Francophone teachers’ syndicate leader says Anglophones are selfish

The president of the Research Personnel and Higher Education Teachers’ Syndicate, Hubert Mono Djana has condemned Anglophones teachers’ trade unions protesting a plan by the Minister of Higher Education, to harmonise higher education in Cameroon and rid the country of its dual education systems.

To Djana, Anglophones protesting against harmonisation are simply trying to blackmail and intimidate the regime by trying to make the protest look like a demonstration of francophone hegemony.

Mono Djana in an extensive write up published in the French language daily, Mutations, says President Biya who has been in power since 1982, has been trying to enable Cameroon come up with a national identity void of colonial heritages. He suggested that Anglophones ought to be grateful to Biya, because he scraped off ‘United’ from the name (United) Republic of Cameroon.

Djana argued that Anglophones protecting the Anglophone system are those who want the country to remain as it were in colonial times. According to him when President Biya said “Cameroon is Cameroon” he meant Cameroon is neither French nor English but has its own identity and ways of doing things.

He wondered why Anglophones are protecting the Common Law and said he does not even know which identity they are defending.

Sometimes sounding as if it were the judicial system government is trying to harmonise, Ndjana questioned if there were two laws, two parliaments and penal codes in Cameroon. He also asked where a case between an Anglophone and a Francophone will be judged if the laws of the country were not harmonised.

Anglos according to him, have fallacious arguments about the sharing of the national cake. Stating that Anglophones are not even up to a third of the country’s population, have more than a third of advantages as far as the sharing of the national cake is concerned.

Ndjana wondered aloud why Anglophones want the University of Buea and that of Bamenda to be purely Anglo-Saxon when varsities in French speaking areas do not make such discriminatory demands.

Anglophones are only making demands now because of ‘black gold’ they discovered in Anglophone regions. He said.

The syndicalist also pointed out that intolerant Anglophones agitating are forgetting that they shared in the enjoyment of the resources from other regions such as bauxite, cocoa, cotton, wood etc. To him, Cameroon should not be dragged backwards by some Anglophone elite who out of bad faith cultivate vain ideologies of victimization.

He called on his “dear Ambazonians” to admit with honesty, the present Cameroon, that of the past and that of the future; fight against the real difficulties of the country. He also regretted that citizens are fighting on the African soil to defend cultures of Shakespeare and Moliere.

It should be recalled that efforts from several independent Anglophone groupings to stop government’s plan to harmonise academic programmes in state universities reached an unprecedented level as four of such associations stepped in to the fray June 3.

Weeks after Buea University chapter of the National Syndicate of Teachers of Higher Education, SYNES, the Cameroon Teachers’ Trade Union, CATTU, the Union of Parents Teachers Association of Cameroon, UPTA took a strong stand against the planned harmonisation.

The Executive Bureaus of the Presbyterian Authority Teachers’ Trade Union, PEATTU, the Catholic Education Teachers’ Trade Union, CETTU, the Baptist Teachers’ Trade Union, BATTU and the Teachers Association of Cameroon, TAC meeting in Bamenda added their voices to the effort.

In their press statement titled “reaction to attempts by the Ministry of Higher Education to harmonise educational programmes in the state universities,” a copy of which The Cameroon Journal procured, the four groups described the government move as “unpopular, high-handed, biased and unpatriotic schemes” with the hidden agenda of cultural annihilation.

“Minister Fame Ndongo had first mooted this nefarious scheme some time last year with the aim of completely scrapping the teaching of common law in state universities, but hostile reactions from Anglophone education stakeholders then forced him to defer the decision” the trade unionists recounted in their declaration.

Maintaining that the move remains a hidden agenda to abolish the teaching of common law in Cameroonian universities, so as to asphyxiate and kill the common law practice in Cameroon, signatories to the Bamenda declaration called on Higher Education Minister, Jacque Fame Ndongo to respect the laws of the land, notably the constitution and the laws of orientation of 1998 and 2001 so as to ensure that peace continues to reign in the country.

In concluding their petition, the trade unionists argued “that all Anglophone pressure groups whether directly linked to education or not will continue to work in synergy in order to ensure that no such arbitrary, nefarious and sinister decisions with glaring insidious consequences are taken to destroy the lofty dreams that the fathers of this nation had in mind before forging the 1961 re-unification.”