The Cameroon GCE Crisis: A Test of Anglophone Solidarity: A Test of Anglophone Solidarity

Chapter Nine - The Problem

313 Chapter Nine The Problem Andrew Azong Wara hile the teachers’ strike was raging and paralyzing national life, the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Simon Achidi Achu, in a desperate move to stem the tide, created a committee by Order No. 194/CAB/PM of 11th September 1992. It was a thirteen man committee whose mission was spelt out simply as “to reflect on the creation of a General Certificate of Education Examination Board”. This was the year of the first multi-party elections in Cameroon and an Anglophone, Chairman Ni John Fru Ndi of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), was putting up a strong challenge to Paul Biya’s leadership of the nation. The Sondengam committee as it was more popularly called because it was placed under the leadership of a charismatic, assiduous but easy-going university don. Professor Sondengam Baibam Luc, tucked itself away in the cool confines of Mont Cameroun and Room 412 in the Five-star Hilton Hotel in Yaoundé. Away from the hullabaloos of the strike but in full view of the goingson in the streets from the open windows of Mont Cameroun in the tenth floor of Hilton, aware of the political windfalls that the strike and subsequently the findings of our committee would have on those scrambling for the Etoudi Palace in the Presidential elections that were due in the November of 1992, the committee set for itself an initial timetable of 14 days for their work. Regrettably the work was to drag on well into November 20, 1992 a few weeks after the elections and thus did not benefit from the momentum of the elections. Rather the momentum that the teachers’ strike had generated and that had been put on hold when the committee was put to work had been lost. A decree to create the GCE Board was later signed on the 1st July 1993 but not until the Government had heard the rumblings of a second national strike. However, the work of the committee turned out to be very useful as it digested and analyzed the problems plaguing W 314 the examinations systems of the two sub-systems of education in Cameroon. From a historical perspective it was evident that the problems confronting the organization of the GCE had their roots in the thirty year history of the administration of examinations from 1962 – 1992. The plebiscite vote against integration with Nigeria in 1961 opened the way for West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to be reluctant to allow schools in West Cameroon to continue to write their examinations. The situation was further compounded by the fact that the Board of Education had in 1955 severed relations with the University of Cambridge Schools Examinations Board (CANTAB) and a return to them was therefore difficult. In the end the West Cameroon Board of Education adopted the London GCE. The West Cameroon White Paper of 1963 had given some guidelines on aspects for the harmonization of school syllabuses between the Anglophone and Francophone school systems. In choosing the London GCE it was expected that a National Examination would soon evolve to replace the GCE and the Baccalaureat (BAC) that was in place in the Francophone school system. That the London GCE which was considered a temporary measure, as was clear from Principal’s Conferences and political pronouncements at the time, was still in place by 1992 was seen to be the result of the total failure of meaningful efforts to replace it. The Sondengam committee puts the blame for this failure on policy makers who could not adopt the harmonization of the two systems as a logical tool for educational reform and development in a Federal Bi-Cultural state as Cameroon. It is worth noting that the Government Bilingual School GBS Man-ofWar Bay, (now Molyko) was created in the spirit of the Federal Education Law of 1963 which laid down the legal framework for harmonizing the two school systems. A harmonization Commission was established in 1965 to prepare school syllabuses in application of the law of 1963. By 1971 all syllabuses had been harmonized but no effort had been deployed to put them into effect. In reviewing the attempts at harmonization the committee observed: “Other than this commission and the GBS, no tangible 315 proof exists, therefore, to show that this effort at genuine harmonization was popular with certain authorities with influence within the Federal Government circles. On the contrary...