Cameroon to bid to host 2016 African Nations Cup

YAOUNDE, March 5 (Reuters) Former African champions Cameroon will bid to host the 2016 African Nations Cup tournament, Sports Minister Augustin Edjoa said.

''We intend to table our application to host the 2016 edition,'' Edjoa told state radio late yesterday.

''Cameroon is a great football nation in Africa, and it is unthinkable that it should go for such a long time without hosting the tournament,'' he said.

The central African country has hosted the tournament just once, in 1972, when it was eliminated 1-0 in the semi-finals by Congo Republic who went on to win the title.

Cameroon is one of three countries that have won the African Nations Cup four times and the only African country to have been five times to the World Cup finals, where it reached the quarter-finals in 1990.

Soccer officials say the sport has suffered due to lack of top level facilities.

The two stadiums that hosted the 1972 tournament, the Ahmadou Ahidjo stadium in the capital Yaounde and the Douala Reunification stadium in the country's main port city, have deteriorated since, becoming muddy tracts in the rainy season and dust bowls in the dry season.

Construction work began on a new international standard stadium in Bafoussam in the country's West province in the 1980s but was soon abandoned.

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