Opinions of Monday, 18 January 2016

Auteur: Festus Ngoh

Shame on UB lecturers

Recently, when it was the issue of the erosion and elimination of the Common Law system in Cameroon, Anglophone lecturers at the University of Buea were unanimous in condemning the move and threatened hell against the regime if it went ahead with the Jacques Fame Ndongo-inspired plan.

This writer contends that there was no victory, yet, because there is nothing anywhere that could stop the Francophone regime in Cameroon from going ahead with its plan. In fact, it is only waiting for tempers to cool down and, going by the attitude of the UB lecturers, that Fame Ndongo’s plan will still be realised, with even perhaps more ease.

It is evident that the “Francophonisation” of everything in Cameroon is an onslaught. I find it unforgivable that the Anglophone lecturers of UB kept silent when a Francophone addressed the 2015 convocation ceremony in French while only a few graduating students reacted.

The plan to assimilate and then annihilate the Anglophone element of this country’s (constitutional) bi-cultural option is ongoing, and if anybody were to note and take action, lecturers in the university should have been at the forefront. But most of them are nothing but self-seekers looking only for an appointment instead of engaging in intellectual research and academic erudition.

Some pundits contend that these lecturers even backstab each other and instigate students into revolt, so as to aggrandise themselves and obtain higher positions, instead of ensuring that the University of Buea lives up to its calling as an Anglo-Saxon university.

Some of these lecturers, at best, grumble when these threats pose themselves. Some of them have been invited to a forum where Anglo-Saxon education in Cameroon could be examined and a valiant effort made to revamp it, but they have consistently failed to attend.

It is clear that at all times in this country, the French Government has, at least, one hangman or two whose duty is to ensure that the Anglophone (or the Southern Cameroons) factor is eliminated from this country. After Mr. Zachee Mongo So’o in the early 70s, whose assignment was to adulterate and destroy Anglo-Saxon technical education which was already flourishing in GTC Ombe; Mr. Robert Mbella Mbappe who was exposed while trying to stop Anglophones from obtaining an assessment organ, the GCE Board; today it is “Professor” Jacques Fame Ndongo who has insulted Anglophone teachers and showing that he (on behalf of his Government) hates Anglophones many times more than Mongo So’o or Mbella Mbappe could ever do.

One would have thought that when the lawyers started what they did last May, the UB lecturers would join them from their own end and spark off a veritable revolution that would put an end the unbridled abuse of the Anglophone community.

Anglophones must know that the ultimate plan of this regime is to use an imaginary policy called ‘national integration’ to annihilate a working State system called Southern Cameroons, in terms of its geography, its history, its economy, its education, its administration, its legal system and even in terms of communication.

They are setting up Francophone factories and fuel pump stations along the Tiko-Douala road from the Douala end so that, eventually there will be no physical (or is it natural) boundary between Tiko (Anglophone) and Douala (Francophone). They even have a map on the Douala end of the Wouri Bridge which forcibly ties these two historically distinct areas into one.

The fad which passes for a constitution on which this country has been running (or is it failing) for the past 20 years, gives Mr. Biya the power to carve out administrative areas as he pleases. So, in the same manner in which he got up one morning (1984) and changed the name of this country into La Republique du Cameroun, he could get up one day and the Littoral (Francophone) and the Southwest (Anglophone) Provinces will become administered as one (Francophone) entity.

By law, this country has two educational systems which have to co-exist. But the injustices of this regime against the Anglophones in the area of education have been a legend. Today, the Anglophone teachers and Fame Ndongo are at daggers drawn over the Francophonisation of the Anglo-Saxon educational system in Cameroon.

The heads of faculties in the Anglo-Saxon universities are becoming Francophones. These are the people who are being prepared to become the vice chancellors of those universities tomorrow. One could have expected UB lecturers and, indeed, those of the University of Bamenda, to brace up for the eventual showdown which is brewing up between this regime and the Anglo-Saxon educational system.

In administration, apart from having only Francophone Governors, Prefects and so on, the regime is making sure that, in all services in the Anglophone territory, Francophones are being inserted. If there are seven doctors in the general hospital in Victoria, six are Francophones. The same is true at the Buea Regional Hospital.

Even the staff of the CDC is becoming more and more 'Francophonised'. SWELA, the Southwest Elites Association, has a duty to carry out a study and show the world that this assertion is true.

As I scribble this piece, it is being alleged that the Southwest Chiefs’ Conference and the Southwest Elite Association have been banned, ostensibly for daring to demonstrate solidarity with the lawyers’ declaration last May. Are these organisations going to stand idly by and allow their basic rights of freedom of association to be taken away from them?

The worst element of Anglophone destruction is the CPDM. So, are the chiefs and elite going to continue militating in a masquerade (CPDM) which is clearly designed to hoodwink and smother them?