Meeting in Bamenda on August 28, 2020, the teacher trade unionists said the total number of attacks during this period is likely much higher. In the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 academic years, they say no fewer than 311 students and 164 teachers were attacked by armed men fighting in the North West region.

Aside pitching their tent in some school premises, the armed attackers have damaged, destroyed, or pillaged school infrastructure, materials and/or supplies.

During attacks, armed men killed, beat, abducted, and threatened education workers; intimidated and threatened students; set classrooms, offices, and teachers’ residences on fire; shot at windows, doors, walls and roofs; set off explosives; burned school documents and academic materials; stole, damaged, and/or destroyed school employees’ property; and pillaged supplies from canteen warehouses and storerooms.

The teachers say they can no longer stay quiet and watch armed men go on with wanton, uncalled for persecution of education actors and devastation of the educational legacy of the Anglophone regions.

Their words: “Preoccupied by the unprecedented moral decay and descent into chaos in our communities, characterized by horrible afflictions – stigmatization, physical attacks, wanton kidnappings, torture, callous killings and inquisition-type mutilations and decapitations – the leaders of the different teacher trade unions met in Bamenda on 28/08/2020 and resolved to make their voices heard.”

They noted with heavy hearts that since the onset of the crisis, the price that the educational community had paid was huge, as the following two-year sample from just one of the two regions indicates:

“In the 2018/2019 School Year, the number of students who were either attacked, kidnapped, tortured and/or shot at was 287, while in 2019/2020, the number dropped to a non-negligible 24!

“Correspondingly, the number of teachers in the same bracket was 97 in 2018/2019 and 67 in 2019/2020.

“During the same spell of two years, no (zero) student deaths were recorded in 2018/2019, while 02 were recorded in 2019/2020, one of these deaths coming immediately after the student was kidnapped, tortured and released.

“Correspondingly, 28 teachers died in 2018/2019 (eight of them were murdered and the rest from every indication had their deaths provoked by incidents related to the ongoing insurgency) while 36 died in 2019/2020 (03 murdered and 12 dying suddenly with every indication that threats, attacks, abductions that went with the payment of huge ransoms and the resulting panic provoked their untimely deaths). Suffice here to mention only the names of the last three victims – Messrs. Song Paulinus, Pipayu Ibrahim Ritre, and Njamshi Nelson Ndi, this latest shot on 18/08/2020 – all of them killed in callous circumstances, to the stupefaction of a Bamenda apparently in stupor.

“Finally, 428 schools in 2018/2019, like 37 in 2019/2020 were either partially or wholly looted, occupied by armed gangs or partially or wholly burnt down. These figures are breathtakingly horrifying and give the impression of a slow but inevitable descent into a hellish form of existence, which will leave in its wake repercussions untold.”

Teachers say they cannot continue to stay mute in the face of these heinous acts.

“We therefore join our voices to those of all persons of decent breeding to condemn all those acts that undermine basic rights and human dignity, which have resulted in the destruction of property, assault and battery, abductions and horrible killings,” the teachers said in a press release signed by five of their leaders.

The teachers appeal: “That in the name of the God/Allah who owns all life, such inhumanity of man to fellow man, meted especially by brother on brother, should stop forthwith, because such wanton assaults, destruction and killings only breed rancor and deep-seated hatred thus perpetuating the mayhem.”

They sent out a resonant prayer that all compatriots promoting the ongoing insurgency from bases at home and abroad should, each in their individual conscience, resolve to stop playing “tingods” toying with and wrecking lives like is the case now because the consequences for future community interaction are alarmingly apocalyptic.

They urged the government to continue to explore ways of reaching out to the parties in the ongoing conflict and of addressing the grievances that provoked the crisis in the first place. Governance is always ongoing, with a development-oriented vision, they said.

The teachers called on the military and security to continue sourcing for ways to actually secure the beleaguered populations and communities and to make tact and restraint their philosophy in every action of theirs, especially vis-à-vis the civilians who consciously or unconsciously play buffer that will at least show the difference between the professionals they are and the rag-tag armed men they are called upon to tango with every now and then.

Corporate demands by Common Law Lawyers and Anglophone Teachers led to protests in November 2016. The street demonstrations later morphed into ongoing running gun battles between state forces and armed separatist fighters in the predominantly English-speaking regions, leading to untold destruction of human lives, their habitats, and livelihoods.

Given that they were at the beginning of the current crisis, the teachers resolved as follows:

“That all those standing in the way to give peace a chance and allow deprived, nay, sacrificed children return to school, and their teachers to resume their functions in an atmosphere of peace and security, given that education is the springboard for any form of development and because school boycott as a grievance-expressing measure cannot go on and ad infinitum.

“Yes, permit us to assert categorically that education remains the key to success and human development. From the onset of the strike, we did not contend that our educationally system was totally bad; we indicated a number of lapses and biases that needed to be done away with for our enviable system to continue to gain in quality and ascendancy. We equally assert that a good number of those issues have been righted and we cannot assess the good faith and equity of their implementation to good measure if we do not allow for schools to resume fully.

“The civilian populations in general have suffered immeasurably. But especially the teachers have paid the supreme price – from salary suspensions especially of comrades in the private and denominational sections, to the social media “adopt a teacher” hype that proved to be scam unparalleled to the present stigmatization, attacks, kidnappings, tortures, and killings. Any society that spites and persecutes its teachers calls upon itself calamities untold.

“Therefore, we deign to add our angst-tormented, nay, our pained voices to the other rational voices calling for reason, decency and tolerance to reign. Dear brothers and sisters, having tasted and felt/seen the enormity of conflict in its internecine ramifications, let us collectively give peace a chance.”

Done in Bamenda on August 8, 2020, the press release from the teacher trade unions is signed by: Semma Valentine, Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, CATTU; Afu Stephens Kwah, the Presbyterian Education Authority Teachers’ Trade Union, PEATTU; Ayeah Emmanuel, the Baptist Teachers’ Trade Union, BATTUC; Gilbert Lakinyu, Catholic Education Writer Trade Union, CEWOTU; Tameh Valentine Nfon, Teachers Association of Cameroon, TAC.