In Nigeria and Cameroon, Secessionist Movements Gain Momentum<br />In Cameroon, 17 people were killed in recent days during protests in English-speaking areas, where some residents<br />have called for splitting off from French-speaking parts of the nation, Amnesty International said.<br />In Nigeria, a movement in the southeast seeking independence from the rest of the country has also gained steam — 50<br />years after a civil war over the same issue left one million people dead in one of the region’s deadliest conflicts.<br />It’s doable." Hostilities with the central government in Nigeria’s southeast have simmered ever since the Nigerian civil<br />war started 50 years ago, when a self-declared Republic of Biafra tried to break off from the rest of the nation.<br />As the country wondered about the health of Mr. Buhari, who has spent more than 100 days in London receiving medical treatment for a mystery illness, people poured<br />into the streets in the southeast to support a movement to create a new state or break off into a separate nation, as the area tried to do in the late 1960s.<br />John Fru Ndi, the chairman of an opposition party that has the support of many English-speaking<br />people in the country, estimated that as many as 30 people were killed.<br />Last month, Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, declared a separatist group, the Indigenous<br />People of Biafra, a terrorist organization and unleashed a military offensive in the region.<br />In Cameroon, the military has been deployed in English-speaking areas, where the<br />government blocked social media websites for at least the second time this year.
