ravaged by armed separatism since 2017.
Since 2017, armed separatists have been clashing with government forces in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest, in a bid to create an independent nation they called “Ambazonia.”
According to figures from the United Nations, the conflict has killed hundreds, while more than 530,000 have been displaced internally, as a result.– NNN-ENA