The Covid-19 pandemic had forced the various world sports institutions to postpone to this year certain events planned for 2020. Among them, the Euro football and the Olympic Games, but also the African Nations Football Championship (CHAN ), which was originally scheduled to take place in April in Cameroon. It is finally from Saturday January 16 and until February 7 that this tournament will be held, created in 2009 and in which only players playing in Africa participate. Sixteen teams have qualified for the final phase, including the host country, and four sites have been selected: two in Douala, one in Yaoundé and one in Limbé, in the English-speaking region of the South West. Several of these venues will also host matches of the African Cup of Nations (CAN), scheduled for early 2022.
“Cameroon will be closely watched and we want this CHAN to be a success. Everything is ready, whether in terms of sports, hospital or hotel facilities. For the country, this will serve as a trial run before the CAN », Explains Michel Dissaké Mbarga, inspector general of the services of the ministry of sports and director of the tournament since November 2019. Benjamin Banlock, the general secretary of the Cameroonian Football Federation (Fécafoot), is also very optimistic, while Cameroon had been criticized for delays in the work: “I invite those who expressed doubts to come on site. Everything is ready for the CHAN and everything will be ready for the CAN. “
However, the country is faced with two major challenges, little to do with sports issues. The first is obviously the health situation. The stadiums will be open to the public while almost everywhere in the world football is played in front of empty stands. Cameroon allows itself, because with 27,300 positive cases for Covid-19 (including 451 deaths) since the appearance of the virus in March, the epidemic “Is relatively well mastered”, believes Michel Dissaké Mbarga.
Threats from the separatists
The tournament director nevertheless specifies having “Wanted to take maximum precautions”. Thus, a maximum capacity of 25% of the capacity of each stadium has been set and tickets will not be sold on match day. “But we will obviously have to wear the mask and respect the distancing measures. We have made the volunteers who will be present in the stadiums aware of the need to enforce the rules. Spectators who do not comply will be expelled. “ This 25% gauge could “Be revised upwards or downwards after the first round, depending on behavior”, adds Benjamin Banlock.
The other challenge concerns more particularly the South-West region, the scene of a political and armed conflict – which has already claimed 12,000 lives – between the State and the English-speaking separatists. The latter sent letters to the African Football Confederation (CAF) and FIFA at the beginning of January, in which they claim to want to attack foreign delegations and supporters concerned by the meetings in Limbé, where five matches of the first round as well as a quarter-final and a semi-final are scheduled. The threat revives in some the memory of the attack carried out during the CAN 2010 in Angola by the separatists of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC). Aiming at the bus of the Togolese delegation, it had left three dead and nine injured.
Bernard Okalia Bilai, the governor of the South West region, was reassuring, saying that “All the necessary arrangements have been made “. Limbé has already hosted matches of the Women’s CAN in 2016 “And everything went very well “, also recalls Michel Dissaké Mbarga. In Cameroon, supporters seem to be much more worried about the level of the national team, battered during a tournament organized in Yaoundé in early January by Niger (1-2), Zambia (0-2) and Uganda ( 1-1). But don’t we say that Indomitable Lions are never as dangerous as when they seem at their lowest?
