Issues at stake : I salute Sir Humphrey Ekema Monono

By nature, Sir Humphrey Ekema Monono is a taciturn and soft spoken character with a caressing baritone.He is chubby with an intimidating frame that is the embodiment of fine and equal parts.

As a teacher and administrator, Monono is an inspiring harmony of brain and brawn. For one thing, he has the knack for remaining sangfroid and maintaining a rare emotional equipoise in the face of violent criticisms.

He usually remains calm and collected until the blow-out between him and his critics come to a denouement.

These sterling qualities of charisma, coupled with his robust mastery of the Queen’s language, make Monono an infectiously likable personality. That is the man who presides over the destiny of the Cameroon Certificate of Education Examination, GCE Board.

The Registrar of the GCE Board is a VIP in all ramifications, for, he steers the fate of an outfit that is the last hope of the Anglo-Saxon education in Cameroon.

Monono’s declaration recently that the 2016 GCE results will be published in all outlets of the media was not mea culpa. It was the frank talk of a leader who decided to hearken to the aspirations of the people. Unlike the past two years, the 2016 GCE results will be disseminated for candidates to have their results on time.

The option to publish the results for the past two years exclusively through one mobile telephone Company was a gaffe. Candidates in certain areas went for weeks without seeing their results. I did not hesitate to qualify the mess as “GCE Board’s unpardonable bloomer.”

Yet, many intellectual oafs who wanted to curry favours from the gentleman said there was nothing wrong with such a situation. Hawks with monochromatic minds saw in the innocuous criticisms the vicious workings of the Graffi/Sawa divide. They did not see in Monono that towering personality whose ideological convictions transcend his ethnic Sawa provenance.

The man who was criticised was not some tribal Chief. We took exception to some policies of our national Monono, the no-nonsense boss of the GCE Board.

It is sad that some sycophantic biro pushers prodded the GCE authorities on, in the GCE results publication misdemeanor, pretending to love them more than their better halves.

With their mean-spirited moves, they were ready to tell the GCE Board authorities that they were well dressed even when they were indeed naked.

The truth will always prevail, even if its tellers are reduced to a minority of one. Monono finally took sides with the truth, thereby deserting the coterie of self-seeking schemers who had claimed that he was as infallible as the 1870 Pope. Thus, his decisions should not be gainsaid in anyway.

Yet, criticisms must come because people want the Anglo-Saxon virtues of the GCE Board to remain sacrosanct. The GCE Board must be free of all the scandals that rock the BAC Board almost on a yearly basis. Scandals like the Gaieté College incident should not be allowed to happen any more.

Markers of the GCE are no political prisoners to anybody. So, none of them should be sanctioned anymore for going to have dinner even with the devil. With the sage of a Daniel, Mr. Monono must look and look before he leaps so that he can leap, leap and leap.

That is why he should give ample time for consultations and dialogue with the various stakeholders before upping the GCE registration fees.

Caution is the deal here because what lurks ominously now is a potentially explosive situation that is just waiting for a spark. The gnawing level of poverty among the majority of parents is the setting. We know the pecuniary difficulties that the board is going through.

Subvention to the outfit has been thinned down almost to the barest minimum. So, who wants to kill the GCE Board? Whatever the case, one thing must be stated here - that the GCE results must never be contaminated by the Regional Balance gibberish that the “frog” examination boards have embraced.

Dear reader, let me slightly digress and refresh your memory with this sad anecdote. On December 15, 2012, the University of Buea graduated the first batch of medical doctors trained in that varsity’s medical school. The peculiarity in the euphoria-gripped ceremony was not that 53 young doctors took the Hippocratic Oath to join their elders in the perennial ritual of complaining and wound-licking about poor pay.

Few could remember that the batch was recruited in a controversial Armageddon in which “Regional Balance” and meritocracy crossed swords. The former crushed the latter. As the Minister of Higher Education, the New Deal Spin doctor, Prof. Jacques Fame Ndongo, shocked the nation when he sang “Regional Balance” as the dirge for meritocracy and academic excellence.

With the eagle-eye vigilance of a strict umpire, the then UB Vice Chancellor Prof. Cornelius Lambi, had recruited the students on clear cut criteria. Meritocracy was predominant among the laid out eligibility conditions.

Yet, shouts of “crucify him” rented the air. The results for the competitive examination into the medical school were reversed and the first became the last in the new list that was tailored to be in tandem with Fame Ndongo’s Regional Balance philosophy.

Despite the opprobrium that followed the Minister’s “Regional Balance” enigma, Lambi was sentenced to the power guillotine. His tenure at the helm of that varsity was aborted. When History will be condemning his peers for trampling on values, posterity will hail Prof. Lambi for sacrificing his career for the truth and the general good.

Interestingly, the apostles of Regional Balance are mute when only few Anglophones are admitted into Professional Schools like ENS, ENAM and the Yaounde Medical School.

So, where is the Regional Balance? The Regional Balance argument was some kind of evil spirit that hurled the night on the noon of academic excellence. I wonder what has happened that candidates from some particular tribes have certainly become the most intelligent ones as they flood all professional schools.

What is obvious is that meritocracy has become a pathetic casualty in the hands of pseudo-intellectuals and the grand “subverters” of national ideals. Those who expected the University of Buea to demonstrate the “Anglo-Saxoness” in it were dazed and downcast. UB’s moral fibre suffered a tremendous fraying by virtue of the Minister’s controversial act.

Observers hold that the authorities ought to really give merit a chance in order to avoid churning out “murderers” in the name of “doctors”. The current wave of medical scandals in the country’s hospitals is not unconnected to such murderers. Let such ignominious cases of Regional Balance and “godfatherism” stay out there! Don’t touch our GCE Board!