Cameroon teachers are protesting what they say is growing violence against them by both students and their parents, and the teachers are urging the government to protect them and reinstate corporal punishment. The teachers say the absence of corporal punishment is encouraging abuse of teachers. This week, several attacks on teaching staffs were reported, including one in which a teenage student fatally stabbed his teacher, in the capital.

Students shout Saturday at a government-run school in Obala, a town on the outskirts of Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, protesting the principal’s decision to destroy all mobile phones and knives seized from children Friday at the school.  One of their senior discipline masters, Narcisse Ateba, says the students use mobile phones to access social media platforms that promote violence, and they also use sharp objects such as knives to attack their peers and teachers.

He says that some parents and students will want to harass or beat him up, but he has nonetheless decided to publicly destroy the 15 mobile phones found and seized by teachers from students Friday because it is illegal to use them in classrooms. He says he will not allow students to come to school with razor blades, box-cutters and knives.

The destruction of the mobile phones and the peaceful marches to administrative offices and palaces are part of protests by teachers at Obala against what they say are increasing acts of violence against them.

This week, a 16-year-old student at the public school Nkolbisson in a neighborhood in Yaounde is accused of using a knife to stab his mathematics teacher who died of excessive bleeding as he was being rushed to a hospital. The school said the student insisted on using his mobile phone in class against the teacher’s instruction. The student was arrested and detained by police, and will be answering to charges, including premeditated killing.

Another teacher this week was battered by students in Douala for questioning why they were late to school, and yet another teacher in Douala was beaten by a parent and fell into a coma. The parent was said to be angry with the teacher’s decision to use corporal punishment on his son as punishment for making noise in class. In another incident, a student used a machete to chop off another student’s finger in Obala after a fight during a soccer match.

Elvis Yisinyuy, an official with the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union in Yaounde, says attacks by students on teachers intensified in 2015 when Cameroon prohibited teachers from beating or severely punishing students.

“When a minister says that teachers are not supposed to administer corporal punishment to students, the student will now see that he [the minister] has the right to bring disorder because there is nothing the teacher can do in class,” said Yisinyuy. “The minister should revisit the text and permit teachers to administer corporal punishment with caution.

Yusinyuy said the high wave of drug consumption by students and the inability of teachers to use corporal punishment because they have been prohibited from doing so is also responsible for the wave of attacks.

Nalova Lyonga, Cameroon minister of secondary education, says corporal punishment can not be tolerated because it is an abuse on the rights of students who are mostly children.

“What I have told the teachers is that they themselves have to make a distinction between a disciplinary case and a case which becomes a criminal case, and they should be able to report to the special police at the disposal of the schools,” said Lyonga.

Lyonga said Cameroon students are exposed to other cultures of the world because of the increasing use of mobile phones, and they gain access to social media platforms that promote violence, while neglecting the peace and unity that Cameroon traditionally preaches.

Carol Kayum, president of Reference Citizens, a non-governmental organization that promotes citizenship education, has been visiting schools in Yaounde to educate both teachers and students against violence. She says Cameroon should uphold it’s culture of non-violence to prevent the growing number of assaults on other students and teachers.

“Our cultures are rich. Parents should transmit them to children, and also there should be communication between schools and parents so that we know what our children are doing in school, and we also tell the school authorities what the children do at home,” said Kayum. “School authorities and parents should control the use of drugs.

Kayum said many people now join the teaching profession because they lack jobs, and not for the love of teaching, and as such, they are not loved by students.

The students also have complained they are harassed by some teachers whom they accuse of behaving poorly or not teaching well.

The Cameroon Ministry of Secondary Education has recorded 40 violent attacks by students on their peers, 22 attacks on teachers and 15 attacks by parents on teachers within the past  month. 

Source: VOA

Mbappe Arnold Alexandre, Student of Government Bilingual High School, GBHS, Obala in the outskirts of Yaounde, is currently receiving emergency medical attention at the Obala District Hospital after his finger was chopped off by his classmate with the aid of a machete.

The incident happened Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at the campus of “Lycée Bilingue d’Obala” (GBHS Obala) in the Lekie Division of Cameroon’s Centre Region after an altercation during a football match.

Mbappe Arnold Alexandre is seen on a hospital bed with blood oozing out of his left hand as a medic attends to him. His left thumb is shown lying in a plate close to him. He says he had a disagreement with his classmate on a football pitch and the classmate decided to engage him in a fight. The said classmate was later given a machete by other students with which he committed the chilling act. 

From his hospital bed, the victim explains: “We were cleaning up the campus given that the Delegate (apparently the Divisional Delegate of Secondary Education for Lekie Division) was supposed to visit. We were playing football in the school field when I engaged my classmate in a ‘rough tackle’ in an attempt to get the ball. I quickly explained to him that it was not intentional. But he hit me and that is how a fight started. Other students then came in. I don’t know when he got hold of a machete. I only saw when he raised the machete against me. I raised my hand to block the machete. That is how the machete cut off my left thumb. He then escaped.”

We get from the said video that Mbappe Arnold Alexandre was rushed to the Obala District Hospital by other students and medics immediately attended to him without any preconditions.

Wednesday’s incident comes few hours after a student of GHS Nkolbisson brutally murdered his Mathematics teacher. On Tuesday, January 14, 2020, Njomi Tchakounte Boris Kevin, a Mathematics teacher at Government High School Nkolbisson was stabbed to death by a Form 3 student, a release from the cabinet of the Minister of Secondary Education said.

The 15-year-old male student is now under police custody. Preliminary investigations and eyewitness accounts suggest that after days of premeditating the murder, the drama unfolded Tuesday as students watched on.

The student is said to have had a disagreement with the teacher, promising to knife the teacher Tuesday, according to testimonies from some students in the presence of the Minister. In an attempt to call the student to order at the start of his lesson, the teacher unfortunately went physical with the unyielding student who pulled out a knife hidden under his uniform and stabbed the 26-year-old teacher who later died at the Yaoundé University Teaching Hospital (CHU).  The student is said not to be a first time offender, reportedly dismissed from previous schools.

The Minister of Secondary Education, Prof. Nalova Lyonga had following Tuesday’s incident said the problem of indiscipline stands out as one of the challenges to stakeholders in her ministry. It is not known what measures government will take to stem such dangerous tides.

Source: Cameroon Info.Net

A primary school teacher suspected of having sexually abused almost all the girls in his classroom has been arrested in Douala

According to the girls’s testimonies, the paedophile teacher took them in groups. He touched them and forced them to practice oral sex to “have wisdom.”

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that the principal and a teacher of the school knew about it, but did not speak about it to avoid a scandal.

The arrest of the paedophile teacher has revived the debate on sexual abuse of minors. For the past two days, the local media have been enjoying it and internet users have condemned the teacher.

Some demand that it be delivered to the mob.

“He is a demon he deserves death for the good example of others“, writes a user.

Others believe that children are no longer safe anywhere.

“Our children are no longer safe. Whether it’s in the church, in the neighborhoods or in our homes. We have to protect them,” said another internet user.

The teacher will be brought before a judge and faces ten years in prison.

By Rita Akana with files

I should be writing about and wishing you, our readers, a merry Christmas, but one particular headline has preoccupied my mind throughout the week;news report about 200 PhD holders protesting on the streets of Cameroon, over joblessness, left me wondering whether education is still the key to success as we have always been told.

The protestors, all doctorate holders, the highest rank in academia sat on the streets and painted a picture of hopelessness, with some even getting beaten and injured by the law enforcers as they expressed their anger after missing out on jobs in government universities.

In an interview with the BBC, the desperate academics said they had been volunteering in state universities for years yet when recruitment was done, jobs went to less educated applicants, according to Nanan Herman, the spokesperson of the protestors.

But that country’s Higher Education Minister, Jacques Fame Ndongo, insisted that the recruitment was based on merit. An ordinary Cameroonian speaking to the BBC said seeing PhD holders protesting over lack of jobs is the most uninspiring development for young people in school.

Proximity is one of the aspects that guide the news media; the news must feel close and relevant to the target audience of a particular media outlet. So how close and relevant is news about PhD holders protesting over joblessness in Cameroon, thousands of miles away from Kigali?    

Well, a fortnight ago in Kicukiro, Lynette, a 20-year old neighbour of mine came to me seeking advice on a decision she was about to make. In her senior six vacation, Lynette is contemplating to suspend plans to join University and take up a job that pays Rwf250,000 (US$300) a month.

An eloquent debater with aspirations of becoming a lawyer, Lynette is a brilliant young Rwandan girl and I was curious to hear her thought process. So, I asked her to first tell me the reasoning behind her decision before I could offer my own advice on the same.

“I believe that, ultimately, education is only a means to a job and an income; if I am able to secure employment now where many graduates, I know are still jobless, I think it would be unwise of me not to take the opportunity,” she told me.

That mindset is increasingly becoming popular among young people of Lynette’s age. They look at the so called highly educated adults in their community and they don’t get the inspiration they need, to follow in similar footsteps. Many have chosen business over further education.

My friend, Emmanuel never went past senior three but he has turned his childhood passion for cars into a thriving business. Having learned how to drive at an early age, he started off as a sales agent, pointing whoever wanted to buy or sell, in the right direction. He got me my first car.

Last year, he opened his own business, a car rental service and last month, he added a fourth car, to his growing fleet. The irony is, in the same town where a senior three leaver is succeeding at business, Aimable, a recent graduate of Business Administration from a local university is still struggling to find his first job, nearly two years after he graduated.

In October, Aimable sat for his tenth job interview which ended negatively, further increasing his desperation. There are many like Aimable, not just in Rwanda but in Africa at large. According to the World Bank, there will be nearly 400 million young jobless people on the continent within a decade, if governments don’t step up their efforts in creating meaningful jobs.

“But I believe that instead of crying on the streets, these PhD holders should be creating jobs for themselves and others who are less educated; this protest is a major vote of no confidence in our African education system, especially if the most educated cannot survive without a state job,” the Cameroonian local further told the BBC.

Actually, it is not entirely true that the most educated people can’t thrive in private enterprise. On a recent trip within the region, I was checked into Grand Global Hotel, a facility that is owned by a couple both of whom are PhD holders. The two still have their formal employment in senior roles and the hotel is just an additional source of income.

Three years ago, my friend’s uncle, who had successfully run to represent his constituency in his country’s parliament was kicked out of the role after it emerged his academic credentials were suspect. Now he’s set to graduate with a degree with intentions to reclaim his position.

“So, my dear Lynette, your reasoning holds water; you indeed need that job. But as someone who has two degrees, it would be selfish of me to tell you that education doesn’t matter; get your qualifications because opportunities will always show up but they must find you equipped.”

Culled from The New Times Rwanda

In the 2020 finance bill approved by parliament in Cameroon, the operating budget of the Ministry of Higher Education has increased by XAF13.4 billion (US$22.7 million) to XAF50.7 billion while its investment budget decreased by more than XAF10.2 billion. The reasons for this budgeting are still unknown but the presentation shows a real desire for change in higher education in the country, writes Idriss Linge for Business in Cameroon.

For university research, the budget is XAF11.6 billion and the stated objective is to increase the exploitation of research results on the priority development sectors of the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper within no more than two years. However, the budget does not indicate whether the university research budget will be allocated exclusively to public higher education or whether it will be extended to the private sector.

The integration of graduates from traditional higher education faculties is also been taken into account in the budget. An allocation of XAF8.1 billion is earmarked for it. With scientific and technological fields poorly equipped and literary studies disconnected from reality, the achievement of this objective must be monitored. Finally, XAF7.4 billion will be spent to increase the number of students in technological and vocational courses.

Source: University World News

The Cameroon government has shut down more than 260 schools that had been operating informally in the country’s francophone regions.

The schools had been opened to help absorb students fleeing the separatist uprising in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

I travelled to Douala where around 100 unregistered institutions have been closed.

The pupils who have fled the fighting in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions have painful memories.

“I left Bamenda because there was a war. They were killing people and they were shooting guns,” says one student.

“We couldn’t study in Bamenda because of the crisis. Anytime we are in school, bullets falling on top our classrooms, gunshots everywhere,” another adds.

A mother, Kerin Kongdem, told me how hard it is to find a school.

“The first school was closed by the authorities because they said it wasn’t authorised. So we’ve had to find a new one this year – just to pay the registration fee was not easy for us,” she says.

The school she found was also operating illegally and is one of many that have opened to accommodate the influx of English speaking learners displaced from the north.

We visited one of the illegal schools and the owner declined to speak to us for fear of closure.

Critics of the government say it’s not offering any alternatives for the children when they close the schools.

But the official for secondary education in Doula’s Wouri district, Sylvestre Fils Moukalla, denies this.

“The Minister of Secondary Education gave Parent Teacher Associations the express authorisation to build more classrooms in various schools. These PTAs mobilised enormous resources to build new classrooms. As a result, the problem of the influx has been resolved. In the Wouri for instance, all the children have found a classroom,” he says.

Some of the newly displaced parents are turning to home tutors to make sure their children don’t have to go back a school year.

“Even to feed the children isn’t easy so I decided to get a private teacher to see how we can manage to educate these children at home. I have just pleaded with this teacher. I don’t have money. I pleaded that whatever I have, I would give him. It’s too difficult for us. We are suffering,” Claude Ngwa, a father of seven told me.

BBC

In Cameroon, five schools have reopened in the restive English-speaking regions after separatists shuttered them four years ago. The schools’ reopening comes after the government dispatched so-called “peace caravans” to discuss the outcome of a national dialogue aimed at resolving the country’s ongoing separatist crisis.

These are the voices of hundreds of school children, their parents and teachers at the campus of a government school in Tabekeng, a village in the English-speaking northwest region of Cameroon. Among the children who are happy to see their peers, teachers and institution after close to four years is 14-year-old Peter Moukeng. He says he has been longing for his education.

“I am tired of going to work in the cassava farm all the time. I want to go to school to become a nurse and help people who are wounded and suffering,” he said.

Three of the school’s 14 teachers are present. Geography teacher Godlove Tamfu says he decided to return after peace caravans sent by Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute to their localities convinced them that the government, in organizing a major national dialogue, was committed to solving the grievances of English speakers who constitute a minority in the country that also counts French as an official language.

“We are determined to send our children to school. There is nothing that is going to frighten us any longer and I think that any teacher who is ready, should come,” he said.

Tamfu, his colleagues, parents and the school children are asking for additional security around the campuses. They have created local militias to inform the police when people with questionable motives are in their village.

Markets too are become busier. Magdaleine Tebeu, a 51-year-old mother of five who lost her son and husband in the separatist war, says she decided to return to her poultry shop because her children need food. She says she cannot continue waiting for sporadic humanitarian assistance.

Tebeu says they urgently need peace because they are tired of the killings and the sufferings they have been subdued to for long. She says she cannot continue staying at home and being unable to take care of her family since her husband’s death.

The government says at least 200 of the more than 4,500 schools that were either sealed or occupied by separatist fighters have been reopened and troops have been deployed to protect the teachers and students from the separatists.

South West Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai says 30 percent of businesses that were closed in the towns have been reopened, but that the situation is a concern in most villages that fighters still occupy. He says people started returning to their businesses after the government organized the national dialogue.

“The South West region is recovering,” he said. “Many internally displaced persons are coming back to their villages. Activities are returning to some enterprises and businesses too seem to move well, so we have hope that the situation is really improving.”

Bilai says it is too soon to tell how many people have gone back to their villages. Separatists have on social media said the returns are possible because they have changed strategy and will only attack military posts and people caught collaborating with the central government in Yaounde, which the separatists describe as an annexation force.

Last month, Cameroon organized the national dialogue to solve the crisis and decided to give special status to the English-speaking regions. The government says parliament will vote this year on a law to determine the special status. The dialogue has also led to the release of more than 300 English speakers who were arrested and charged with terrorism.

Violence erupted in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in 2016 when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.  
 
The government responded with a crackdown that sparked an armed movement for an independent, English-speaking state.

The separatists began to attack schools, kidnapping teachers and students, while vowing to make the regions ungovernable. The United Nations says the conflict has killed close to 3,000 people.

Source: VOA

More than 855 000 Cameroonian children are out of school following the failure by over 4 000 schools to open for the new academic year.

Schools remain closed because of the largely English-speaking North-West and South-West regions beset by conflict between state security and separatists demanding self-rule.

More than 4 100 primary and 744 secondary schools remain closed or have ceased operating, two months into the new academic year.

Fear of violence has kept parents from sending their children to school while at the same time blocking teachers and staff from reporting to work.

Among these children, almost 150 000 have been displaced from their homes, which increases their vulnerability and trauma.

Henrietta Fore, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director, said the minors subsequently faced a higher risk of recruitment by armed groups, child marriage, early pregnancy and other forms of exploitation and abuse.

“Thousands of children in Cameroon are living in fear. They need peace so that they can resume their education and reclaim their future,” she said.

In some areas where schools have been closed, community-run learning activities have been initiated to ensure that children do not miss out further on their education.

Fore urged communities, armed groups and government authorities to protect education in all its forms and enable children to learn in a safe and protective environment.

“Education must remain above politics,” she said.

English speaking communities allege marginalization by the government of President Paul Biya, which is dominated by French-speaking Cameroonians.

Source:  CAJ News