GCE board in dire throes

Who leaked 2015 GCE Exams and why?
- A Francophone now bracing up to take over as GCE Board Registrar
By Samuel Sumediang, Mile 16 Bolifamba
A few months ago, the Registrar of the GCE Board issued a public statement cautioning Cameroonians about some leaked GCE questions which were being circulated and warned candidates to steer clear of such distraction. Though the GCE questions in circulation were actually faked, the perpetrators of the leakage certainly had their aim: they wanted the public and especially potential GCE candidates to know that examination questions can leak.
    It must be said that for at least 17 years the GCE Board has been a member of an international assessment organization where methods of guaranteeing the security of public examinations are studied and practiced as a system. A system in which handling such examination malpractices as leakages are taught and can be dealt with spontaneously.
    At the moment of writing this story, the GCE Board has already dealt with the present leakage. But the question that begs itself is who commandeered this scam and for what purpose? Surely some candidates will be arrested and charged. But sometimes these are the small fry.
    However, observers say no well-meaning citizen of the former Southern Cameroon will engage himself in such an act, and with such callousness. One can excuse the Registrar of the GCE Board if he contends that there was no leakage because what happened was actually an act of sabotage. The recklessness of the act smacks of a deliberate intention to destroy and degrade a system that is acknowledged worldwide as reliable and credible in terms of standards and values.

    Since 1963 Yaounde authorities have deployed huge amounts of time as well as financial, material, and human resources  to systematically destroy Anglo-Saxon values and standards in Cameroon. The idea of the leakage is therefore to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it.
    That is why it is believed that those who orchestrated this scam only set out to expose the system, discredit it and take advantage of the confusion to impose their hidden agenda.
    At the moment of writing this story, the origin of the leakage had still not been traced, despite the fact that both the GCE Board and the various Teachers’ Trade Unions – CATTU and TAC, have been making frantic efforts to fish out the real culprits. And this writer can bet that the final report of the investigations will at best be sketchy. The real culprits will remain in the dark.
    The leakage was transmitted mostly through telephone messages (SMS). One investigator said after tracking with the MTN and Orange networks he ended up with some old telephone numbers which have remained unused for many years. And some of the names attached to some of the phone numbers were francophone names.
    Another important question could be; who benefits from the act? The person who benefits from the sabotage is capable of orchestrating it.
    This year’s leakage was akin to the one that occurred in 1996 except that it was in a much smaller scale. So, who leaked the 2015 GCE examinations?
    It should be recalled that following the 1996 leakage, the government set up a committee of inquiry led by Dr. Herbert Nganjo Endeley (RIP). In the inquiry report that was published in November 1996, the Herbert Endeley-led committee recommended that government should take back part of the running of the GCE exams. Herbert Endeley sounded this recommendation on CRTV-Radio, during the famous “Cameroon Calling” slot.
    Interestingly, a few months later, in February 1997, Dr. Herbert Nganjo Endeley was appointed chairman of the GCE Board. The pioneer chairman, Mr. Sylvester N. Dioh who had given his all, risking his career and even his life to fight for the creation of the GCE Board was thus ignominiously replaced by someone who during the long struggle for the creation of the Board was reported to have said that the struggle was a bid by the “graffis” to climb to power.
    Being the lynchpin of the government, Dr. Endeley immediately embarked on getting the pioneer members of the GCE Board council replaced with people he could easily manipulate into voting Mr. Azong Wara Andrew, the pioneer Registrar of the Board out. That is how Mr. Azong Wara did only three years at the helm of the Board and many Cameroonians today don’t even remember him at all.
    But this is the mechanism with which the government hijacked the GCE Board and today the Anglophones who are the immediate benefactors of the Board are no better-off for it.
    Since then the entire running of the GCE Board has been in the hands of agents of the essentially francophone government in Yaounde, who do not even possess an inkling of assessment knowledge or ability since assessment is not part of their educational culture. Today they regularly starve the Board of needed finance so as to be able to tele-guide and manipulate its Registrar: “C’est nous qui payons, nous devons gerer”. They have brought francophones to dominate the governing council of the GCE Board as well as the Examinations Executive Committee which is the highest academic body of the board.
    This was easy to achieve since the Anglophones who now manage the board are apologists of the government. So, having put Anglophone apologists of the regime at the helm of the Board for almost eighteen years, the government might just be thinking that it is time to move its Francphonization agenda one notch up by getting a pure francophone or a pseudo-Anglophone as Registrar.
    Like in 1996, this 2015 leakage would serve as an excuse to manipulate the anglophones and bring in a francophone as Registrar. This view of things now gives credence to recent reports by some newspapers, notably The Median, purporting that the government wants to appoint a francophone as Registrar of the GCE Board.
    The Median has learnt on good authority that the proposed Registrar in question is a lady (names withheld) who is a staffer at the Supreme State Audit department and also lectures at the University of Dschang. This lady has been a member of the GCE Board’s finance commission for over 7 years and so she masters the financial management of the Board to her finger tips. So it will be easy for her to manage the Board, except that it will be another insult to the English – speaking people of Cameroon.
    Already the lady in question has been moving around the country “monitoring” the management of the 2015 GCE Exams. She prefers to monitor the GCE about which she is at best, an adventurer, even when the exams organized by the Francophone “Office de Baccaleaureat” are constantly criticized for want of proper management and assessment.
    Observers contend that the bicultural heritage of Cameroon is a blessing and an asset; but the way Yaounde authorities are using the francophone demographic superiority to suppress the English-speaking component can only be the ingredient of potential conflict.