Cameroon officials have shut down over 130 schools near the Nigerian border over Boko Haram concerns, education administrators reported Tuesday.
The Muslim extremists have increasingly targeted boarding schools, college campuses, secondary schools, and other educational facilities across Nigeria. Cameroon students near the border have already moved towards the interior.
"The diagnosis is going on if there are some [schools] which are destroyed or occupied because some of the schools were temporarily occupied," Ministry of Secondary Education representative Monouna Fotso told Voice of America.
"I am telling you we are preoccupied, very preoccupied by this situation. It is the whole government, it is not only the Ministry of Secondary Education, that is preoccupied."
Boko Haram is radically against Western education and influences, and Cameroon officials are considering relocating schools that are near the Borno state border so that students can continue to learn.
"If there are some localities where the situation is so bad, at the level of the government, we will relocate some schools," Forso explained. "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."
Amchide, Fotocol, Kolofata and Kiti Matari have been severely affected by Boko Haram attacks, and Ashigashia officials reported that 30 per cent of their schools closed when the terrorists occupied the city two months ago.
The militants held Ashigashia for three weeks before the Cameroon military dislodged them.
Cameroon must also grapple with thousands of displaced Nigerian and Central African Republic citizens that have fled across the border. Cameroon's Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, said that Boko Haram is crippling their country.
