Police Recruitment Exam: Anglophones programmed to fail

The set-up for Anglophones to fail the recruitment into the Police force, started from the onset. When Martin Mbarga Nguelle, General Delegate for National Security announced in December last year, the recruitment of some 4,700 police officers, none of the announcements or communiques carrying it was translated and made public in English.

Just as well, the over 100 communiques announcing the number of positions, required documents and dates of the examination for the various divisions and units of the police force were all carried in French.

When The Cameroon Journal visited the General Delegation for National Security then to find out why the documents were not available in English, officers in the communication unit in Mbarga’s office told us they were going to publish the English versions in due time – they never did.

As a result, most Anglophone citizens wallowing in unemployment and desperate to sit for the recruitment had to go hiring the services of translators to get the documents translate for them.

Others who have the ability to speak a little bit of both French and English, told The Cameroon Journal that they had to resort to using the French/English dictionaries to facilitate the interpretation and correct meanings of certain words and positions advertised.

Thanks to this crude means, they said, many of them managed to register as part of the over 140,000 candidates who are competing for 4,700 vacancies in the police force.

On Saturday, March 28, about 61,500 of the candidates sat for a phase of the entrance examination meant to recruit some 1,200 trainee inspectors into the Force. The Cameroon Journal again stumbled upon one of the modules of the exam dubbed ‘CIVIC EXAMINATION’. We found out that all the questions were translated verbatim from French to English. They were not only incorrectly translated, the context was inaccurate. Some of the translated questions meant the direct opposite of their original French version. You read questions in the official translated version like,

“How long does last the mandate of the President and the Beaurau of the National Assembly.”

Another one reads; “Give the composition of the Chairmen’s conference of the Senate.” This isn’t a fabrication. Take a look for yourself at the photo above to see the translation. The point here is that while Francophone candidates were reading the correct script – the original script, Anglophones candidates were left wondering what the questions demand of them.

Candidates from the North West and South West regions who have no mastery of the French language will certainly get most of the answers wrong owing to the very nature of the translation. One of the candidates who preferred not to be named retorted after coming out of the exam room that only divine intervention will help him make it. He asked a billion dollar question; “If the examiners can’t write the English Language, how would they mark scripts written in English Language?”

Another candidate who also begged not to be named intimated that the thing was so frustrating that “Some of my friends cross checked the questions with the corresponding question number in French before attempting an answer.” As for him, he said, “I have little hope and it lies in the fact that President Biya supported the Minister of Higher Education when he added names of students who failed the IRIC examination among successful candidates, on the basis of regional balance.”

He narrated how when the University of Buea went on strike some years back because names of Francophone students who failed the entrance examination into the varsity School of Medicine were inserted into a second list made by Vice Chancellor, Prof. Lambi, the minister told them that in regional balance, Anglophones have 22%. Based on this, he retorted “So I still have hope.”

The high turnout as against the number of available places in Saturday’s exam has been witnessed in two other past recruitment exams for other openings in the force. The alarming number of applicants point to the high degree of unemployment that is rocking Cameroon.

For Saturday’s exam, one thing was done right – many temporary examination centers were created by the General Delegation for National Security, in Yaoundé, to accommodate the huge number of candidates. Centres were created in Lycee General Leclerc, Government High Schools in Tsinga, Nkol-Eton, Anguissa among others.

Also commendable is the fact that the DGSN published the list of accepted candidates for the exam two weeks before the date to spare them the trouble of having to show up at the centers to realize their names were not selected.

After Saturday’s exam to recruit inspectors, the next to recruit police constables comes up in two weeks. This will bring to an end the 2014 batch of recruitments into the national police corps. Recruitments for the 2015 batch will be launched after the second half of 2015.