The bilingual technical high school in Nsam, in Yaounde, stayed closed to students on 22 October 2026, the day after students vandalised buildings and equipment and threw stones at the headmistress's vehicle, the school administration said. Classes were suspended to let the administration prepare their resumption, and no date for the return has been announced.
The unrest followed the death of a first-year student, Feudjio Kidio Junior Cabrel, in a motorcycle accident on 21 October 2026. Three students were riding to school on a motorcycle driven by one of them when it crashed, the minister's communications officer, Henri Bomba, said. The driver died at the scene and one passenger was seriously injured and in a coma, he said.
The brief of 22 October 2026 reported that Secondary Education Minister Nalova Lyonga had held a crisis meeting that day with school officials and the security forces, and that no date for resuming classes had been set. The meeting followed the violence, and the school has not reopened.
Accounts of what drove the violence remain in dispute. The prefect of Mfoundi, Serge Herve Biwele Sal, said no student had been expelled over a haircut. Several students at the school said a classmate had been sent home for his hairstyle, and that they believed he was the student who died. Bomba said a pupil had been sent home shortly before the accident for a hairstyle that broke school rules, and that students wrongly linked him to the death.