Excerpt:” I don’t want to be a fool
forever. I WILL NOT GO TO SCHOOL COME MONDAY 9 AND THE DAYS AHEAD so as to be
tortured, raped, riddled with grenades, tear gassed, or even killed.”
Again I take an antipodal position against popular
opinion without minding the anathema and invectives that loom over me. This
fact-full, but emotionally packed and fustian write-up might be regarded by
some as a satanic verses; I don’t care because NgugiwaThiong’o has opined that
every writer is a writer in politics. He however cautions that the politics
must be one which sides with the down trodden.
Yes,
our house (Southern Cameroon) is under the consumption of a gigantic fire and
we cannot afford to chase the rats or pretend not to be scorched by the
incineration. As a concerned parent and teacher I see the dire need to begin
classes immediately. Varied reasons abound for both Southern Cameroonian
teachers and students to descend to the classrooms with immediate effect.
Southern
Cameroonians lack basic school infrastructures, talk less of stationery. The
University of Bamenda, for example, harbors many institutions of higher
learning. It is sad to say that the same old structures that were constructed
by the Germans donkey years ago are the same ramshackle buildings this
prestigious institution is still using. At times students huddle under trees to
attend lectures, or they are simply dismissed for lack of where to attend
lectures.
A
tour of schools in the entire region will live one wondering if we are still in
the Neanderthal age. The dilapidated structures, which also pass for schools,
even in the South West Region are a direct smack on the face. Children attend
classes while sitting on dusty and jigger-infested floors. Though timber is exported
from this region by La Republique and auctioned to France. Students in this
part of the country lack benches and roofs on the huts which purport to be
classes. These are the state of putrid schools that await teachers and students
come January 9. Oh! good old Southern Cameroon so close to God, but far away
from heaven.
Teachers
and students in Southern Cameroon must go to school now because they are the
“extremist minority being manipulated” by some individuals. The privileged
francophone children of cabinet ministers and those who matter in the society
in La Republique have flooded Southern Cameroonian schools. These students are
waiting for the much cherished Anglo-Saxon education to be taught by Southern
Cameroonian well-cultured teachers. Yet these teachers are the extremist
elements and enemies in the house.
In
that light, we have every reason to go back to school to teach and nurture
Francophones so that they turn round and bite the finger that fed them. After
all, we are “Anglofous,” “les biafras” and all what not. We must go to school
and teach them to continue to lord over us.
It
is high time we went to school because we have been coerced to do so. Education
goes with a relaxed and conducive atmosphere. Unfortunately, La Republique does
not know this cognitive code teaching method. All strategic sites and schools
in the major towns of Southern Cameroon are flooded with heavily armed military
men from La Republique. Any new comer to Southern Cameroon being riddled with
machine guns and water cannons all over the militarized zone will conclude that
a Third World War is at hand. The atmosphere is stifling. The same soldiers who
committed untold atrocities in Southern Cameroon by openly brutalizing our
lawyers, seizing their robes and wigs are there to protect us as we lumber to
school come Monday.
Students
in southern Cameroon should go back to school to study under intimidation,
blackmail, and threats. The mistreatment meted on lawyers awaits teachers. So
come Monday the 9th, Southern Cameroonian teachers should go to school to be
dished with what our honorable men of the bar experienced.
Southern
Cameroonians have been tortured, maimed, raped, and even grisly killed.
Soldiers went into innocent students’ rooms inflicted excruciating pains on them,
looted property, destroyed phones, and left indelible marks on them. Southern
Cameroonians are anxious to be raped again by officers of law and order.
Southern Cameroonians are eager to be served with tear gas and irritating water
from canons. Southern Cameroonians are begging to be tortured. That is why they
have to go to school now. The mistreatment and brunt of humiliation they bore a
few weeks ago was not enough. Ha, do I hear myself echoing that there is no
Anglophone Problem, and hence no marginalization of Southern Cameroonians?
We
have to begin school forthwith for the educational genocide in Southern
Cameroon to continue. Southern Cameroonian Students and pupils must go back to
school to be untaught. They must study English Language in French whether they
like it or not. French, the language of oppression, intimidation, and
corruption is the language that awaits them as they scurry into their classes.
I wonder how these poor Southern
Cameroonians will ever understand concepts in biology, chemistry, physics,
maths, history, literature tatatitatata given that the subjects are taught in
French by inexperienced and unqualified teachers. No doubt these breed of
Southern Cameroonian students will remain caged till doomsday. How will these
ill-fated Southern Cameroonians ever fit into the ever dynamic world? Only La
Republique with its linguistic experts and congenital mythomaniacs can provide
an answer.
We
must go back to school because we are not and shall never be the leaders of
tomorrow. The past, present, and the future is bleak. For 35 years (from
infancy, adolescence, and adulthood) we have been under the yoke of the same
tyranny; being fed the same old lie that we are the leaders of tomorrow. The
same ministers keep changing portfolios. Some wallow under the cornucopia of
multiple posts while we continue to go to school to either end up riding bikes,
driving taxis, or doing mean and odd jobs. In such conditions, we will never
ever have the money to officially bribe to go to professional schools like ENS,
ENAM, EMIA, IRIC (all French acronyms). We should quickly go back to school
because we cannot be ministers of basic education; we cannot be ministers of
secondary education; we cannot be ministers of higher education. The handful of
us who manage to find ourselves in ENS have to be in Yaunde daily chasing files
or looking for money to bribe again to become the sub of sub directors or
assistant of assistants to our East Cameroonian counterparts.
Southern
Cameroon has been retrogressing for the past 55 years. Anything that is
auspicious there is either carted to East Cameroon or outrightly destroyed. We
must go back to school because we are a good-for-nothing people. We have to be
tortured and humiliated before the GCE Board was grudgingly given to us. We
have to be raped, dragged in sewage, afflicted, and killed before the president
can demonstrate his largesse by going to his daughter’s pocket allowance and
nibbling a paltry two billion FCFA from there to pacify us. Perhaps we should
applaud the head of state by going to school, and with “unflinching motions of
support” for his magnanimity because he has used his hard-earned money to
provide us with laptops and now two billion.
Little
known Rwanda, and even Equatorial Guinea, know the importance of education
because their teachers and students attend schools in decent environments.
Which governments bribes authorities for teachers and students to go to class?
Which government, except La Republique, coerces and threatens both students and
teachers to go to class? Impossible is not La Republique.
I
don’t want to be a fool forever. I WILL NOT GO TO SCHOOL COME MONDAY 9 AND THE
DAYS AHEAD so as to be tortured, raped, riddled with grenades, tear gassed, or
even killed. I will not also be the blackleg to sell my country and progeny.
Unless there is a genuine change and quickly too, I WILL ONLY GO TO SCHOOL IN
2035 of grande or greater ambitions. Forgive my French lapse for I was
fortunate not be taught literature in that wily and abrasive language.
Posted by: JJackai@aol.com
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