The Social Democratic Front, SDF, Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi, has stated that the current Registrar of the GCE Board, Humphrey Ekema Monono, is one of those who fought against the creation of the Board in the early 1990s.

He reacted angrily to the fact that the GCE Board suspended some examiners for having shared a meal at his residence recently.

He accused Monono of trying to destroy the GCE Board and what he referred to as the Anglo-Saxon educational culture.

Fru Ndi spoke exclusively with The Post in the sidelines of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference that ended in Yaoundé over the weekend.

Excerpts:

The Post: You attended the opening ceremony of the 60th Conference of the Commonwealth Parliament Association, CPA. What is your appreciation of the event, so far?

When I got in, as usual, they were moving me from one seat to the other. They gave me the first seat and from there they took me to a second seat. When they wanted to take me to the third, I protested and it is where I had to sit till the close of the Conference. The Commonwealth, I know is Anglo-Saxon. I felt really ridiculed when Mr. Biya, read his speech from the beginning to the end, in French. I thought that, at least, he was going to do what he did in Buea where he had greatly talked in English and then turned to French, to give his main message. I know that I do not speak French; however, I know a few words and expressions in French. But going to, for instance, a Francophonie meeting, I should be able to, at least master; “Bonjour, bienvenue au Cameroun,” to let the people feel at home. And when you talk to them in English in a French-speaking society, then, you end by saying; “Merci, au revoir.”

Biya is somebody who speaks acceptable English when he goes to Buea or Bamenda. What interpretation can you give to such behaviour?

It is a snub of the Commonwealth, the Anglo-Saxon culture, a snub of the Reunification. You saw the snub in Buea. The Reunification was all on him; his pictures were all over, there were songs in praise of him and he was now the founder of Reunification. Muna was not there, Foncha, Endeley, Mbile and so on, were not there. Same for Ahidjo and all the people who fought for unification like the Ntumazahs; nothing was said about them.

He concretised it today to tell you that he doesn’t need the English language in Cameroon. As a journalist, you know that important texts, coming from the Presidency, are all in French. You have to struggle to translate and, sometimes, some of the things are so technical that you don’t give the technical meaning of the issue.

Well, even if Biya did not want to speak English today, he could have done what he usually does with the veteran Journalist and Deputy Chair of the National Communication Council, Peter Essoka, where he talks and Peter Essoka now comes in with a voiceover in English. But you see, this was never done; which means the Anglophones in Cameroon should just shut up.

Could he have been sending through a message, that Cameroon is purely a French speaking country?

Exactly that! That Cameroon is a Francophone country and we don’t need the Anglophones. After all, somebody, a Bafang woman, said Anglophones should leave their land and go to their own country; that all they were interested in is their land.

Some GCE examiners were sanctioned or suspended for rallying markers to share a meal at you residence in Bamenda; what is your reaction to that?

Nobody organised the teachers for me. It is I who organised to entertain the teachers. The SDF had said, civil servants, Chiefs and Fons should be apolitical. The CPDM brought them in, where you have Ministers who are Councillors; Ministers who are Parliamentarians. So, we have to let our own people go into Councils.

I have been offering meals to teachers for a long time and what encouraged me last time was that, when journalists carried the vox-pop on radio Bamenda, most of the markers who came in complained that they came without knowing where they were going to sleep, how to pay transport to the marking centre; how they were going to eat.

And when they said all these, I thought, as a parent, what can I do? All my children have finished from universities and they are back home and now working. So, I said to myself, it is not good that only when your child has written the GCE before you think of the teachers. A teacher is a builder and I do believe that if there is any Cameroonian who wants to show any gratitude, he should show it to the teachers because these are people who are moulding the future. What the child does in school is in the hands of the teacher and I don’t think that we can ever pay teachers enough for the work they are doing.

So, when the teachers complained about their plight, I thought the best I could do was to offer them a meal. That’s what I have been doing over the years. I gave them a meal last year. The teachers who marked in Buea last year were up in Bamenda this year. And some said; ‘Mr. Chairman, we have to eat our own food because we were in Buea last year.’ Then, I had to offer a meal not because they asked, but because I had to, in appreciation of what they are doing. I was not offering it because of political motives. I was giving it as a parent. Why should I not give to teachers? I gave books to most of the schools. I was giving books of about a million and five hundred thousand FCFA every year to the schools around to help the incoming students to have these readers. So, did the Registrar of the GCE Board, Humphrey Monono, expect me to take permission from him before doing this? Mr Monono, luckily, was part of the former Minister, Prof. Joseph Owona’s delegation when I received him at my residence. I did not have permission from anyone. I do not need to take permission from Biya to receive Ministers, fellow Cameroonians who come to visit me. This is my Pastor here seated (pointing at a guest). When he comes to eat with me, I do not take permission from the PCC Moderator.

I overheard you saying; by sanctioning these teachers, he was challenging…?

Yes! He challenged me and I am told he was one of those who fought against the creation of the GCE Board. He fought against the SDF in those days, when the teachers who were in school were excited that a new political party had been formed; he transferred all those teachers.

In what capacity did he do that, at the time?

He was the Principal of Government Bilingual Grammar School, Molyko, in Buea. That was a school that was coming up with good teachers that understood themselves, but he scattered all of them. It is the same thing the late Samuel Ngeh Tamfu did in Nkambe. He transferred all the teachers. You know, Nkambe Government High School was good in sciences in particular. But because the teachers were also discussing politics, he went to the former Minister of Education, Robert Mbella Mbappe and asked for their transfer.

Mbappe transferred all those teachers. From then, till today, Nkambe High School has fallen on its stomach. So, I ask myself; are teachers and civil servants prisoners? Or, when they are in CPDM, it is ok. But when they are in the SDF and they talk, it’s not ok. So, I said to myself that Monono fought against the creation of the GCE Board; he is fighting now to destroy it because it is not just those teachers he sanctioned.

It’s been put on record that there were students who never wrote the exams at all and it is presumed that a phone call was made and the children found their names on the list having pass marks and on the list of successful students. I think that Mr. Monono is trying to destroy the Anglo-Saxon culture that is the only thing that Anglophones are still hanging on. So, if he wants to destroy that and he thinks that he wants to start with Fru Ndi, he is starting a very good dance on a bad footing.