Thousands of students, shopkeepers and staff in Cameroon have protested this week against what they claim is the marginalisation of the country’s English-speaking minority population. The so-called ghost-town protests in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon, including the city of Bamenda in the north and the town of Buea in the southwest, which led to the closure of schools, shops and market stalls, are the latest in a series of actions launched in November 2016.

Initiated by teachers and lawyers, the protests have revolved around encouraging people to use absenteeism to challenge what many English-speaking citizens claim is the dominance of French in society. Thousands of students stayed away as schools resumed this week. Petrol stations and shops were also empty.

Many protesters called for full linguistic representation in schools, courts and in the government. Cameroon’s English-speaking citizens make up around 20 percent of the nation’s total population of almost 24 million. The rest of the country speaks French, which is the language of use for government business.

Activists in the Southwest Region of Ambazonia told Al Jazeera that a mass skipping of the first day of school – Monday, September 4 – was a success. “Some people think that parents are not sending their kids to school because of the militarisation of these two regions, but that’s not the case,” said a participant who wanted to remain anonymous.

“How do you want kids to go back to a system that we are protesting against, the system that we want cleaned? It’s a peaceful protest.” On Monday, pro-government newspapers, the Cameroon Tribune and L’essentiel du Cameroun, published front-page stories showing children attending school as normal.

Security forces were also deployed in the affected areas at the start of the week to ensure there was no repeat of last year’s violent protests which witnessed the use of live ammunition and tear gas by state security forces. Since protests began last year, the government has frequently cracked down on disorder in the Anglophone regions of the country.

President Paul Biya, in power for 35 years, ordered a series of arrests and shut down internet access for three months. Security forces have killed at least six people to date and arrested hundreds more. Last Friday, President Biya ordered the release of dozens of political activists in a move seen as an attempt to ease tensions. The UN has called for both sides to engage in constructive dialogue.

Source: Al Jazeera

The French Cameroun dictator, Paul Biya has announced a financial package to entice religious leaders and some proprietors of private schools in Southern Cameroons to open their doors for the 2017 academic year. The Minister of Secondary Education said the sum of 2 billion FCFA has been made available as subvention to private primary and secondary schools in the country.

The Minister of Secondary Education, Jean Ernest Ngalle Massena Bibehe specified that the secondary and basic education sectors will each receive CFA one billion. The envelope will be distributed to both religious establishments and lay private schools that will go through a CPDM audition.

It was also revealed that 658 schools will benefit from the subvention including 28 teachers’ training schools, 508 schools within the general education category, 123 technical schools and 35 school management boards. Education officials have also hinted that payments will depend on the size of the institution and that only schools that had previously applied have been shortlisted for the grant.

The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium has however rejected the move stating that it remains a vain attempt at stifling the Southern Cameroons revolution. A spokesperson for the Consortium told Cameroon Concord News that the regime is broke and Biya has been unable to provide simple computer laptops he promised students in higher institutions of learning in the country.

By Rita Akana with files from CRTV

There are reports of tension mounting in Kumba, the chief city in the Meme constituency in Southern Cameroons over the issue of ‘back to school’. Cameroon Info.Net recently revealed that the many key players in the educational sector have received threats from unknown Southern Cameroons militant groups ordering them to end all forms of activities in their schools latest August 14.

We gathered that some schools in Kumba had started organizing holiday and catch-up classes in preparation for the anticipated academic year 2017/2018. However, most proprietors confirmed that they are not ready to risk their lives, or that of their pupils and students or even their assets for school resumption.

Registration of students and pupils for the new academic year in Southern Cameroons has remained very slow as the revolution enters its 11 month. Some proprietors and school administrators confirmed that many parents were sending their children to schools in Yaounde, Douala and Bafoussam.

The demand for transfer certificates by Anglophone parents to send their kids to schools out of West Cameroon has been unprecedented. Most of the parents are still skeptical about school resumption in the Anglophone regions after the failure and political GCE that was staged last academic year by the Francophone regime in Yaoundé. In Kumba in particular, tension has generated panic and safety issues to the effect that most parents do not want to send their kids to school.

Source: Cameroon Info.Net

The so-called candidates for the General Certificate Education (GCE) are still waiting for their results and this is causing general panic among families that betrayed the Southern Cameroons struggle to sit in for the exams. La Republique du Cameroun has launched many public entrance examinations into the public service and children from West Cameroon were unable to take part because the GCE results have still not been released.

Some of the directors of the professional colleges like Jean Marie Dongo of the National Post, Telecommunications and Information Technologies have announced that Southern Cameroons students can still sit for the entrance examination while awaiting the results.

Correspondingly, pressure is set to be mounting on the Board Registrar, Humphrey Ekema Monono who recently affirmed that the issues are very complicated than it was anticipated. Dr. Monono told CRTV that “Candidates registered in Bamenda in the Northwest Region and took the exams but in Yaoundé because of the Anglophone crisis. The GCE board must take this into account.”

However, Cameroon Concord News sources at the GCE board reported that the results in Southern Cameroons were catastrophic and there are talks about how to lower the scores and the grading. The GCE was indeed a complete fiasco as candidates who had missed school for a whole academic year also had to deal with special centers created by the French Cameroun political elites.

By Rita Akana
Cameroon Concord News

Jean Ernest Masséna Ngallé Bibehe, the Francophone Minister of Secondary Education, has closed 61 private schools for the year 2017/2018.

Officially, the minister in charge of secondary education referred to the violation of the legal formalities of creation and openness, to justify his decision.

Cameroon Concord News understands 7 out of the so-called10 regions are affected by the measure of the Minister in charge of Secondary Education.

In the Center region, 19 institutions, 17 of which are in the Mfoundi division alone have been closed.
For the Littoral region, 30 establishments were hit by the measure, 14 of them in the city of Douala, precisely in the Wouri division.

6 establishments were closed in the Bamenda County of Southern Cameroons, 2 in the French Cameroun East region, and 2 in the Buea County of West Cameroon. A school was also shut down in the Adamaoua (Vina) and another one in the West.

By Sonne Peter
Cameroon Concord News Group

The GCE Board is currently organizing a special session of the Ordinary level 2017 examination at Franky Comprehensive Secondary School where GCE scripts were allegedly stolen by thieves. Cameroon Concord News gathered from sources at the school that the re-staging of the examination was authorized by the so-called Board Registrar, Humphrey Monono.

The massacre is continuing as candidates were seen at the school campus rewriting the papers that were ‘ stolen’. Ever since the incident, there has not been any police investigation to determine which of the papers were carried away and no arrest on the issue.

Correction of the GCE scripts is presently going on in Buea and Yaounde and questions are now being asked on when the Franky Comprehensive School candidates will finish writing and also if examiners will be recalled from their homes to mark this new version of the CPDM GCE.

Controversy has also erupted on who set the questions and cat calls have greeted the whole scenario with some Anglophone parents saying that Humphrey Monono and his gang should accept that the organization of the 2017 GCE has been a complete and total fiasco.

By Sama Ernest
Cameroon Concord News

The management of the GCE Board has shut down the Bamenda marking Centers, Cameroon Concord News has learned. We gathered that the decision was reached after a meeting with the Francophone governor. The Board leadership has been quoted as saying that the institution cannot guarantee the security of the teachers summoned to correct the examination papers due to the current state of affairs in the Bamenda County set up as a result of the Southern Cameroons crisis.

Teachers who have to correct the examination papers have all been directed to the Buea and Limbe centers in the South West Region. Our senior correspondent in Mamfe, the chief town in Manyu Division hinted that several numbers of teachers have left the North West region via Bachou-Akaegbe in Manyu to Buea for the exercise.

The closure of the Bamenda centers announced recently by the well fed registrar, Humphery Ekema Monono (seen here) also involves examiners for the Ordinary levels. Humphrey Ekema Monono has also sent out a threatening message to all Southern Cameroons teachers warning against lateness. It is therefore in the South-West Region that all the participants in the correction chain will be working on the official examination copies.

The Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime believes security and working conditions are better assured in the Fako constituency. Some of the teachers who spoke to us but sued for anonymity said they were traveling to Buea and Limbe for tourism as due to the low participation of candidates, the number of working days have been drastically reduced. This means the markers will be paid less.

By Eyong Johnson
Cameroon Concord News

The Newly appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Buea, Professor Ngomo Horace Manga and the new Pro-Chancellor, Professor Ako Edward Oben have been installed into their respective functions on Monday the 10th of July 2017.

They were installed at the Dorothy Limunga Amphitheatre 750 of the University of Buea by the Minister of Higher Education, Chancellor of Academic Orders, Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo. The Higher Education boss instructed both academicians to uphold peace, conviviality and security in a university that exemplifies the Anglo-Saxon culture of Cameroon.

Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo insisted that the new VC and the Pro-Chancellor have to ensure quality education at a time the Bachelor- Masters -Doctorate (BMD) demands flexibility and the professionalization in teaching.
The Minister congratulated Professor Ako Edward Oben, who is former Rector of the University of Maroua for his academic prowess that has spanned decades in Cameroon and abroad. He was challenged to ensure that UB “the place to be” upholds its reputed academic tenets in a peaceful environment.

To the New VC, Professor Ngomo Horace Manga, Associate Professor in Applied Chemical Engineering, the Minister exhorted him to transform the University Campus into an educational yardstick of professional excellence in a changing world. He was Secretary General in the Ministry of Higher education before his appointment. A cream of personalities and students watched the two distinguished professors take office.

The VC and the Pro -Chancellor from Ndian and Manyu Divisions respectively, received blessings from traditional rulers while dance groups and the UB choir immortalized the event with interesting displays. The two were appointed in a Presidential decree of 27th June 2017 to replace Dr. Nalova Lyonga Limumga and Professor Maurice Tchuente.

Source: CRTV

There are reports that hundreds of answer GCE scripts of students of Franky Comprehensive High School, a not-too-old but renowned institution in Yaoundé, have been stolen by unknown ‘night-jars’.

The scripts were kept in an office of the school pending transfer to the accommodation center of the GCE Board.

The men of the underworld are said to have found their way into and out of the said office through the ceiling.

In the the 1960s, a Stanford psychologist ran an experiment to study children’s self-control. It’s called the marshmallow test. And it’s super simple. Kids ages 3 to 5 choose a treat — an Oreo cookie, a pretzel stick or a marshmallow. Then researchers give the child brief instructions: You can eat the treat now … but if you can wait for me to return, you’ll get two treats.

The researchers leave the room. And the child just has to sit there staring at a marshmallow — and deciding whether to exert self-control or to dig in. Psychologists have performed the experiment many times. In general, fewer than half the kids “pass” the test. Most kids can’t delay gratification: They gobble up the marshmallow.

The researchers followed these kids for decades and found that those who did wait were more likely to have better SAT scores and better jobs later on in life, the researchers reported. Now for the first time, there’s a study reporting on what happens when psychologists give the marshmallow test to kids outside Western culture, specifically 4-year-old children from the ethnic group Nso in Cameroon.

“The Nso are a community who live off subsistence farming, mainly corn and beans,” says Bettina Lamm, a psychologist at the Universitat Osnabruck, who led the study. “Most of the children live in mud brick houses without water and electricity. They have to work a lot to take care of younger siblings and help their parents on the farm.”

Guess what? These kids rocked the marshmallow test. “The difference was huge,” Lamm says. “The Cameroonian kids really behave very differently, and they were able to wait much better.” Lamm and her colleagues ran the experiment on nearly 200 Cameroonian and German kids. The Cameroonians kids were offered a puff-puff — a little doughnut popular there.

Compared to German children in the experiment, the Cameroonian kids waited, on average, twice as long for the second treat. And way more Cameroonian kids — nearly 70 percent — waited the full 10 minutes to snag the second marshmallow. Only about 30 percent of the German kids could hold out, Lamm and her team reported in the journal Child Development in early June. Lamm and colleagues watched the kids closely during the experiment and tracked their behavior. The German kids showed way more emotions during the waiting period, she says, especially negative emotions.

They whined more, cried more and squirmed more in their seats. “They were really fighting the waiting period — playing with their fingers, talking to themselves — trying any distraction they can to manage to wait,” she says. “In contrast, many of the Cameroonian kids simply sat quietly and waited,” Lamm says. “Ten percent of them even fell asleep.”

It’s almost like the kids were meditating. Lamm says they don’t know exactly why the Cameroonian kids were so good at the marshmallow test. Kid behaviors are complicated and sophisticated. But one reason may be the Nso parenting style, which is completely different than Western parenting.

“Nso children are required very early to control their emotions, especially negative emotions,” Lamm says. “Moms tell their children that they don’t expect them to cry and that they really want them to learn to control their emotions.”

This parenting style starts very early — when children are newborns. “The moms breast-feed their babies before they start to cry so they don’t need to express any negative emotion,” Lamm says. “This emotion is already regulated before it’s expressed.” Western moms spend a lot of time looking at their babies for signals to figure out what their babies needs. The Nso moms don’t do this.

“They believe they — the moms — know what is good for a baby, and they do what is good for a baby,” Lamm says. “They don’t need to look for signals from the baby.” As the children get older, this parenting style continues.
“Kids are really expected to learn to control their needs and not ask for their desires or wishes,” she says. These moms expect obedience and respect. And the kids are good at adapting to situations where they don’t get what they might want, where they have to wait.

“So they learn self-control,” Lamm says. “Maybe it’s a different type of self-control than Western kids learn. But it’s very effective.” But self-control might not be the whole picture, says Celeste Kidd, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester.

A few years ago, she and her colleagues found evidence that the marshmallow test doesn’t involve just self-control. It also measures how much a child trusts his environment — how much they trust that the researcher is really going to return with the second marshmallow.

“What also matters is kids’ expectations about whether waiting will be worth it or not,” Kidd says. Because if you think about it, if the child doesn’t believe that second marshmallow is actually going to arrive, then it makes sense to eat the first one.

“We have evidence that kids take under consideration the statistical nature of what has happened in the past,” Kidd says. “So for example, if a child is living in an environment where there’s a lot of uncertainty and instability, then they may think that waiting isn’t likely to pay off even though they have the ability to delay gratification.”
Nso parents are quite strict and consistent with their discipline. So, Kidd says, perhaps this consistent parenting boosts the kids’ trust in adults — that when the person in charge says they’re going to bring a second treat, they likely will.

Source: npr.org