SDF, suspended examiners drag Monono to court

Cameroon GCE Examiners that were suspended by the Registrar of the GCE Board for organising markers of the 2014 session to have dinner with John Fru Ndi have filed a case at the Administrative Court of the Northwest Region.

One of the Assistant Chief Examiners suspended, Councillor Maurice Werewum, has turned the heat on Monono, exposing what he termed his messing manners, which, according to him, if not checked, the Board will become less credible in the eyes of the international community. He was speaking in an exclusive interview he granted The Post in Bamenda on November 1.

Read on:

The Post: How was the GCE Board created?

Councillor Maurice Werewum: I was the Coordinator of the Teachers’ Association of Cameroon, TAC, for Kupe-Muanenguba Division. At the time, TAC was under the leadership of Andrew Azong–Wara as National President, while the Confederation of the Associations of Parents Teachers of Cameroon, CAPTAC, was under the leadership of Messrs Peter Chateh for the Centre Province, Augustine Ndangang for the Northwest Province and late Kuve Jakai for the Southwest Province. TAC and CAPTAC together fought relentlessly for the creation of the GCE Board.

What were some of the irregularities noticed with the organisation of the GCE that necessitated the creation of an Examinations Board?

Poor printing of questions, ambiguity in the way questions were phrased, some questions with no objectives; wrong pagination; poor treatment of examiners were the irregularities that provoked the struggle for the creation of an Examinations Board.

You are one of the three suspended for three years, by the Registrar of the GCE Board. What would you say is your crime?

Mr. Monono said we (Gideon Muluh, Thaddeus Bangu and I), were involved in examination malpractices and went on to justify his accusation by asserting that we “gave unauthorised invitations to examiners for a meal at the SDF Chairman’s residence”. As a matter of fact, Monono’s action is a slap on teachers, the SDF party and a gross human rights violation. What is so ridiculous, unacceptable and considered as bad taste is that Monono published our “crime” as an “examination malpractice” when he is guilty of a litany of grave examination malpractices, a few of which are: publication of the 2014 GCE results without those of O/L Physics as if there were no check lists for the different subjects during the compilation, checking and vetting processes, the issuance of three different sets of timetables with major changes for the 2014 examination session, causing several hundreds of candidates to miss subjects like Further Mathematics and Commerce, issuing two results slips to candidates with dissimilar subjects and awarding passes to candidates who did not sit for the examinations.

Who should authorise markers to honour an invitation for a meal?

Nobody! If anybody were to authorise teachers to go for a meal, it should be the person paying the bills. In this case, the SDF Chairman should be the one, since he usually funds the bills. Besides, before Monono became Registrar of the Board, others like Azong-Wara and Dr. Omer Yembe (late) were there and none of them ever contemplated such obnoxiously high-handed and politically motivated sanctions. Even if the statutes of the GCE Board were to be re-written raising the Registrar to the rank of a Prime Minister, denying examiners the free will to honour an invitation will be a gross violation of human rights. It is, in fact, ridiculous and criminal for him to imagine that responsible adults should obtain permission from him before honouring an invitation for a meal at 7:30pm; several hours after the marking exercise has ended for the day.

But Monono has stated unequivocally that your sanction was not politically motivated?

Does he want teachers, examiners of other political parties including the CPDM and Cameroonians to believe that it was a mere coincidence that all three victims of his administrative high-handedness, that axe he wielded with wanton sadistic glee, are SDF front-liners? From every indication; he was driven by his undisguised hatred for SDF militants. In fact, he is systematic in his sanctions.

Last year, 2013, he hatched a plan to replace the Examination Officer in charge of the Northwest GCE Board Regional Office with a lady from Buea, on a trumped-up charge that she was the one who organised the meal at Fru Ndi’s residence. When that sinister plan leaked and failed, he prepared another this year against those he termed ‘Ring Leaders’. In the same vein, plans by Monono and his Deputies to expunge the names of all examiners with opposition sympathy are afoot.

The Registrar and his Deputies did and are planning to do what intellectuals must never do. The very unfortunate paradox is that those to facilitate this macabre mission to identify the militants to be victimised are the supposed teachers’ representatives at the Board. The part they played for the arbitrary sanctions to be meted on us and the utterances they made here and thereafter prove that they are pseudo-teachers’ representatives.

Furthermore, this display of political fanaticism by the Registrar, who, by virtue of his position, is supposed to be non-partisan in the exercise of his duties, is a blatant and defiant violation of the Head of State’s granting of multiparty dispensation that has given Cameroonians the right to militate in any legalised political party of their choice. That Monono, then Principal of Bilingual Grammar School, BGS, Molyko Buea, fought stoutly against the creation of the GCE Board is no news.

He considered the fight by parents and teachers for the restoration of the credibility of the examination as an SDF inspired struggle and then abusively used his connections in Yaounde to cause many teachers (TAC militants) on his staff to be transferred to distant and difficult places.

Some of those Monono caused to be transferred from BGS Molyko Buea to enclaved areas are: Nkemzie (History) and Michael Lukong (Chemistry) both transferred to Njikwa; Juliana Talla (English Language) transferred to Benakuma; Charles Tangie (Economics) transferred to Nkambe; Pius Agbor Tambe (Chemistry) transferred to Ekondo Titi; Pa Sama (Mathematics) transferred to Nwa. To others like Philip Tam and Bate Besong (late) who could not be transferred, he kept harassing them with queries. Even when the Board was created, Monono resisted the marking of the exams in BGS Molyko. In fact, he lacks the moral obligation to baby-sit the GCE Board - a baby whose foetus he did everything to expel at conception.

Was the meal only for examiners who are SDF sympathisers?

Not at all! Over the past 17 years, the meal has been offered to examiners, irrespective of their political leanings. On the first day, the host, Chairman Fru Ndi went to the farm and returned when examiners had eaten and left. He only joined examiners on the second day. On this day he made a few statements that were completely void of politics. He welcomed, thanked and encouraged the teachers that turned out and asked them to feel at home.

What other issues are there with the Board?

Touching on the structure of the Board, the Presidential Decree No 93/172 of 1st July 1993, and the amendment Decree No 97-45 of 5th March 1997, to set up the GCE Board made the Board an autonomous structure away from the Ministry of Secondary Education with titular head as the Minister of Education and this decree was to ensure better examinations management. This ‘independence’ of the Board was upheld until 2010 when Monono began exhibiting his power-drunk attitude, his power excesses by demolishing the liaison offices created since 1994 and ceding their functions to the Divisional Delegations of the Ministry of Secondary Education.

He thus began his mission of returning the Board to the Ministry of Secondary Education. Recently, he made known his intention to transfer the GCE Board Regional Office in Bamenda to the Regional Delegation of Secondary Education. Secondly; that candidates that never wrote the 2014 GCE examinations can have pass results. That created the fear that certificates could as well be given to undeserved persons or that there might already be in place a well-entrenched racket doing this subliminally.

Thirdly; dates of birth and order of names on GCE certificates based on birth certificates submitted at the time of registration are unjustly changed these days at will, depending on whose child is concerned, a practice, which could never be imagined in the days of Sir Humphrey’s predecessors.

Shortly before the 2014 Examination, he, Monono, auctioned all administrative cars at give-away prices only to themselves, for example, the Registrar’s Prado to himself, the two TOYOTA HILUX to his Deputies, the 12-tonne truck to his driver and hired these same vehicles from their buyers (staff of the GCE Board) to transport 2014 materials.

In fact, the only vehicle the GCE Board now has is a 19-sitter bus. He cannot buy new scanners (Optical Mark Readers) for the scanning of OMR mark sheets. As a consequence, during the 2014 marking session, the GCE Board hired scanners from Nigeria. When these hired machines failed, manual input of marks, abandoned many years back, was his only recourse to input the marks, with the well-established attendant consequences especially given the astronomical growth in candidate numbers. Sir Humphrey is, therefore, not a committed Registrar. He sought for that post to feed fat and wallow in opulence. Looking at his track record and at what he indicted us for, who is, therefore, guilty of examination malpractice?

We who went for supper at the SDF Chairman’s residence at 7:30 pm, long after the day’s tiring marking exercise or he, Monono, who has apparently been deliberately organising flaw-ridden examinations with ulterior motives and thwarting the examination structure in many ways, from all indications, to drag it to a level worse than what it was when we started the fight for its redemption many years back. God save the Board!!

You mean irregularities in GCE Board examinations now are more than what took Anglophones to the streets to ask for its creation?

Yes! As I said earlier, the problems at that time were limited to poor printing of questions; ambiguity in the way some questions were phrased and wrong pagination. The problems we have now, with wrong and arbitrary results, were never heard of.

Apart from offering Examiners a meal, what else does Fru Ndi offer?

Fru Ndi, as a bookseller, offers books to many school libraries. He offered milk and other food items to students in dormitories, especially to those in examination classes. He was the main crusader for the British Council Library in Bamenda. For several years, Fru Ndi furnished the Cameroon GCE Board with current London GCE syllabuses annually. Everybody at the Board knows this. Then, he elected to keep the Cameroon GCE Board in contact with London without the officials going there. These London syllabuses were used for comparism and even for the building of Board’s syllabuses especially those of the GCE Technical subjects. And these syllabuses with Fru Ndi’s signature are presently in the Registrar’s Office.

What positions have you held at the GCE Board?

Since the inception of the GCE Board in 1994, I have served uninterruptedly as Superintendent of Examinations (Chief Invigilator) in various schools. In this capacity, I had been to Court several times as the Board’s prime witness in impersonation cases. I have been an O/L Physics Examiner since 1992 (22 years). I was appointed an Assistant Chief Examiner.

What is your next action?

Teachers, human rights activities and the SDF Party, whom Sir Monono is waging a war against are taking him and the GCE Board to Court.