Cameroon Tried to Reopen its Schools. Gunmen Killed a Police Office and Took the Teachers

Cameroon’s new school year has opened under renewed violence in the country’s conflict-hit English-speaking Northwest Region. Armed attackers stormed a teacher-training centre in Wum, killed a police officer who tried to intervene and abducted at least five teachers, according to the regional governor. The attack has revived a painful question that has followed Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis for nearly a decade: how do children return to school when education itself remains part of the conflict?

THE SCHOOL YEAR HAD JUST BEGUN

Cameroon officially reopened schools for the 2026/27 academic year on September 7.

In much of the country, that meant a familiar return to classrooms after the long break.

In the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions, however, the beginning of a school year has become something very different.

For years, separatist groups have used school boycotts, lockdowns and so-called ghost-town orders as part of their campaign against the central government in Yaoundé.

Authorities knew this year would also be difficult.

Some schools in the Northwest had even reopened as early as August, attempting to cover parts of the syllabus before anticipated separatist shutdowns began.

Then came Wum.

GUNMEN ENTERED THE TEACHER-TRAINING CENTRE

According to Northwest Regional Governor Adolphe Lele Lafrique, armed men entered a teacher-training centre in Wum, about 80 kilometres north of Bamenda.

A police officer at the institution attempted to stop them.

He was shot dead.

The attackers then abducted five teachers and took them to an unknown location, according to the governor’s account carried by AFP and Al Jazeera.

Some Cameroonian reports put the number of kidnapped teachers at six and say the head of the institution may be among them. Those figures have not yet been reconciled with the regional governor’s account.

For that reason, the most reliable formulation for now is that at least five teachers were abducted.

THE ATTACK CAME DURING A HIGHLY SENSITIVE REOPENING

The timing is what makes the incident particularly significant.

Separatist groups had announced measures intended to disrupt the reopening of schools in the Northwest and Southwest regions.

Security forces had been preparing for that possibility.

Cameroon’s defence authorities met in late August to strengthen security around educational institutions, while the International Crisis Group had warned that rising violence could interfere with the September reopening.

Yet within days of the new academic year beginning, a police officer was dead and teachers had been taken from an institution created to train the people expected to keep the education system functioning.

That is why this is not simply another kidnapping.

It goes directly to one of the central wounds of the Anglophone conflict.

THIS CONFLICT BEGAN, IN PART, IN THE CLASSROOM

Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis did not begin as an armed separatist war.

In 2016, teachers and lawyers in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions began protesting what they saw as the growing dominance of French-speaking officials, teachers and legal practices in institutions that were supposed to operate within the country’s Anglophone tradition.

The government cracked down on those protests.

The confrontation subsequently escalated into an armed conflict between separatist fighters seeking an independent state they call Ambazonia and government forces loyal to Yaoundé.

Nearly ten years later, the education system that helped ignite the crisis remains one of its most vulnerable targets.

CHILDREN HAVE LOST YEARS OF EDUCATION

The human cost has been enormous.

According to reporting citing church and humanitarian estimates, children in parts of the Northwest have lost an average of about three and a half years of schooling since the crisis began.

More than 6,000 schools have reportedly been closed at different stages of the conflict, while hundreds of thousands of children have had their education disrupted.

Teachers and school staff have repeatedly been threatened, assaulted or kidnapped.

That has created a difficult cycle.

Parents fear sending their children to school.

Teachers fear reporting for work.

Authorities deploy security around campuses.

Armed groups view those security arrangements as symbols of state control.

And schools become part of the battlefield.

SOME SCHOOLS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO OUTMANOEUVRE THE LOCKDOWNS

This year, some communities attempted an unusual strategy.

Instead of waiting for the official September 7 reopening, several private and community schools in the Northwest started lessons in August.

The idea was practical: teach as much of the syllabus as possible before separatist lockdowns or renewed insecurity interrupted classes.

Some schools have also introduced weekend classes and digital learning to recover teaching time lost to recurring Monday ghost-town actions.

The fact that schools have had to reorganise their entire academic calendars around the possibility of armed disruption says much about how deeply the conflict has entered ordinary life.

NOT ALL SEPARATIST GROUPS AGREE ON SCHOOL BOYCOTTS

The picture is also more complicated than a simple government-versus-separatist divide.

One separatist grouping, the Ambazonia Governing Council, reportedly withdrew an earlier call for a lockdown around the school reopening.

Other armed factions, however, continued to enforce shutdowns in parts of the Anglophone regions.

That fragmentation has made the security environment even harder to predict.

For parents, those internal distinctions offer little comfort.

A family deciding whether to send a child to school still has to judge whether the road is safe, whether the classroom will open and whether armed men may appear.

A CONFLICT THAT HAS LASTED TOO LONG

At least 6,000 people have been killed since the Anglophone crisis began, according to United Nations figures cited by AFP.

Hundreds of thousands have been internally displaced, while many others have crossed into neighbouring Nigeria.

Yet the conflict often receives less continental attention than wars in Sudan, Somalia or eastern DR Congo.

That should not obscure its scale.

Cameroon has been living with an armed conflict for close to a decade, and some of its longest-lasting consequences are now being carried by a generation of children whose education has repeatedly been interrupted.

THE REAL TEST IS WHETHER THE CLASSROOM CAN BECOME NEUTRAL AGAIN

The immediate priority in Wum is to find the abducted teachers and establish exactly who carried out the attack.

But Cameroon faces a larger problem.

A functioning education system requires something more basic than classrooms, books or teachers.

It requires families to believe that school is a safe place.

In the Northwest and Southwest, that confidence has been repeatedly broken.

The new school year was supposed to represent another effort to restore normal life.

Instead, a police officer is dead, teachers are missing and families are again being reminded that the conflict can enter the classroom at any time.

Nearly ten years after teachers helped spark the protests that became the Anglophone crisis, education remains one of its most visible casualties.

And until schools can reopen without armed groups deciding whether children are allowed to attend them, Cameroon’s crisis will remain unresolved in one of the places where it first began.