Cameroon: Incensed Bakassi teachers protest over unpaid dues, take Delegate hostage

Some furious teachers from the Bakassi Peninsular on Wednesday, July 26, took the Southwest Regional Delegation of Secondary Education by storm and took the Delegate, Johnson Apah Itor, hostage over unpaid salaries.

According to the teachers, the Government through the Regional Delegate has been making fake promises to pay the money, but has never honoured any of its promises.

When the teachers stormed the South West Regional Delegation of Secondary Education, the two police officers who have been guarding the Delegations following the degeneration of the Anglophone Crisis were helpless.

The Delegate quickly called in re-enforcement from the police to arrest the situation. 

According to some of the teachers, they have been working under very difficult conditions in the Peninsular, which is characterised by the scarcity of basic commodities and also threatened by pirates.

“We are surprised that after the so much noise Government made to the international community, that there were special incentives for teachers in Bakassi.

“We have been working for the past 11 months under perilous conditions, moulding young Cameroonians, yet we have not received even a dime from the over FCFA 80 million arrears that we are being owed by the Government. All we get is fruitless promises,” one of the teachers fumed.

They blamed the Regional Delegate for not being proactive.

“The Delegate doesn’t care much about our plight because he is sitting in an air-conditioned office, he lives in a Government house and has service car with all sorts of allowances to make life very comfortable for him and his family, while many of us are dying every day in the high seas all in the name of serving our nation”, he said.

The teachers swore that they were going to pitch their tents at the Delegation until their money is paid.