From Cameroon to Nigeria, separatist conflicts keep children out of school | Conflict news

Limbe, Cameroon and Eket, Nigeria — It’s just before 3pm on a weekday and 17-year-old Paul Ngwa* is returning home from his job at a phone and watch repair shop in Limbe, a coastal town in Cameroon’s southwest region. Tired and sweaty, he is about to start his second job as a washerman in a nearby village.

“There’s a lot to finance,” says the teenager, who earns 3,000 to 7,500 Central African francs ($4.72-$11.79) a week from both jobs to help support his family of four. Ngwa gives most of his income to Florence*, his 45-year-old single mother, who earns CFA 4,500-6,000 ($7-9) a week selling vegetables and fish by the roadside.

Despite the joint income, the family finds it difficult to survive and sometimes gets into debt.

Meanwhile, Ngwa’s sisters, aged 13 and 15, started farming to help the family and pass the time.

Many years ago, 3pm was the time when many students in Limbe would return home after a day of study. But since the separatist crisis erupted in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions in 2016 – with some of the violence targeting schools – such routines have disappeared for many students, cutting them off from education.

Fear of an attack forced the Ngwa siblings to abandon their studies, he told Al Jazeera. “Many [children] they now work hard labor jobs, while others live with the trauma caused by security forces and separatist groups who attacked them, killed their loved ones, raped or kidnapped them,” he said.

Since the conflict began, thousands of people have been displaced and killed in Cameroon’s English-speaking southwest and northwest regions, and nearly 500,000 children will be out of school in 2024, according to UNICEF.

Meanwhile, 150 km (93 miles) away by sea from Limbe, in the southeast of neighboring Nigeria, another separatist uprising rocking the Igbo-majority region is also putting children at risk.

Breakaway agitators in the region are enforcing frequent stay-at-home orders targeting businesses and schools; this has fueled fear among teachers, parents and students, fueling apathy towards education as security concerns continue to grow.

Rejoice*, a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Orlu, southeast Nigeria, whose last name we are not using for security reasons, told Al Jazeera of her ordeal. In 2023, her father banned her from school after separatist fighters killed her best friend and her family during the sit-at-home campaign, she said.

Earlier that year, Rejoice’s 43-year-old mother suffered a fatal asthma attack on another day when she was sitting at home. Neighbors, fearing reprisals for breaking the law, refused to help transport her to the hospital. “I was alone with her,” she said, recalling the day her mother died.

“Anyone could be killed, it’s horrible,” Rejoice said, her voice shaking as she spoke. “This is our silent cry: we want our peace back, I want to see my friends at school again.”

Underreported trauma

Children in separatist conflict zones across Cameroon and Nigeria are suffering under-reported trauma as violence spreads across borders, experts say. To understand the situation, Al Jazeera spoke to more than 40 children, aid workers and education administrators in the affected regions.

Common are stories like that of the Ngwa in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon, affected by massacres, kidnappings, sexual violence and displacement, or of Rejoicing in the southeastern region of Nigeria, where fear and uncertainty from violent separatist conflict has disrupted education and economic stability.

Mark Duerksen, a research fellow at the African Center for Strategic Studies, told Al Jazeera: “Modern separatism in both countries is driven by economic injustice, political disenfranchisement and heavy security measures.”

In Cameroon’s Anglophone regions, separatists have long protested marginalization by the Francophone majority, which has controlled government affairs since the bilingual regions were united in 1961. In 2016, demands for political autonomy grew, with lawyers and teachers rising up in peaceful protest against the central government over the imposition of francophone systems and norms.

The government responded with a violent crackdown, including the arrest of hundreds, and by 2017, an armed separatist movement announced it would create an independent Anglophone Cameroon, called Ambazonia.

Similarly, Nigeria’s separatist crisis dates back to the early post-independence years.

In 1967, fueled by political tensions, ethnic divisions and violence against the Igbo community, a military separatist leader declared the country’s old eastern region an independent state, Biafra. But the civil war that followed led to secessionists defeat and its integration into Nigeria.

In 2012, Nnamdi Kanu, then 45, who was charged with treason in Nigeria, relaunched a separatist campaign against the alleged mistreatment of the Igbo, using media outlets to promote secessionist messages. His trial allowed Simon Ekpa, 39, who faces terrorism charges in Finland, to lead a faction that has escalated the movement into violent clashes and deadly consequences for those defying stay-at-home orders in the region.

Teachers ‘beaten’, schools ‘burned’

At the beginning of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, many civilian casualties resulted from indiscriminate violence, abuse and large-scale raids by government forces. “I miss my father’s voice,” said Ngwa, whose father went to work in Bamenda, northwest Cameroon, but mysteriously disappeared during a government raid in late 2016.

Following Ambazonia’s declaration of independence, separatist rebels increasingly pushed out Yaounde-controlled institutions, particularly schools, which they saw as tools of francophone discrimination and oppression in English-speaking regions.

“In 2018, during classes, we heard gunshots and were terrified. Separatist fighters came to close the school; they beat up some teachers and burnt the building,” said Ngwa.

“That was the last time I went to school.”

A joint study by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) found that diaspora funding for separatist movements has weakened due to increased violence against civilians and tighter government controls on financial transfers. The separatist rebels then resorted to extortion, smuggling and the imposition of so-called “liberation taxes” to fund their operations. Out-of-school children were not spared in the exploitation.

In 2023, Anita*, a 17-year-old Cameroonian refugee now living in Calabar, Nigeria, was working on a farm in Mamfe in southwestern Cameroon when separatist fighters arrived. They demanded a liberation tax, but the farm owners were not present. Angry and disappointed, they kidnapped seven children, including Anita, and some adults and took them to the hills, she said.

“We spent two days with the separatists, and during that time two other girls and I were brutally raped,” she said.

As of 2016, there were more than 6,000 Anglophone Cameroonians killed in separatist conflicts, including many children, with more than a million displaced to other parts of Cameroon and Nigeria, the human rights group Human Rights Watch said.

‘Worrying’

In Nigeria, sit-at-home orders in the southeast of the country were popularized by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a separatist group, to protest or mark certain events. In August 2021, the orders increased as the group demanded the release of its leader, Kanu, who was arrested in Kenya and extradited earlier that year. Until 2022, while Kanu remained in custody, rebels loyal to Finland’s Ekpa continued to carry out orders.

“When these orders are issued, fearing violence, parents force schools to obey them, which disrupts the school week,” said the principal of a state secondary school in the southeastern Nigerian city of Nsukka. “A few barely return to school a few days ago or stay at home permanently,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking anonymously to avoid retribution.

As of 2021, the separatist conflict in southeastern Nigeria has claimed at least 1,155 lives, although critics say the death toll is higher. Although recent data on the number of children who did not attend school due to the conflict are not available, a study an estimated 664,000 children have been forced out of school by violence and gender inequalities – an alarming figure for a region once known for its high student population.

“The psychological impact and interconnectedness of the conflict is what keeps school children out of class,” said the principal of a school in Nsukka.

Rejoice, a student from Orlu, told Al Jazeera that three girls from her neighborhood and six of her schoolmates had moved to safer areas in southwestern Nigeria to continue their studies due to fear of violence and uncertainty. “Without relatives or friends outside the region, you either stay at home or risk going to school,” she said.

For Stanley Onyemechalu, a PhD candidate working at the intersection of cultural heritage and the legacies of the Nigeria-Biafra war at the Cambridge Heritage Research Center at the University of Cambridge, while some of the reasons for separatism in the 1960s persist, support for secession in southeastern Nigeria is waning.

“Today, the movement is mainly driven by the diaspora, which is vocal [aggressive] minorities, exploiting problems like unemployment, misinformation and overall government incompetence to create an atmosphere of fear,” he said.

“It is a worrying sign that school children are affected by these security issues,” Onyemechalu said. “However, it is still unclear how much of the chaos is actually being fueled by separatists or other actors often referred to as unknown gunmen.”

‘I gave up’

Experts say a variety of factors indicate that separatist struggles in both countries are unlikely to succeed.

“First, Cameroon [President] Ngwa Biya and Nigeria [President] Bola Tinubu are staunch allies of the French and Western governments – their support is guaranteed in the days of wild separatist escalation,” said a Yaounde-based public analyst, who requested anonymity because of the Cameroonian media ban about discussing Bija.

Additionally, internal fighting among Anglophone separatist groups has increased by 83 percent, while the targeting of civilians has also increased by 83 percent, with the number of armed gangs increasing in southeastern Nigeria, ACLED data shows. With these trends, analysts say the initial support the separatist fighters received from the people has dropped drastically.

“We should make no mistake, the separatist ideology still resonates, but no one will hold their future in the hands of violent agitators,” said the Yaounde-based analyst.

In safer parts of Cameroon’s anglophone southwest, schools are gradually reopening but remain largely dysfunctional. In the northwest, local residents and school administrators told Al Jazeera that due to separatist violence, most education centers still remain closed, even as children across Anglophone regions struggle with poverty, malnutrition and limited access to basic needs.

For Ngwa and his two sisters, education is no longer an option. “I gave up,” he told Al Jazeera, complaining that in addition to the high cost of basic necessities for the family, he also has the added burden of paying taxes to liberate armed groups.

“I have to work to ensure my family survives,” said the 17-year-old, “because this place seems like a forgotten and cursed land.”

*Names have been changed or withheld to protect the safety of those who spoke to Al Jazeera.