The song “Oh Teachers” by Cameroonian singer Aunty Clo blasted through speakers Tuesday at Yaounde’s city council courtyard with about 200 teachers listening.

Aunty Clo’s lyrics are about how teachers should be respected and protected as they are the ones tasked with molding young minds for the future and Cameroon’s development.

Most of the teachers attending the protest, held to mark U.N.-declared World Teachers Day, say they fled the Boko Haram insurgency in the north or fighting between the government and English-speaking separatists in the west.

Fifty-two-year-old Peter Tar, a spokesperson for the teachers, says instructors working in Cameroon’s conflict zones endure a lot of suffering.

“Teachers are being persecuted every day, every hour. Some have been brutally killed. Others, brutally deprived of some parts of their bodies, forced out of their areas to become internally displaced persons. Some are now jobless. My heart bleeds for these teachers. I pray peace should return,” he said.

Tar said he escaped from a government school in the town of Ndop after separatist fighters kidnapped him.

The protest was organized by the Cameroon Association of Teachers in Crisis. Tar said the teachers want the international community to know that they are suffering.

More than 40 teachers have been killed in Cameroon since 2017. At least 300 others were abducted and freed only after their families paid ransom.

Hundreds of schools in the north and west were destroyed or shut down.

Valentine Tameh, president of the Teachers Association of Cameroon, says teachers sometimes have no option but to flee the violence.

“It becomes, really, a sorry spectacle, seeing teachers running with their families, some losing their lives, some fleeing to areas where they cannot do anything to sustain themselves. We are appealing that everyone who is engaged in a kind of war should understand that teachers and the milieu in which they operate are sacrosanct and fighters should understand that, without teachers, the community is preparing for a kind of dark ages,” Tameh said.

Cameroon’s Minister of Basic Education, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, says the military is protecting schools, teachers and school children in regions where there is a security crisis.

He encouraged teachers who fled insecurity to return to relatively peaceful areas for the sake of the children in need of education.

“We’ve just recruited 5,000 teachers to support those who have already been in the field. When you (teachers) go to teach in a region of Cameroon, you must know that it is your country. The children, who are there, are all our sons and daughters, so we have to do everything necessary for them to have a safe education because they are the actors who tomorrow will continue building Cameroon,” Etoundi Ngoa said.

The United Nations declared October 5 as World Teacher’s Day in 1994 to honor educators for the important role they play in economic development and other sectors.

Source: VOA

Distant machine gun fire interrupted a speech by Cameroonian Prime Minister Dion Ngute on Tuesday during a visit to the capital of the restive North West region that Anglophone separatists had vowed to disrupt.

A video on social media shows Ngute trailing off mid-speech as the crowd turns and exclaims at a burst of far-off shots. In other footage, a suited man in a flak jacket puts his arms protectively around the premier as they are escorted away by security forces.

It was not clear who was responsible, but the incident underscores the insecurity plaguing Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions since insurgents seeking to form a breakaway state first took up arms against the military in 2017.

There was no immediate comment from the prime minister’s office.

A source at the office of North West’s governor said the shots were fired in the mountains outside Bamenda, the regional capital, and the prime minister was unharmed

“The situation was brought under control,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

Before the shots rang out, Ngute told a cheering crowd that he was there to help resolve the crisis. “It is time that this suffering ends for us all. This is what brought me here,” he said in pidgin English.

North West is one of two regions where English-speaking secessionists seeking to form a state called Ambazonia have been battling government forces over perceived marginalisation by Cameroon’s French-speaking majority.

Both sides have committed atrocities in a conflict that has killed over 3,000 and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.

Ahead of Ngute’s visit to Bamenda, the so-called Ambazonian Defence Forces ordered residents to stay at home, saying that anyone participating in meetings with Ngute did so at their own risk.

“There will be planned military operations to challenge the colonial prime minister’s visit,” they said on Monday.

The separatists were not reachable for comment.

Last week, the U.N. humanitarian agency (OCHA) said it had been obliged to halt its activities due to a lockdown imposed in both regions by a non-state armed group banning all movement, work, or social activity between Sept. 15 and Oct. 2.

There had been a notable increase in violence, kidnappings and attacks against those defying the lockdown, including teachers and students, it said.

Source: WSAU

In recent weeks, Cameroon’s anglophone separatists have carried out a series of deadly ambushes against the Cameroonian army which have been on a bigger scale than anything yet seen since the start of the conflict five years ago. The army high command wants to change strategy but has yet to say how it intends to proceed.

At least three Cameroonian soldiers were killed on Thursday in an ambush by separatist fighters in the country’s restive Anglophone region of Northwest, according to local and security sources.

Separatist fighters ambushed soldiers who were on patrol in Bamali village of the region and opened fire on them, according to a military official who asked not to be named.

A video of the ambush filmed by separatist fighters went viral on social media in the Central African nation.

Clashes between government forces and separatist fighters were also reported early Thursday in at least seven parts of the region, according to security reports.

Reported by Africa Intelligence and Cameroon Concord News

Southern Cameroons Interim Government Secretary of the Treasury Tabenyang Brado says French Cameroun prime minister ’s presence in the Ambazonian homeland is a cause for serious concern, stressing the importance of continued resistance without interference from Amba surrogates.

Speaking exclusively to Cameroon Concord News Hon. Tabenyang Brado on Tuesady, added that the people of Southern Cameroons are already suffering from a series of problems created by the  more than four year old war, “the presence of the so-called prime minister Dion Ngute is a matter of serious concern for the Ambazonia Interim Government and the great people of Southern Cameroons.”

“Vice President Dabney Yerima announced it loudly that Ambazonia Restoration Forces will not allow certain pro French Cameroun actors to have any influence on the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, the actors include Dion Ngute,” Tabenyang added.

“Southern Cameroons cannot tolerate any new French Cameroun teleguided innitiative. The people of Southern Cameroons have reach a consensus that Yaounde no longer have legitimate authority over Ambazonia affairs,” the top Southern Cameroons front line leader pointed out.

In his October 1 message, the exiled Ambazonian Leader Dabney Yerima said the interference of Southern Cameroons pro Yaounde agents in Ambazonia is a source of discord and damage, warning that all those Southern Cameroonians who suffer from the illusion of trusting in the one and indivisible Cameroon and a military solution to establish security in Ambazonia are already getting slapped.

By Chi Prudence Asong

The Prime Minister, who was in the region to promote CPDM-made peace, was hauled away like a piece of luggage by his body guards when Southern Cameroonian Defense Forces came to arrest him for preaching heresy in a foreign country.

Though Joseph Dion Ngute hails from Southern Cameroons, he has been living in East Cameroon in exile where he is serving the East Cameroonian government as a Prime Minister Consultant.

It should be underscored that Joseph Dion Ngute is being looked for in Southern Cameroons and there is a death sentence hovering over his head like a Sword of Damocles for the multiple crimes he has committed against his own people, including treason and murder.

After two years as Cameroon’s Prime Minister, Dion Ngute has worked very hard to achieve one major thing – marrying a very young Beti woman who is carefully sedating him with sex and spying on him at will.

It should be recalled that Dion Ngute is a chief in his village, Ilouani, in Ndian Division but like most South West chiefs, he is seeking asylum in East Cameroon and he is among the thousands of internally displaced Southwesterners.

By Fon Lawrence in Bamenda