They deceive pupils on their way from or to school and collect their textbooks to resell.

It is a serious problem that has been going on unnoticed but needs some attention. School officials say it is not only recurrent, but on the rise. It concerns thieves who have decided to get rich at the expense of unsuspecting parents and pupils. The men, it is said, take up positions near schools especially during closing hours to waylay pupils and collect their stationery. “Their target is textbooks and their mood of operation, God alone knows,” Alice, a school official in Yaounde, lamented.

Despite constantly cautioning pupils on the need to pay no attention to people who offer to converse with them on their way to or from school apart from their parents or close relations, school officials say they are still fearful. The parents of two eight and five year-old pupils of Bilingual African Star School at Montée Jouvence, Mendong-Yaounde, are yet to understand what happened to their children on Friday October, 21. It was 2:30 pm as the two children headed home from school as usual when they were suddenly waylaid by someone they say they will still recognise, but know nothing about. The two little children were taken from Montée Jouvence to somewhere behind the Gendarmerie post at Mendong where they were stripped of all textbooks in the possession of the classes four and one pupils.

Quizzed by the teacher if they were tricked with money or cookies before being waylaid, the two naive-looking children said no, recounting how the man urged them to walk faster. But what baffles the teacher is the long distance the man took the children away, abandoning them after making away with all their textbooks. “He took all the books without using any force on them,” explained Alice, the teacher. “It is the first reported case since the start of the 2011/2012 academic year,” she said but stressed that it is an occurrence that has been on the rise. The parents of the pupils started calling school officials at 6.30 pm to find out the whereabouts of their children. “I must tell you that the incident created panic when all efforts to get the children were proving futile,” the teacher stressed.

Not far from this school is “l’école primaire et maternelle les Dégourdis,” where officials told Cameroon Tribune that they opted for the saying “Once beaten, twice shy” to make sure that pupils of the school no longer fall prey to such tricks. “One of my pupils, seven-years old, rushed back to campus some three years ago, crying how his books had been seized by an unknown person,” the Headmistress of the school, Lydie Bissa recounted. The child recounted how the man called him, took his school bag and gave him FCFA 100 to go buy some biscuits so they can share. The child came back and realised the man had disappeared into thin air with the bag and all its content. She said since the inception of the school some years back, they have recorded close to ten cases and since then, better measures have been put in place to put a stop to the seizure of school books from pupils by unknown people.

“Fingers are all pointing at vendors of fairly used books,” school officials say. They argue that the thieves act on behalf of vendors because of their readiness to buy and resell textbooks without necessarily verifying the origin. Notwithstanding, some road side vendors in fairly used textbooks are vigilant. Nicodeme Folefac, explained that though he has never been victim, he takes precautions when buying books.