Cameroon: B’Haram ‘traumatising our citizens’

About 130 schools in the northern part of Cameroon have been shut as a result of activities of Boko Haram, which the government says is bent on “traumatising its citizens”.

Students affected by the closure have reportedly relocated to safer parts of the country to continue their education.

Monouna Fotso, an official of the country’s ministry of education, told Voice of America on Tuesday that violent raids and kidnappings by the militants were taking their toll on education.

He said regular cross-border attacks had virtually halted academic activity along Cameroon’s 500-kilometre boundary with Borno state.

Fotso listed Amchide, Fotocol, Kolofata and Kiti Matari as some of the most of affected communities.

“The diagnosis is going on if there are some which are destroyed or occupied because some of the schools were temporarily occupied,” Fotso said.

“I am telling you, we are preoccupied, very preoccupied by this situation. It is the whole government, not only the ministry of secondary education, that is preoccupied.

“At that moment also, we will bring the staff and students to new sites. The objective of this Boko Haram is to traumatise our citizens.”

In September, academic activities in some parts of the country were suspended for about three weeks as a result of occupation by Boko Haram.

Cameroon has been grossly affected by the insurgency in the north-east part of Nigeria.

While some of its citizens have been killed or abducted, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians are presently seeking refuge in the country.

Early November, the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugee (UNHCR), alleged that an estimated 13, 000 Nigerians fled to Cameroon from Mubi, a town in Adamawa after persistent attacks from the sect.

Rene Emmanuel, Cameroon’s minister of territorial administration and decentralisation, told the country’s national assembly that Boko Haram’s threat is “choking life in the country”.

He said Cameroon had been suffering the collateral effects of a conflict that does not directly concern it, adding that on a daily basis, Cameroonians living along the border with Nigeria were subjected to atrocities of the group.

Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon, has vowed to wage relentless war against Boko Haram.