President Obiang Nguema Visits

The official visit of the Equato-Guinean leader today translates the ambition to keep flame of friendship with Cameroon burning.

The President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and wife, Constancia Mangue de Obiang arrive in Cameroon today on an official visit. The one-day visit of the Equato-Guinean presidential couple accompanied by an important delegation provides another occasion for Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea to review their long standing relations.

The visit which in the real sense of the word, translates the determination of the two Heads of state to continuously oil historic relations between the two brotherly nations, will be marked by discussions at the summit between Presidents Biya and Obiang Nguema on the one hand and the two first ladies, Mrs Chantal Biya and Mrs Constancia Mangue de Obiang. The August guests are expected to touch down at the Nsimalen International Airport at midday from where they will move to the Yaounde Hilton before proceeding to the Unity Palace for real business to begin.

The visit comes barely two months after the Cameroon-Equatorial Guinea enlarged Joint Commission created in 1977, met in its eighth session in Yaounde during which significant cooperation and diplomatic agreements were reached between the two nations. As by the spirit of the agreements, Equato-Guineans expressed the wish to see their educational institutions modelled after what obtains in Cameroon, have companies from Cameroon win more contracts in Equatorial Guinea and intensify commercial links between both countries. Prior to that, both countries announced the effective take-off of a project to train a number of Equato-Guinean policemen in Cameroon.

Visits of this nature are certainly important and sometimes obligatory for countries that are bound by nature to live together as neighbours. This wave of thought has historically threaded in the minds of the two Heads of State who from every indication know the necessity of keeping the flame of brotherhood burning. Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea in effect, share much in common beginning with geographical proximity and cultural similitude. In the same vein, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea are all members of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), the African Union and the United nations among others.

Conscious of these similarities and the necessity to enable the people of the two nations live in harmony, the two leaders have taken as resolution to multiply visits and constantly oil the machine of peace. The last of such for President Obiang Nguema to visit Cameroon was during the celebration marking 50 years of Cameroon's independence dubbed Africa 21. Such frequent visits readily testimony to the fact that good friends are those who constantly visit each other.

And as nature would have it, both nations have fathomless advantages to draw from their cooperation. Since the creation of diplomatic relations at ambassadorial levels between the two nations on October 27, 1968 as well as the creation of the UDEAC and eventually the CEMAC sub-regional organisations, the clear objective has been to foster meaningful ties. And this has not been limited only to bilateral level but also at multilateral, notably within countries of the Central African sub region.