Cameroon will hold a presidential election on October 7

Cameroon will hold presidential elections on October 7, announced Monday the head of state Paul Biya in a decree issued in 1965

elected in 1982, is the oldest and the oldest of Africa. President in office, but has not yet said he will make an offer for another term, although his supporters are already urging him to put his name forward.

The vote will take place in a context of growing problems in the oil-rich state, which faces insurgency by English-speaking separatists in the west and bloody incursions of Boko Haram jihadists into the North.

The main opposition, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), has already nominated its candidate, Joshua Osih

Among the candidates are Akere Muna, lawyer and former vice-president of Transparency International, and Maurice Kamto, leader of the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (MRC).

Earlier on Monday, the inhabitants of Buea, the main town of South West mostly English-speaking. Regio n, firing broke out in the administrative district and lasted several hours, marking a new escalation of the separatist crisis

Anglophones, irritated by the discrimination perceived by the majority francophone, launched a campaign for greater autonomy in 2016.

Biya adopted a hard line, rejecting requests to return to the federal structure of Cameroon and ordering a crackdown after the separatists issued a symbolic declaration of independence on October 1.

According to a government report last month, separatists have killed 74 soldiers and seven policemen since the end of 2017, when more than 100 civilians have died "in the past 12 months."

The UN says 160,000 people were displaced and 20,000 took refuge in neighboring Nigeria

during this time, suffered incursions from neighboring Boko Haram jihadists.

Since 2014, the group has killed 2,000 civilians and soldiers and kidnapped According to an badysis by the think tank of the International Crisis Group (ICG), about 1,000 people [ad_2]
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