Children at the Government Primary School Limani dance with joy as they meet each other in class for the first time in several years.

Cameroon has re-opened 40 schools on its northern border with Nigeria that were sealed four years ago because of threats from Boko Haram insurgents. But while students are happy returning, many of their teachers are absent and have been replaced by troops from the Multinational Joint Task Force still fighting the Islamist group.

The children’s school in Limani is one of the forty near northern Cameroon’s border with Nigeria that authorities reopened this week, citing improved security.

Cameroon closed around sixty schools in the area beginning in December 2014 because of the threat from Boko Haram.

The Islamist militant group, whose name roughly translates as “non-Islamic education is a sin,” had launched an all-out assault on villages near the Lake Chad area.

Cameroon says hundreds of Boko Haram fighters attacked and torched schools, including the Limani primary school.

Ibrahim Nassourou was nine years old when the school was shut. He and his parents fled to a neighboring village where Nassourou was unable to attend school.

He says when he was told that their school in Limani had been reopened he shouted with joy because he can now again persue an education.

Cameroon authorities are touting the absense of a major Boko Haram attack for the past year and are urging parents to return their children to the re-opened schools. Troops are protecting the schools, they say.

But parents are reluctant to trust promises of safety. Only about 20 percent of the students have come back.

Teachers are also noticeably absent.

At the Limani Primary School’s Class Five, troops from the Multinational Joint Task Force have traded their weapons for teaching manuals and chalk.

Cameroon-born staff corporal Blaise Fonkon says teaching is part of their social outreach program.

“We have [a] humanitarian line of operation. In that humanitarian line of operation, we have of course the school situation. Through their school, if they actually know what they are supposed to do here, they will be engineers, they will be teachers, they will be doctors and I am sure that they will change this country,” Fonkon said.

Classroom teacher Edison Abunaw says despite assurances of their safety, most of his teaching colleagues do not wish to return.

And between Boko Haram’s attacks and kidnappings, and villagers hiding in fear, he says, the fate of many former students is still not known.

“We used to have about 500 to 600 pupils, but we have about two hundred [now]. Most of the parents, they don’t tell us what happened to their children so we are confronted with situations where we cannot easily explain what happened to the child,” Abunaw said.

Abunaw notes classes only started September 3, so he says it is too early to say if more teachers and students will return.

Cameroon is giving absent teachers two weeks to come back to their jobs.

Mayor of Fotokol town Abouzari Mahamat says the government has promised to rebuild schools that Boko Haram damaged.

He says the engineering corps of the Multinational Joint Task Force, which is fighting Boko Haram, has promised to construct new classes and repair those that were destroyed. Mahamat says, thanks to the presence of the troops, peace is returning and children can now go to school.

But Mahamat acknowledges that reconstruction has been slow because contractors also worry that fighting could return.

VOA

Issa Tchiroma Bakary, the Biya Francophone regime’s Minister of Communication has condemned the latest self defense efforts carried out by the Ambazonian Restoration Forces on Ground Zero. Mr. Tchiroma who is a chartered member of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate noted that Southern Cameroons self defense forces have committed “imprescriptible” crimes since 1 September 2018, to discourage students and teachers from going about their business.

Cameroon Concord News understands the Yaounde regime ordered its troops to assassinate young Southern Cameroons boys and girls believed to be members of the Ambazonia Restoration Forces accusing them of wanting to disrupt the smooth running of the new school year 2018-2019 in some localities of the southwest and northwest, shaken since October 2016, by socio-political demands.

The Ambazonian Interim Government said in a statement that they were not in the position to guarantee the safety and security of pupils and students within Southern Cameroons territory. Fighting recently claimed the life of the rector of a public school in the Ngo-ketundja constituency.

On Monday, September 3, 2018, 6 students from the Presbyterian Girls Secondary School in the locality of Bafut in the Mezam County were reportedly kidnapped as well as the director of the said college by soldiers dressed in French Cameroun army uniforms.  On Tuesday, September 4, 2018 around 2 pm, armed men stormed Melim High School in Kumbo, Bui County, vandalized the administrative buildings and chased away teachers and pupils present in the school.

The so-called Cameroon government spokesman revealed that an attack on St. Joseph College in Sasse, Fako County was repulsed by the French Cameroun defense forces. Our sources in the Northern Zone hinted that the bursar of Government Technical College Bui who was going to his place of duty was attacked and his effects carried away.

The Ambazonian Interim Government has protested to the United Nations and the African Union against these barbaric acts and serious violations of Southern Cameroonians rights by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime in Yaounde.

By Sama Ernest

Fighting between troops loyal to the Biya regime in Yaounde and Ambazonian Restoration Forces has forced pupils and students in Southern Cameroons to stay away. Most of the schools are now deserted. Some highly placed Anglophone officials serving with the Francophone government announced earlier that schools in Southern Cameroons will resume for the 2018/19 academic year. But shockingly Southern Cameroons parents found their streets in several towns and cities in the newly created Federal Republic of Ambazonia had been turned into a battle ground and thousands have fled bloody confrontations between Cameroon’s armed forces and the Ambazonian defense groups.

A senior government official in Buea told Cameroon Concord News that it will be impossible for the children to resume school. “People are suffering, the situation is bad” he said and sued for anonymity. Heads of academic institutions are advising students not to return to school. “I cannot advice any child to go to school in the North West and South West because it is dangerous,” an obviously scared Principal told our correspondent in Bamenda.

The 2018-2019 academic year has effectively started in Francophone Cameroun but uncertainty looms in Southern Cameroons. Those who strongly advocated for schools to resume in the Southern Zone met with a stone wall as Buea, the chief city recorded a massive ghost town operation with shops sealed and streets deserted.  We gathered that there was a heavy exchange of fire on Sunday evening between gun men and Francophone security forces in Mile 16.

The ghost town operation put in place by the exiled Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has swept through the entire Southern Cameroons. Fighting is intensifying in the Bamenda County with reports of a separatist attack on the Bafut gendarmerie brigade situated at Agyati.

Sporadic fighting was also reported in Bambili involving the some French Cameroun police officers stationed in the area. The story was the same in Bambui and Sabga.

By Sama Ernest and Rita Akana

AMBAZONIA PARENTS ASSOCIATION (APA)

Motto: Education for Edification

The position of the Ambazonia Parents Association on School Resumption.

Fellow Ambazonians.

After due consultations with our Executive Members, and a cross section of Ambazonian Parents on Ground Zero on the burning matter of school resumption, we arrived at the following resolutions:

1) Congratulate the Parents on the ground, and the Ambazonian people in general for standing strong now for two years, in defence of the inalienable rights of their children to life, liberty, and to quality education, that will emancipate and edify them…, and against the colonial and destructive slavery education that has been imposed upon our children now by La Republic du Cameroun for so long.

2) Unanimously and unambiguously support the position taken by the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, cautioning Parents on the ground to put the safety and security of their children first, but allowing them to make the decision on school resumption or non-school resumption, based on their assessment of the security situation on the ground.

3) Condemns the Genocidal violence being perpetuated against our people, the massacres, the burning of our villages, the acts of terror that has forced hundreds of thousands of our people, including children into the bushes, and making it impossible for them to get an education in a safe and secure environment. Condemns the rapes, the killings, and the lootings that have left our people impoverished and unable to lead normal lives, and unable to feed, clothe, nor send their children to school.

4) Encourage Parents, and the people of Ambazonia to remain steadfast and resolute, and to continue to look up and work closely with the Interim Government of Ambazonia, currently led by Acting President Dr. Samuel Ikome Sako. To rest assured that the Parents Association continues to stand firmly in support of our people and the Interim Government, and that great efforts are being made to Free our country from colonial oppression and slavery.

5) Stand by our Abducted President, Sisiku Julius AyukTabe, and our other leaders in the dungeons of Yaounde, as well as the tens of thousands of refugees in Nigeria and other countries, the hundreds of thousands of our people in ths bushes, our Amba boys
valiantly defending our people, our children, mothers, sisters, and our land from the Genocidal occupation forces of LRC, knowing that we’re together.

6) Pay homage to all our heroes, and martyrs who have fallen at the forefront of this struggle, and extend our profound sympathies to their families and loves ones, while also extending our wishes of speedy recovery and comfort to those who have been wounded and maimed. Their supreme sacrifices will be remembered, and sanctified by the people of Ambazonia for generations to come. May God be with them.

7) Urge all Ambazonians to know that we’re in a life and death struggle to liberate our country from the fangs of the devil, and to restore the God-given Freedom and Independence of our country, the Federal Republic of Ambazonia / The Southern Cameroons. That we should therefore stand like one man and never waver, for the darkest hour is before dawn, for Ambazonia has Risen to Fall no more!

Short Live the Struggle!

Prince Akere’Nwei Divine
(President General)
Ambazonia Parents Association

Francis Itoe Ebongue
(Secretary General)
Ambazonia Parents Association

Fabian Mokongo Elangwe
(Communications Secretary)
Ambazonia Parents Association

Done in Buea, Federal Republic of Ambazonia
This day of our Lord, September 1st, 2018

With Cameroon’s school year set to resume September 3, a group of students and their parents arrived Wednesday at the Government Bilingual High School in the northwestern town of Batibo.

Deserted for more than a year, the school is in a terrible state — infested with insects, and with grass growing through the floor.

Hundreds of schools in the area have been abandoned since armed separatists attacked schools and other public buildings two years ago.
The insurgents, who are fighting for an independent, English-speaking state, saw the schools as legitimate targets because they forced the French language on locals.

The violence saw thousands of students either move to other school districts or, more commonly, stay home.

Grace Nembo, 42, was not deterred. She came to ensure her 13-year-old son gets an education. She said it was a parent’s duty “to see his or her own child educated so that that child can be edified to be able to face the society and the world at large.”

The separatists had demanded that schools remain closed until all government troops left the English-speaking northwest and southwest provinces.

Warning to parents

This week, the separatists announced on social media that parents could begin sending their children back to area schools if they wished. However, the message warned that the separatists were still fighting Cameroon’s military and could not guarantee school safety.

The governor of the northwest region, Deben Tchoffo, sought to assure parents that security measures were in place to protect their children.

“I still give firm instructions to the administrative authorities, to security services, to take their responsibilities to accompany the resumption of classes,” Tchoffo said.

Peter Ngah escaped the fighting in Batibo and said he was not confident his child would be safe there. He will instead send his son to an English school in the French-speaking town of Bafoussam, where there is more security.

“I am ready for my children to go to school, but at the same time, we are very skeptical following the security situation,” he said.

The United Nations says more than 200,000 people have been displaced by the violence in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions. A majority of them are school-age children.

VOA

MANYU ADVISORY COUNCIL REJECTS ANY NOTION OF SCHOOL RESUMPTION IN MANYU, NGUTI, MANYEMEN AND TALANGAYE.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Manyu Advisory Council as The Supreme Authority of Manyu and its ancestral areas (while Manyu is under illegal occupation by France-backed La Republique du Cameroon), completely and strongly rejects any notion of school resumption in Manyu, Nguti, Manyemen, and Talangaye of Southern Cameroons.

The unanimous decision comes after the Council concluded that schools in our homeland are simply unsafe death traps for our young men and women and even teachers who were supposed to teach. We have all witnessed multiple casual killings with pleasure of our youths in recent days and weeks and months but we shall not make it even easier for the terrorist army of La Republic Du Cameroon to kill more of our children and youths in their classrooms.

We therefore encourage parents to teach their children at home or even in the bushes in English as this is far better than parents crying by the grave site of their murdered children after they would have been killed by terrorist forces of France-backed La Republic Cameroon.

Our young people  should go to school and feel safe; unfortunately Schools in Manyu, Nguti, Manyemen and Talangayeare simply not safe as they have become a target for kidnapping and slaughtering by the Francophone terrorist army of LRC.

In the coming weeks an educational committee shall be formed to support and initiate education in the bushes just as the Catholic Church has followed our people to the bushes.

Sincerely,

The Manyu Advisory Council

The Ambazonian Communications Secretary, Hon. Chris Anu has asked Southern Cameroons parents and guardians to keep their children and wards at home saying no public or private school is safe for any academic activities in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Chris Anu in an audio message aired today said French Cameroon government forces have placed nearly all primary, secondary and high school campuses in Southern Cameroons under lock and key and many of the premises are serving as military barracks for the invading Francophone troops.

The Interim Government  spokesman noted that the current French Cameroun military operations deep inside Ambazonian territory posses challenges in the country and has made it difficult for the Ambazonian Interim Government to guarantee the safety and security of Southern Cameroons pupils and students.

The Ambazonian Communications Secretary further pointed out that the issue of back to school is the sole responsibility of the parents. Chris added that French Cameroun forces have been targeting Southern Cameroons teenagers.

By Rita Akana

In a massive show of solidarity and support the Executive President of the Sasse Old Boys Association, SOBA UK over the weekend in Chesford Grange Hotel unveiled a one thousand pound (£1,000) donation to the ex-students of Saker Baptist College, ExSSA UK in their latest string of charitable support to alumni associations.

Cameroon Concord News Group understands that the money will help expand and improve ExSSA UK’s activities including their theme to engage and elevate the education of the girl child. In a captivating speech delivered by the much respected SOBA UK President Mr Ayuk Akoh-Arrey, the Sakerettes were reminded of the long standing connection between the students of Joseph’s College, Sasse and Saker Baptist College Limbe. President Akoh-Arrey told the sell-out crowd of over 300 guests that Sasse College and Saker Baptist share a long standing history, and that their cause to support the education of the girl child was a good cause, and he congratulated the National President of ExSSA, Ms Irene Tamajong and her organising committee for putting up a great convention.

The SOBA UK President made public the names of the many SOBANS who attended the event, among them, the former CPDM UK Section Vice President Comrade Alfred Bate Bawak, Chief Bate of MECA Leicester and Hon. Eko Ngwashi, along with members of the SOBA UK Executive team in full attendance.

The President of ExSSA UK, Irene Tamajong assured the guests at the convention that the money will be spent on good causes. Speaking to our UK correspondent immediately after his presentation, President Akoh-Arrey said SOBA UK will continue to make significant donations to support its members and charitable causes. He said the key target for SOBA UK now is to deliver a very successful Convention on 22nd September 2018 at St George’s Park, the Home of England National teams.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The school boycott adopted in Oct 2016 was a strategy by the Consortium to force the hand of French Cameroun to reverse its policy of assimilation and destruction on the Anglophone Sub System of education. It was a necessary strategy at the time.

However 2 years on, the Apartheid regime of Paul Biya of French Cameroun has no immediate intention to stop or reverse its Apartheid Policy.

The current crisis in Ambazonia is a political crisis-that of Decolonization and Annexation. Which if French Cameroun had good intentions it would have been resolved at the Negotiations Table not in the bushes with the barrel of the gun.

The current war environment makes it very difficult for schools to function normally and effectively. Some whole communities have been deserted. Some destroyed and burnt by Apartheid soldiers of French Cameroun.

And this has not stopped. We have seen some photos of French Cameroun snipers in Ambazonia. This sets the stage for the killings of innocent school children as they attempt to go to school.

Yes it’s very easy to say children should return to school. How do you guarantee the security of these children in the current war environment? This is the subject we should be discussing including the security of children while they attend their daily school routine.

The security of children is not a subject for emotional minds, but a subject for level headed, pragmatic and rational minds. How will children attend schools in Lebialem, Belo, Kupe, Batibo, etc where bullets are constantly flying in the air.

As a parent will you send your child to school in the named LGAs above. That is the challenge we are facing. What about all the villages that have been scorched (As contained in the report by Agbor Balla’s CHRDA – Centre for Human Rights and Development in Africa).

Schools can never resume effectively with bullets flying in the air. Unless there is a cease fire from both sides schools will continuously be disrupted.

I know some will quote Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan etc. Which also have ongoing wars but yet children are still studying.

So yes schools should carry on, however parents should note the following;

1) The Security risk of sending your child to school each day.

2) The potential of your child being injured or killed while in school or in the process of attending school.

3) The curriculum will only be partially completed due to the disruptive nature of the school environment.

4) Prepare for the trauma which some children will face as a result of the violence that they may experience as result of the war.

These are some of the challenges parents and teachers should brace themselves for.

Both sides – French Cameroun troops and Amba Boys should respect the Geneva Convention as schools should be protected.

But from past and recent experiences we all know who the defaulters of the Geneva Convention are. French Cameroun of course.

My dear Ambazonians, these are the challenges we face as to schools continuity as we continue to fight for the restoration of the autonomy of Southern Cameroons.

By Oswald Tebit