MY EDITORIAL Act 9 :The Intransigence Of The GCE Board
AUGUST 2015 (REVISED)
Why are some of our public authorities so ruthless and heartless!!! When a few years back the GCE Board authorities opted to publish the results of examinations organized by the Board, through a mobile communication network, the experience was disheartening and the outcry outrageous! In spite of all attempts, the Registrar of the GCE Board, Humphrey Ekema Monono, failed to convince public opinion on the justification of such a near people- disoriented decision.
Many thought the decision would be reversed if not improved upon, in later years. But Helas! No! it worsened. The next year students and parents had to go through unbearable stress to get their results through a number and a code to a telephone company that may have suddenly develop a fault. The SMS itself, more expensive than the ordinary SMS could be equated to broad-day robbery. 200 frs! And many sent over 5, that is spending at least a thousand FCFA, yet no results were forth coming. Probably too tensed and impatient, some students took the risk to travel to Buea to check their results.
Thanks to pressure and even threats the GCE Board authorities bowed out and last years the results were published through the traditional methods; in newspapers and radio stations.
Cameroon’s civil servants with spotted exceptions are generally pompous, deaf and dumb to the cries of the population. The registrar of the Cameroon GCE Board, Humphrey Ekema Monono, may just be a prototype of this type of a civil servant.
As Registrar of the GCE Board, that was a hard-earned achievement, even at the expense of the blood of some Anglophones, determined to safeguard a culture, we that that he would have made a strong statement concerning the 2016/2017 GCE session on-going.(I don’t in anyway insinuate that students should not go to school or not write their exams.) But, the sudden silence of the registrar is suspicious at the near detriment of a hitherto reputable examination that was being written nearly under unethical conditions.
We are afraid Humphrey Ekema Monono is just a bogus and fake father to the thousands of candidates he claims to represent. This is arrogance, it is disgraceful, and it is a shame, for someone of his caliber who understands what the GCE in the pure anglo-saxon tradition of education is.
In fairness,we recognize all other good services he has this far rendered to the Cameroon GCE Board, but we are afraid he has lost his salt, outlived his time and should honorably give way before somebody else takes that decision. This seems to be the desire of many out there!
Mokun Njouny Nelson
