In what has been the longest school hostage situation ever witnessed in Cameroon, Ambazonian fighters have finally decided to relax their grip on schools throughout the Anglophone regions, approving resumption.
The four-year wait for an effective return to school seems to have come to an end, but not without strict conditions.
In a communiqué supposedly published by persons claiming to be the ‘Amba’ fighters and shared on social media, they stressed the necessity of education to every child as a reason for the relaxation of the ban on pedagogic activities throughout the Northwest and the Southwest regions.
“We know that schools were one of our weapons, but we cannot leave our children to grow up as illiterates or be migrating from one country to the next in search of education, therefore, bring back all our children from foreign lands,” they write.
However, the restoration fighters have laid out stringent rules that must be followed for schools to effectively resume in the Anglophone regions unperturbed.
The conditions include:
“No Government Schools would reopen unless they changed names to “community schools.”
“Schools must respect all ghost town days
“No singing of the Cameroon National Anthem in the schools
“No teaching of French and French Cameroon History in the schools.”
“Teaching of Mother tongue languages to be encouraged”
“All schools to take adequate measures to protect students and pupils from COVID-19.”
The restoration fighters in the communiqué also threatened parents who would dare send their kids to government schools, saying any parent doing so would be accountable for whatever happens to their child.
