NEWS ANALYSIS

Beyond Nalova Lyonga’s ministerial crave 

By Peterkins Manyong, guest writer and publisher of The Independent Observer

“Truth is like someone midway in a staircase. Those on the ground floor see him as being up whole those further up the staircase see him as someone down”, Francis Nyamjoh in: “Married But Available.”

The author of the book from which the quote emanates was incidentally a lecturer at the University of Buea whose vice chancellor is the subject of this analysis.

Interestingly, the remark is in relation to a controversy about a fence which Dorothy Njeuma, UB’s pioneer VC was constructing round the campus around the time Dr. Nyamjoh was a UB lecturer. Like Nalova Lyonga, Dorothy Njeuma was a Bakweri. And even more significant, Dr. Njeuma in her capacity as vice minister of national education connived with her Francophone boss to denigrate the GCE exams.

But she and her partner-in-crime were “shot in midflight” when Anglophone students of the then Federal University of Bamenda emptied themselves into the streets and said NO. That was in December 1983 one year after Biya took power. Embarrassingly, when the University of Buea was created, Dorothy Njeuma was appointed its pioneer vice chancellor.

Nalova Lyonga, another “daughter of the soil” seems to think she can reap the fruits of conspiracy with Francophones to deprive Anglophones of what is rightly theirs. Her controversial decision that HTTTC Kumba entrances examination must be translated into French for Francophone candidates seems to be in the same direction.

This is a clear case of overreaching. The very decision to create the school in Kumba suggests that President Biya wanted it to be autonomous even if under the auspices of UB. The fact that entrance examination questions into HTTTC Bambili and that of Douala are never translated renders Nalova’s act more odious than it should have been. If her conduct were not motivated by a vaulting ambition to be rewarded with a ministerial appointment, there is no explanation for it.

What constitutes a crime or a sin is not an act in itself, but the intention behind the act. She wants to give the false impression that she is out to promote bilingualism. But the real intention is to sacrifice Anglophone education on the alter of personal aggrandizement.

 It is worth recalling that the University of Buea was recently in a crisis emanating from her high-handedness. The controversy is yet to settle and she has plunged herself into the midst of another. Coming at a time when the nation is at war with Boko Haram and when any uprising could lead to undesirable consequences, the University of Buea vice chancellor’s decision can be said to be hopelessly out of joint. It is extremely precarious.

Professor Bernard Fonlon (May peaceful and eternal rest be his portion) took great exception to such pseudo-intellectual activities like running a university as a “glorified secondary school” and sacrificing truth for political ambition. Nalova Lyonga has certainly burnt her fingers. It is an act of divinity that Joyce Bayande Endeley, the director of HTTTC Kumba is not only a level-headed woman, but also of Bakweri origin.

Perhaps the University of Buea chancellor thought the HTTTC Kumba director would be a walk-over. Her opposition to Nalova’s scheme is a source of hope for the Anglo-Saxon education even if Nalova Lyonga has her way in the end. The pain that Nalova Lyonga is about to inflict on Anglo-Saxon education will be deeply felt by future generations.

A genuine intellectual is not necessarily one with a bag of university degrees. If the University of Buea vice chancellor were one she would have asked herself what legacy she would leave behind. It is for overlooking this responsibility towards future generation and placing parochial tribal interests above intellectual and universal ones that Christopher Okigbo stood trial in the hereafter at the Court of Mater Karibu Ali Mazru’s “The Trial of Christopher Okigbo”. Okigbo was a poet of Igbo extraction who was killed in a plane crash while transporting arms from abroad for Biafra during the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70.

Anglophones have every reason to rise up against Nalova Lyonga because she has taken this decision at a time when its technical education is being savagely destroyed by Francophone teachers through poor approximate translations that make nonsense of lectures and examination texts. Technical education is the only palpable solution to unemployment. You take away a man’s life when you take away the means by which he lives. That is what the University of Buea vice chancellor is trying to do to Anglophone children; depriving them of an education that would enable them provide themselves jobs rather than join the hundreds of thousands with the public service mentality.

The UB VC’s conduct is another devastating blow to female activism. Those who advocate women’s empowerment have often argued that: “when we educate a woman, we educate a nation”. The future of a nation lies in its youth. The creation of technical teachers colleges in various parts of the country is in recognition of the need to have better educate children.

GTTC Ombe produced some of today’s best mechanics, engineers and carpenters. Anglophones could still revive this glory by taking advantage of the new HTTTCs. Writing examinations into these schools in English is an encouragement for Francophones to learn English so that they should in future not address the Commonwealth in French as Biya did during the CPA conference opening. It would be another way to undue part of the damage done through the destruction of Anglophone technical education.

Nalova’s decision is one act of provocation to many. Anglophones should not equivocate on it. They should deny it with all the vehemence a rotten egg is rejected.