Cameroon officials have said that at least 130 schools have been closed as a result of Boko Haram attacks on schools near its northern border with Nigeria.
The country’s secretary in the ministry of Secondary Education, Monouna Fotso told Voice of America (VOA) that regular cross-border attacks had virtually halted academic activities along Cameroon’s 500 kilometre boundary with Nigeria’s Borno State, the stronghold of the militant group.
“Schools are a favourite target of Boko Haram, whose name means ‘Western education is sin,’” Fotso said, adding that due to insecurity, the country’s authorities have advised students and teachers to relocate.
“If there are some localities where the situation is so bad, at the level of the government we will relocate some schools. 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,” Fotso added.
The border areas which have been hardest hit are Amchide, Fotocol, Kolofata and Kiti Matari. Ashigashia reported 30 percent of their schools had to close two months ago when Boko Haram occupied the town for three weeks before being dislodged by the Cameroon military.
Despite dispatching troops and cooperating with the Nigerian government, Cameroon has increasingly become both a staging ground and a casualty of Boko Haram’s five-year violent campaign to create a caliphate in northern Nigeria.
The country’s minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, also told the agency that the Boko Haram threat is choking the country.
He said Cameroon is suffering the collateral effects of a conflict that does not directly concern it, and that every day Cameroonians living along the borders with Nigeria are subjected to Boko Haram atrocities, including assault, rape and murder.
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