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Anglophone crisis
Over 3200 schools shut down in NW/SW
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The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, has announced that more than 3,200 schools are still not operational in Cameroon’s crisis hit North West and South West regions.
This is as a result of the constant bloodshed and insecurity plaguing these regions for over 5 years, OCHA published March 10, 2022.
The organisation went further to state that schools remain the greatest target by armed groups in the regions since this crisis erupted, though calls by separatists for school boycott have reduced. Parents are still very scared and skeptical about sending their children to school, especially as attacks against school staff and educational premises persist, OCHA said.
Among the recent attacks on schools in the Anglophone regions, are the burning down of a classroom at Government Practicing School Molyko Group 1 in Buea. This armed group also burnt dormitory blocks at Queen of Rosary College, Okoyong, Mamfe, in the South West region on February 10, 2022.
The attack was blamed on separatist fighters and a day later, one of the separatist, Yerima Dabney, condemned the attack and said they were against attacks on schools.
After separatists cut down on their call for school boycott, which had become the other of day, many community schools erupted in some suburbs to substitute government schools.
“On 19 January ; non-state armed fighters intruded into the premises of the Government High School of Weh in Menchum division in the North West region and abducted five teachers, OCHA recounted.The incident caused the closure of other schools in Weh. As if that was not enough, on 26 January, non-State armed fighters abducted three teachers at a Government Technical College in Keyon, Oku subdivision in the North West region.”
All these because separatists did not want government schools to function. Nevertheless, attacks have also been perpetrated on private schools such as CPC Bali, PCSS Bamenda and several others.
All these have necessitated the closing down of several schools especially in remote areas and those that are operational have kept school attendance low across the regions. At least one can say most schools in urban areas are operational in the region.
Out of 5,724 primary and secondary schools, 3,223 schools are non-functional because of the crisis. Most of the operational schools are found in urban settings.
“ In the North West and South West regions as well as in the Littoral, West, Centre and Adamawa regions hosting Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, an estimated 462,000 students need emergency education assistance.” OCHA Cameroon said, adding that, “based on the available statistics, over 210,000 displaced school-aged children within the North West and South West regions are estimated to be displaced. Only 19,650 children among them (9 per cent) are attending formal schools.
“An estimated 123,000 IDPs in the North West and South West regions need access to education. This adds to the host community children which are out of school. In the Adamawa, Centre, Littoral and West, 107,152 IDP school-aged children out of 143,160 have access to formal education,” the body’s recent report stated.