By Januarius Asongu

This article examines the catastrophic consequences of the sustained school boycott strategy in Cameroon's Anglophone conflict. We argue that what separatist leaders termed the "broken pencil" strategy has backfired, engineering a profound case of coerced cognitive depletion. Through the systematic dismantling of education, the conflict has forced the exodus of over two-thirds of the region's professional class while depriving an estimated 850,000 children of years of schooling, creating a permanent "lost generation." This dual assault on present and future human capital has triggered institutional collapse in healthcare and justice, transformed a productive economy into a remittance-dependent periphery, and ironically accelerated the Francophone assimilation it sought to prevent. The article concludes that the weaponization of education has fundamentally undermined the societal foundations necessary for any future self-governance, making educational restoration a prerequisite rather than an outcome of political settlement.