Dismantling Anglo-Saxon heritage:

Who wants to francophonize the GCE Board?

Observers say because sycophants of the regime have been maintained in perpetuity at the helm of the board, lethargy has infested the once promising institution and has taken a comfortable sit in it. Quite unfortunately!

Samuel Sumediang, Mile Four – Victoria

Humphrey EkemaMonono, GCE Board Registrar for life?

The title above might suggest that the GCE Board has gone into some comatose state, far from it. Rather, it speculates that the GCE Board might go the same way as those other state corporations (SNEC, SONEL, NSIF, CAMTEL, SNH you name them) which this regime has allowed one person to manage as their personal property for donkey years, thereby giving no room for adaptation, improvement and innovation.  This is to demonstrate that like any other state institution, once the regime starts meddling in it, it goes completely caput, especially when it is an Anglophone institution.

                That is clearly what is about to happen to the CDC. Whether people believe it or not, the hidden policy of the francophone regime of this country is to ensure that nothing exists that can be identified as Anglophone; which means that in the long run, the marking of the GCE will also no longer be an Anglophone preserve.

                It has been clearly demonstrated in several newspaper articles that the hijacking of the GCE Board by this government started since 1996, only two years after the Board started its work. And once this government takes over an institution, it goes moribund. The GCE Board was created to have financial and legal autonomy; but more so, it was made to have flexibility so that leadership should be continually undergoing renewal so as to ensure innovation and creativity. These are essential requirements of modern day business and governance. Whether this government knows anything about modern management and governance requirements and techniques or not, it just would not let it happen any where here.

                That is why they can allow one person at the helm of the state for 34 years and counting. Even Paul Biya himself who is guilty of sponsoring this lethargy, and is benefitting from it, has stated that Cameroon does not make any progress because of lethargy. Citizens are just as lethargic as those in power. Everybody looks only for every means (including crooked and illegal), to become rich. Nobody thinks about the commonweal.

                Going by the rule, the chairman of the GCE Board’s council is supposed to announce the vacancy of the post of Registrar at the end of every three years. Candidates would then apply and the council would meet and vote a new Registrar who would then be appointed by government.

                Unfortunately, this has not happened for several years, and as a result one man has been at the helm of the board for 11 years and counting. Now that everybody has forgotten this simple rule which endows the institution with autonomy, we are waiting for the government to appoint a new Registrar without passing through this process. The truth of the matter is that the francophone mentality gives no room for public institutions to have autonomy and independence. For them any state institution is managed just like an arm of government. This is contrary to the Anglophone culture.

                It is even being rumored that the present Registrar, Sir HumpreyEkemaMonono (PHD) had since May this year, indicated his readiness to go, if only for legality to be reinstated in the board. But we are told that Yaounde authorities have asked him to hang on till later on.

                It is believed that government must have been shocked by the Registrar’s offer to resign, partly because they are not comfortable when people resign this because they expect everybody to be a political sycophant.

                The point must be made also that it is an open secret that the government had tried to replace Monono with a francophone in March of 2015 but retracted, when Anglophone Teachers’ Syndicates learnt about the devilish plot and promised to raise hell. It is understood that the government only backed down for the time being, while contemplating the next destructive scheme.

                If the Board has become moribund, it is also because the chairman is one of those sit-tight Anglophone CPDM militants who was absolutely livid with rage when he heard that Monono had indicated to Yaounde his readiness to go. This is because, going by the gentlemen’s’ agreement which was built into the Board at its creation, the positions of Chairman of the council and Registrar should alternate between the North West and the South West regions. So the present chairman knows that once the sitting Registrar goes away, he too must go because the position of Registrar should now go to the North West.

                So the lethargy at the GCE Board is partly because the current chairman is unwilling to give up his post and that pleases the Yaounde regime that needs more time to find a “suitable” Anglophone sychophant or an outright francophone to take up the position of Registrar.

                The lethargy at the GCE Board is reinforced by the fact that Anglophones go about bragging about “their GCE Board” but they care less about these abnormalities affecting it. As mentioned before, if things go on like this, before long, francophones will become the Chief Examiners and Examiners of the GCE. And francophones will give the explanation that most of the candidates for the GCE are francophones (see the way their children crowd all Anglophone primary and secondary schools) so they must control every aspect of the GCE. And Anglophones will just be watching and letting go everything.

                At the moment, going by the manipulations of this government and what they are making credulous Anglophones to believe, the only person who will be qualified enough to take over the management of the University of Buea in the next two or three years will be a francophone. And many Anglophones don’t mind it.

                That up to now, the GCE Board has not honoured its financial obligations to teachers who marked its recent exams is another aspect of just how moribund the supposed cherished institution has become. This particular aspect of payment of dues to teachers is deliberately crafted by the Yaounde government to make Anglophones feel small and subjugated.

                This writer has read somewhere that francophones who regularly parade the corridors of the GCE Board (speaking in French to show that they are the masters) have declared: c’est nous qui payons, nous devonsgéré”. Francophones believe that they own this country and Anglophones are foreigners. So they contrived to make even the budgeting of the GCE Board entirely dependent on Yaounde so that every GCE session, the Registrar would have to go on bended knees to the francophone government begging for money to run the Board.