Cameroon has been celebrating 51 years as unified nation with a navy and civilian parade on Nationwide Unity Day in its capital Yaounde.
For all however 10 of these years it has been dominated by only one man, President Paul Biya.
And at 91 years outdated he’s now the oldest head of state on the earth.
The nation is now much less united than ever: Hundreds of individuals have been killed since 2016 and over one million individuals displaced after a gaggle of Anglophone Cameroonians started to battle Biya’s Francophone authorities.
A few of those that watched the parade sounded optimistic about their nation’s future and welcomed the day.
“It’s to remind that we’re one individuals, it is to remind that it is collectively that we will construct and develop, it is to remind that it is collectively that we might be completely happy, it is collectively that we will dwell in peace,” stated Therese Temgoua, a Francophone Cameroonian who’s a financial institution government.
“I feel it is a completely happy day, and what I’ve seen right now reveals that Cameroon’s democracy is definitely in the fitting course,” Enobi Akepe, an anglophone Cameroonian who’s a college lecturer, stated.
However one francophone journalist described the unity of the nation as a “facade.”
“As we speak, Cameroonians agree that we live in a sure facade of unity. First, as a result of within the North-West and South-West, you recognize that there are secessionists who don’t allow us to breathe. Alternatively, we see the rise of hatred within the nation,” stated Pierre Youte, a journalist and the director of Soleil d’Afrique newspaper.
This wet season Cameroon can also be dealing with a cholera epidemic which has unfold to all of its areas and is know to have contaminated round 20,000 individuals.
The determine is more likely to be larger as solely these contaminated individuals who handle to achieve hospital are counted.
On Friday, on the eve of Nationwide Unity Day, the authorities closed down a few of Yaounde’s meals markets to stop the unfold of the lethal bacterial illness.
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