BY Ngum Ernestine
The kick off of the 2024/2025 academic year in Cameroon is gathering momentum throughout the national territory. The exact date for schools to open their doors is Monday September 9, 2024.
While the back- to- school bells are already ringing with parents criss- crossing the various markets to purchase didactic materials for their children and carrying on registration in the various schools, the situation in the restive North West and South West Regions is different. Separatist fighters have called for school boycotts, shutdown and lockdown in these two regions.
Whereas the military is advocating for effective school resumption, the separatist fighters are against. They say effective school resumption will only see the light of day when these two Anglophone Regions will gain full autonomy from La Republique du Cameroun.
The separatist fighters have engaged in their usual tactics of visiting schools that have already opened their doors for registration in preparation of the start of the school year that seems promising. They constantly visit the schools and demand for financial support.
Reports say their constant visit to some of these schools asking for financial support at gunpoint and harassing staff members has of recent attracted military attention, causing them to accuse the school authorities and staff members of siding and supporting separatist fighters who have taken up arms against them. These allegations from the military have caused many innocent school authorities and their support staff to be arrested, tortured, molested, and detained in very cruel, degrading and inhumane detention conditions by the military. Many have been declared wanted by the military and the whereabouts of some remains cloudy.
The situation of Takwa Nadine Mali, Personal Administrative Assistant to the Proprietor of Ebenezer Higher Institute of Science and Technology in Bamenda is worrisome. Her whereabouts at press time remained a misery.
Reports say she has suffered constant threats and molestation from the Ambazonia Defense forces, and unfortunately has been placed under government security searchlight for not only siding with separatists but supporting them financially.
The separatist fighters often, at gun point, reportedly demanded her financial support for defying their school boycott and shutdown orders. Takwa Nadine Mali at one point gave FCFA 50,000 to the separatist fighters for them to spare her live when separatist fighters took advantage of an unfortunate incident that occurred on August 7, 2024 and stormed their school.
Eyewitnesses say a motorbike rider was killed by a truck driver, thus causing the bikers to stage a protest and the separatist fighters took advantage of incident and stormed the institution.
The military, according to what we gathered, got hint of the incident and how money exchanged hands between the separatist fighters and the Personal Assistant of the school proprietor and immediately placed her under security searchlight.
Takwa Nadine, according to sources, under pressure from the military, accepted that she had been giving money to the separatist just to spare her life especially when the separatists usually threatened her at gunpoint.
This confession from Takwa Nadine triggered the military to launch a manhunt for her as information circulated that an arrest warrant has been issued for her. She had no other option than to escape out of the country, taking into consideration that she is caught in the web of the separatists and the military.
It should be recalled that the Anglophone crisis, something that pundits say had been brewing for several years, boiled over in 2016, when Common Law Lawyers in the North West and South West regions went on strike. They were demanding for the return of the federal system of government, redeployment of Civil Law Magistrates back to Civil Law Courts in French Cameroon, among other grievances. Not long after, teachers in the North West and South West regions also went on strike, demanding for the redress of several issues concerning the English sub system of education.
The crisis has left thousands, both civilians and security and defence forces dead, others internally displaced with some living in bushes while over 50,000 have fled to neighbouring Nigeria, where they are living as refugees. Houses, as well as villages, have been razed to the ground with extrajudicial killings being regular occurrences.
School boycotts, shutdowns and perpetual lockdowns have been the order of the day since the crisis metamorphosed into an armed conflict.