The modern state of Cameroon was created in 1961 by the unification of two former colonies, one British and one French.

Since then it has struggled from one-party rule to a multi-party system in which the freedom of expression is severely limited.

Cameroon began its independence with a bloody insurrection which was suppressed only with the help of French forces.

There followed 20 years of repressive government under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. Nonetheless, Cameroon saw investment in agriculture, education, health care and transport.

In 1982 Mr Ahidjo was succeeded by his prime minister, Paul Biya. Faced with popular discontent, Mr Biya allowed multi-party presidential elections in 1992, which he won.

In 1994 and 1996 Cameroon and Nigeria fought over the disputed, oil-rich Bakassi peninsula. Nigeria withdrew its troops from the area in 2006 in line with an international court ruling which awarded sovereignty to Cameroon.

In 2008, Nigeria completed the transfer of control to Cameroon of the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula

In November 2007 the Nigerian senate passed a motion declaring as illegal the Nigeria-Cameroon agreement for the Bakassi Peninsula to be handed over to Cameroon.

Internally, there are tensions over the two mainly English-speaking southern provinces. A secessionist movement, the Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC), emerged in the 1990s and has been declared as illegal.

Cameroon has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa. However, the country's progress is hampered by a level of corruption that is among the highest in the world.

In 1986 Cameroon made the world headlines when poisonous gases escaped from Lake Nyos, killing nearly 2,000 people.

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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – Security forces have arrested a top commander of a radical Muslim sect who is accused of orchestrating attacks in the country’s northeast that have left police, clerics and others dead, a governor said Wednesday.

Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima told The Associated Press in an interview at his heavily guarded office that officials believe a negotiated peace can be reached with the sect known locally as Boko Haram.

However, he warned that those involved in the group who continue the sect’s sectarian campaign of assassinations and bombings will be hunted down by the increasing military and police presence in his state.

“I believe the worst is over,” Shettima said, adding that five others also were arrested and are being detained.

Shettima, a governor under the regional All Nigeria People’s Party, came to power in the nation’s April elections. In the time since, Boko Haram has launched a wave of attacks in and around Maiduguri, a dusty city in Nigeria’s far northeast that borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger, as well as the Sahara Desert.

The violence became so bad that university officials canceled classes in the town, and authorities banned all motorcycles since the group uses them to launch their attacks.

Now, soldiers in flak jackets and helmets sit behind sandbagged barriers along major roads, intersections and buildings, armed with heavy machines guns.

That presence, as well as other measures, have cut down violence in the city, Shettima said. Investigation by military and the police recently saw authorities arrested the man responsible for planning and orchestrating attacks around the city, the governor said.

Five others also were arrested and are being held by military and the police, Shettima said.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege,” came to prominence in July 2009 when its members rioted in Maiduguri. The riots and an ensuing military crackdown left 700 people dead and the group’s mosque in ruins.

The group, which wants strict implementation of Shariah law across Nigeria, re-emerged last year to carry out shootings and bombings.

Boko Haram maintains a loose command-and-control structure, allowing different groups to operate autonomously from each other, Shettima said.

“They operate in some sort of cells, some sort of units that interlinked, but generally they take directives from one commander,” he said.

While mainly focused on local issues, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 car bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria that killed 23 people and wounded another 116. The commander for U.S. military operations in Africa has said that Boko Haram may be trying to coordinate attacks with al-Shabab of Somalia and north African group al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

While Shettima and others say progress is being made, residents of Maiduguri largely refuse to talk about the security situation in public. Privately, they say they remain scared of both Boko Haram and the security agencies, who have been accused of brutality in their new crackdown against the sect.

Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, is split largely between a Christian south and a Muslim north. Unemployment and unceasing poverty, coming despite the nation making billions a year from oil production, have increased resentment in recent years in the north. Boko Haram tapped into that unrest, something the governor acknowledged.

“A political problem needs a political solution,” Shettima said.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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Senegal has been held up as one of Africa's model democracies. It has an established multi-party system and a tradition of civilian rule.

Although poverty is widespread and unemployment is high, the country has one of the region's more stable economies.

For the Senegalese, political participation and peaceful leadership changes are not new. Even as a colony Senegal had representatives in the French parliament. And the promoter of African culture, Leopold Senghor, who became president at independence in 1960, voluntarily handed over power to Abdou Diouf in 1980.

The 40-year rule of Senegal's Socialist Party came to a peaceful end in elections in 2000, which were hailed as a rare democratic power transfer on a continent plagued by coups, conflict and election fraud.

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At a glance

Politics: Abdoulaye Wade came to power in 2000, ending four decades of Socialist Party rule; he won a second term in February 2007

Economy: Agriculture drives the economy; tourism is a source of foreign exchange

International: Senegal has mediated between Sudan and Chad over Darfur tensions; many African illegal migrants use Senegal as a departure point for Europe

Security: Despite a peace deal, a low-level separatist rebellion simmers in Casamance, in the south

Senegal is on the western-most part of the bulge of Africa and includes desert in the north and a moist, tropical south. Slaves, ivory and gold were exported from the coast during the 17th and 18th centuries and now the economy is based mainly on agriculture. The money sent home by Senegalese living abroad is a key source of revenue.

A long-running, low-level separatist war in the southern Casamance region has claimed hundreds of lives. The conflict broke out over claims by the region's people that they were being marginalised by the Wolof, Senegal's main ethnic group.

The government and rebels signed a peace pact at the end of 2004, raising hopes for reconciliation.

On the world stage, Senegal has sent peacekeeping troops to DR Congo, Liberia and Kosovo.

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LISBON, Portugal – An American fugitive who once hijacked a plane lived openly in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau during the 1980s under his real name and even knew U.S. embassy officials there, a former U.S. ambassador said Thursday.

Retired Guinea-Bissau Ambassador John Blacken told The Associated Press he was stunned to hear the news of George Wright’s arrest Monday in Portugal because he and his colleagues did not know Wright was a fugitive.

He said embassy officials would have taken action if they had known Wright had escaped from jail in New Jersey while serving time for murder and was wanted in a 1972 hijacking by the Black Liberation Army, a radical U.S. group, that diverted a U.S. plane to Algeria.

“All this was a big surprise, my goodness, murder and everything else,” Blacken said in an phone interview from Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau. “No one imagined him being a murderer, of course we didn’t know him that well. He seemed like an ordinary person and not radical at all.”

Blacken remembered meeting Wright socially in the former Portuguese colony in where Blacken was ambassador from 1986 to 1989.

“If we had received such a cable, we would have responded,” Blacken added. “He was known as George Wright here, and it’s strange that (U.S. officials) never tracked him down here.”

His comments raised questions about the effectiveness of the FBI manhunt for Wright, who managed to elude authorities worldwide for 41 years even while using his own name or the Portuguese variant of “Jorge.”

A fingerprint contained on Wright’s Portuguese ID card was the break that led a U.S. fugitive task force to him, according to U.S. authorities. But for decades his file was in the unsolved “cold cases” section for U.S. law enforcement.

Bracken could not recall what sort of work Wright did in Guinea-Bisseau, a tiny nation on the Atlantic Ocean. He said he remembered Wright’s Portuguese wife, Maria do Rosario Valente, better because she had worked as a freelance Portuguese-English translator. He could not remember exactly what projects Wright’s wife worked on, but said some could have been for U.S. embassy or for a Guinea-Bissau trade project he launched in 1993.

Wright and his wife were already married when Blacken knew them, and he did not know how they met or where they married.

Wright has lived for at least the last two decades in Portugal, and a photocopy of his Portuguese residency card viewed by the AP listed his home country as Guinea-Bissau.

A woman who answered the phone at the Guinea-Bissau embassy in Lisbon said no one was available to comment on whether Wright obtained citizenship from the African nation.

Wright’s arrest has generated intense media interest in Portugal. International camera crews were staked out Thursday around his pretty house on a cobbled street not far from a stunning Atlantic Ocean beach in Almocageme, 28 miles (45 kilometers) west of Lisbon.

Wright was being held in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, pending extradition hearings. He has asked to be released during the extradition process, and the court is considering his request, according to U.S. officials.

The superior court in Lisbon handling the U.S. extradition request declined to provide the AP with documents relating to the case, or the name of Wright’s lawyer. Under Portuguese law, only those directly involved in a case have access to the documents. Attendance at court sessions is also restricted to the parties involved, unless the judge grants an exception.

If a court grants his extradition to the U.S., Wright could appeal to Portugal’s Supreme Court and then to the Constitutional Court, a process likely to last months.

Blacken said he didn’t remember whether Wright registered with the U.S. Embassy in Guinea-Bissau in the 1980s. He said he had no knowledge of whether Wright obtained citizenship in Guinea-Bissau, but said it probably wouldn’t have been hard for him to do so.

“A person living here for over a period of time who wants to apply for citizenship can normally get it regardless of his background,” Blacken said.

The leftist authorities in Guinea-Bissau might have even been impressed if Wright had told them about his past, said Jan Van Maanen, a Dutch businessman who serves as honorary consul for the Netherlands and Britain in Guinea-Bissau.

At the time, the nation was a one-party Socialist state that strictly controlled the media, was very sympathetic to revolutionaries and had embassies from many Communist countries.

“In the 70s and the 80s, they used to use passports and therefore nationality as something to decorate people with,” Van Maanen said. “In our culture they use a medal or a nice-looking paper as a sign of appreciation. Here in Guinea-Bissau they used passports, saying ‘We’re so proud of you and here is your passport.’”

Wright was convicted of the 1962 murder of gas station owner Walter Patterson, a decorated World War II veteran shot during a robbery at his business in Wall, New Jersey.

Eight years into his 15- to 30-year prison term, Wright and three other men escaped from the Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, New Jersey, on Aug. 19, 1970. While on the run, the FBI said Wright joined an underground militant group, the Black Liberation Army, and lived with some members in Detroit.

In 1972, Wright — dressed as a priest and using an alias — is accused of hijacking a Delta flight from Detroit to Miami along with other Black Liberation Army members. The hijackers identified themselves to passengers as a Black Panther group, police said.

After releasing the plane’s 86 other passengers in exchange for a $1 million ransom, the hijackers forced the plane to fly to Boston, then onto Algeria, where the hijackers sought asylum.

Algerian officials returned the plane and the money to the United States but allowed the hijackers to stay.

Wright and the group left Algeria by boat to Europe in late 1972 or early 1973 and settled in France, where they got jobs and lived together, said Mikhael Ganouna, producer of the 2010 documentary “Nobody Knows my Name” about the hijacking.

But Wright left the group after breaking up with a girlfriend, and Ganouna said no one knew where he went. Wright’s associates were subsequently tracked down, arrested and convicted in Paris in 1976. The French government, however, refused to extradite them to the U.S.

Until his arrest Monday, life was quiet and sweet for Wright in the Portuguese hamlet of Almocageme, where neighbors said he lived for at least 20 years with his wife and two children, now in their 20s.

Locals knew him as Jorge Santos, a friendly man from Africa who did odd jobs and spoke fluent Portuguese. Over the years, he worked as a nightclub bouncer, a beach stall salesman and ran a barbecue chicken restaurant, neighbors said.

His wife answered the door Wednesday at their whitewashed house in Almocageme but refused to comment on her husband’s arrest.

At their front gate, a black mailbox in the shape of a barn carried the words “U.S. Mail.”

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Clendenning reported from Madrid.

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