There is disorder and panic in the town of Mutengene, South West region, following the alleged shooting to death of a youngster by a police officer

Reports from Mutengene say police officers apparently on patrol, met a group of boys playing draughts at a small business avenue in the locality. They are said to have surrounded the boys provoking a brief argument. We learned the youngsters succeeded to slip out of the circle of police officers.

Eyewitness accounts say one of the police officers caught up with one of the fleeing boys who turned around demanded the reason they are being hunted down.

“It is in the course of the argument that the officer shot the youngster at point-blank range. A woman who suffering from mental derangement is the one who shouted out to the other boys that one of their friends has been hit by the gunshot they heard. They all ran to the scene and found him lying down lifeless;” a source told Journal du Cameroun.

We gathered the officer and all others who were hunting down the boys became the hunted as they fled in diverse directions. The irate youths carried the corpse of the youngster from the Quarter 2 neighbourhood to the police station at Buea Road Street. All the police officers at the station equally vamoosed at the site of the corpse-carrying youths.

The youth, our source said, freed all detainees at the police station and set two vehicles ablaze including that of the commissioner of the district.

Government school set on fire

The youths, apparently feeling unsatisfied with their retaliation, headed to the Government Bilingual High School Mutengene and set fire on the Francophone section of the school. The incident prompted a massive deployment of security officers to the locality- including student police officers from the Mutengene Police Academy. We learned several shots were fired into the late that night.

It should be noted that an uneasy calm reigns in the North West and South West regions. Students and teachers of the Francophone sub-system of education have shun an on-going protest that have paralysed the education and judiciary sectors in the regions. The protest against a perceived overbearing influence of French in the English-speaking regions is not respected by Francophones.

The angry crowd, our source said, claimed that the francophone students who have been going to school ever since the strike started three months ago, have been provoking  their English-speaking peers. The protest leaders have continued to insist that the protests must remain non-violent. Unfortunately, at least five government bilingual schools have been partly burnt down in Anglophone regions since the protests started on November 21, 2016.

We learned that after burning down the school, the youths swore they will not take any form of provocation. They equally swore to block the parade of the AFCON trophy in the region.

Journal du Cameroun contacted for comment, Senior Police Superintendent

Prierre Nith, who is the commander of the Mutengene Police Academy. He would not speak to us, as he insisted only the regional boss of the General Delegation for National Security had the locus standi to give out information on the incident. The regional police boss was however unavailable for comment.