Bamenda: calm progressively returns

In the backdrop of uneasy calm, taxis, commercial motorcycles and interurban transport buses are back on the streets of Bamenda after the disorder that paralyzed economic activities on November 21st and 22nd, 2016.

Banks and shops whose doors were shot during the disorder are equally back to life with inhabitants going about their activities after days of stress during which trekking was in vogue with taxis, commercial motorcycles and interurban transport agencies off the streets.

Violent outburst by some youths who erected barricades on the streets did not help matters. They were on the streets protesting the bumpy or ugly state of the city’s road infrastructure, poor work that is not helping matters on the rehabilitation of the City’s old water system and regular energy black outs.

Away from the streets, the strike action called by Teachers’ Trade Unions is still to permit effective teaching and learning process. In effect, teaching and learning continues to suffer as teachers, pupils and students remain rare to find in virtually all schools of the city and the University of Bamenda. Academic activities have been boycotted since November 21, 2016 and Teachers’ Trade Union leaders feature abundant literature protesting what they argue is marginalization and attempts to assimilate the Anglo Saxon sub-sector of education in Cameroon. They appear at a loss that some of the brightest GCE Advanced Level students cannot qualify for the Medical school in the University of Buea, Bamenda and other professional schools, which they think, were created to serve their interest, just because they are required to know someone or have money to facilitate the process.

In the short and long of it, the Teachers’ Trade Unions argue that it is not an issue against Francophones, but a crusade against the mismanagement of Anglophone cultural values in the nation’s bi-cultural set-up. They stress that it is not a struggle between English speaking and French speaking children of Cameroon but an effort to correct structural and systematic mistakes or injustices that impose a beggarly life on Anglophones.

It was against this backdrop that on November 23, 2016, North West Governor, Adolphe Lele Lafrique went sizing up the situation, prescribing a door-to-door approach to advice inhabitants against disorder and reassuring the population of the government’s commitment to give dialogue, peace and order a chance in the City and neighbourhoods. The Governor made stopovers at the Mile 90 Check Point on the Bamenda-Bali-Batibo highway, Bamenda main market, the Matazen gateway into the North West Region in Santa Subdivision, Nkwen and Mankon Fon's palaces.