Southern Cameroons

Stand up against the “colonization” of GCE Board
By Ajong Manfred Oweni in Buea
Beginning from 1996, we started chronicling in various newspapers, the surreptitious manner in which La Republique was taking over the GCE Board. And as always, in doing so they do not hire mercenaries, but use only pure blood citizens of Southern Cameroon. As soon as they suddenly appointed late Dr. Herbert Nganjo Endeley chairman of the GCE Board, the machinery was already in place. They starved the Board of much needed operational funds but vulnerable people of Southern Cameroons instead vilified the only person who has led a successful revolution in this country, Mr. Azong Wara by claiming that he embezzled the money. Up till today nobody has ever been able to substantiate those claims but the effect was that the very teachers who helped to get the Board created, now made the task of taking over the GCE Board easy for La Republique by vilifying the very soul of the Board in the person of Mr. Azong Wara Andrew.

    So the regime brought in their own hirelings in the persons of Nganjo Endeley and Dr. Omer Weyi Yembe. If you were asked what role these two men played during the three-year battle to get the GCE Board formed, you will never get a positive answer. Others worked for it but Endeley and Yembe were sent by the enemies of the Board, La Republique, to come and grab the fruits.
    Remember it was Dr. Yembe who brought along the much dreaded BAC and Probatoire exams which is setting so much confusion in anglo-saxon education in this country.
    In late November – early December last year, a newspaper article titled “The Cameroon GCE Board – 20 Years of Stagnation?” predicted that the take-over of the Board is about to become complete in the sense that the present authorities in the persons of Peter Alangeh Abety (Chairman), Monono Ekema Humphrey (Registrar) and Denis Ndasi Mofor (Deputy Registrar for Exams) have transferred some of the activities and services of the Board to the delegations of education so as to satisfy their civil service friends and colleagues. The prediction arrived at in that article was that the GCE Board’s Regional Office in Bamenda was about to be closed down. And lo! During the marking of this year’s exam in Bamenda, the Deputy Registrar for exams (gleefully) informed the staff who were working in Bamenda that the Registrar has written to the Minister asking that the Board’s Regional Office in Bamenda be transferred to the Delegation of Education. This is not all; the present regional coordinator of the GCE Board in Bamenda is due retirement in the next few months. The regime, in collaboration with its surrogates at the Board, the Registrar and his deputy, would simply leave the position vacant and allow the delegation to continue doing the work of the GCE and then eventually find that the delegation can as well do what the GCE Board was doing. So the Bamenda Regional Office would be closed down and then strategies would be switched to attacking the GCE Board’s main headquarters in Buea. Then the three year battle (from 1991 to 1993) to get the GCE Board created would have been wasted, thanks to the sycophancy of a few citizens of Southern Cameroons and the complacency of the rest of us.
    The regime in Yaounde continually starves the GCE Board of required funds necessary for it to accomplish its tasks. This is in a bid to make the Board as ineffective as possible so as to justify their intention to transfer its services back to where it was wrenched from. That is how the GCE Board finds it difficult to pay teachers, pay its rents, build its own structures, employ sufficient staff so as to carry out its functions effectively, etc.
    The new GCE Board headquarters in Buea is a not what it was designed to be under Dr. Yembe’s tenure. But when the francophones saw what Dr. Yembe was proposing (an imposing edifice rising up four floors) they said we (Southern Cameroonians) wanted to build our own ministry of education. And that is how they watered down the whole project and ended up with the half-baked product that you see now.
    People of Southern Cameroons, for 43 years you have never had a minister of education; but more than that, the regime in Yaounde stole Mr. John Fru Ndi’s electoral victory in 1992 because he is a citizen of Southern Cameroon. On top of that, they have just recently declared (according to leakages from the Prime Ministry) that an Anglophone can never be president of this country. So are we going to allow these marauders continue treating us like vassals? We are all aware that all the colleges and universities they are creating in our territory are only an expansion of their empire because they become populated and governed only by their citizens. They are now teaching our students Mathematics, Geography and other subjects in any kind of language except English. We have written so many articles decrying these wanton acts of subjugation but La Republique and its Southern Cameroonian surrogates ignore us. The Teachers’ Unions have sent memos to Paul Biya and to various Southern Cameroonians who serve in Paul Biya’s cabal but no one is responding. Even the opposition parliamentarians have addressed this issue directly to Paul Biya. But in his characteristic nonchalance, he gave a deaf ear.
    The people of Southern Cameroon are left with no choice but to take back their education. Unlike the francophones we have a clear-cut anglo-saxon education culture based on a system of values, standards and traditions.  So we must fight for the preservation of “a good thing”. The only problem is the attitude of the regime of Paul Biya to always exercise its domination of power over issues and values.
    Suppose the people of Southern Cameroons stood up now like one man and demanded the creation of an Educational Council (as it obtains in all anglo-saxon societies around the world), what would Paul Biya and his Anglophone cohorts do? Would they bring out the army (in the argument of force) to intimidate and brutalize us as they did in 1983 and 1993; or would Paul Biya for once be a gentlemen, engage in the force of argument so as to make this country respected around the world? A Lutta Continua!