Anglophone Teachers Trade Unions Back Common Law Lawyers. -Call for Change of Name from GCE Board to AE Board

Benjamin Ngah

Support for the common law lawyer’s stand on the Anglophone marginalization is escalating as the six months deadline issued to the government of President Paul Biya is fast waning with little or no reaction to their demands in view. After Hon. Mbaya’s descend on Ayaba, the South West Chiefs’ conference memo to the Yaoundé authority, strong utterances from Cardinal Tumi and some Anglophone elite on the Anglophone marginalization, some Anglophone Teachers Trade Unions have also followed suit and have vowed and taken a strong stand to absolutely support to the cause of the Anglophone as championed by the Anglophone common law lawyers.

In an end of year press release issued on Saturday 27^th of June, 2015 and signed by Presbyterian Education Authority Teachers’ Trade Union-PEATTU, Catholic Education Workers Trade Union-CEWOTU, and Teachers Association of Cameroon-TAC, called on “all Anglophones in general to throw their weight behind the Anglophone common law lawyers  who spoke courageously in defense of our heritage, educational and otherwise.” Furthermore, they throw their weight behind the University of Buea Chapter of SYNES for standing firm against all machinations and “sleight of hand attempts in the name of harmonization of university programs by the Minister of Higher Education. According to the press release, the evil behind the harmonization was to “abolish the teaching of the common law in Cameroonian universities so as to asphyxiate the common law practice in the country.”

The press release also calls for the creation of an Anglophone examination Board to take care of all Anglophone examinations in the country unlike the GCE Board that is concerned only with the GCE Examinations.

On the just ended written part of the GCE examinations and other exams, the trade unions observed that though the examinations were ”duly organized with a great measure of goodwill” the condemned the weakness and leakages witnessed here and there. They condemned the fact that some questioned in the technical examination were “sloppily crafted in English or poorly translated from French.  The widespread leakage allegations that marred the GCE examination, the release state had untold psychological damage to very many candidates and would go down history as one of the worst examination stampede in the Cameroon GCE Board. To this, the trade union urged the powers that be to make sure the culprits and brought to book to pay for the crimes. According to the release, all those who orchestrated the scam were enemies of the Anglophone Cameroonians in general and patriotic Cameroonians in general.