Cameroon: Teachers Join Forces to Free Kidnapped Colleague
A collective of teachers in Cameroon are clubbing together to pay off the ransom of their kidnapped colleague.
Bouba Samson – a French teacher employed at a bilingual school in Bamenda, Northwest Region – was abducted at the end of August.
The kidnappers, suspected to be English-speaking separatists, reportedly contacted Samson’s wife and demanded a ransom fee of six million CFA francs.
In response to the Cameroonian’s police authorities’ silence on the matter, a 20 000-strong body of teachers – called the Collective of Outraged Cameroonian Teachers – are reportedly making a joint monetary contribution in order to free Samson.
Jacques Bessala Ngono, a spokesperson for the collective, said: “This is about freeing a human being who is the hands of people who could kill him at any moment.”
Samson’s abduction comes almost a year after two staff members were kidnapped from the University of Buea in Cameroon’s southwest region.
Their kidnappers called themselves the Amba Boys – separatists who are trying to establish an independent, English-speaking state in defiance of the French-speaking government.
