Re: ON THE UNREST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BUEA. REACTING TO DR. MBAH

Dear Dr. Mbah,

I do not want to take the time, energy, and the systematic approach that the illustrious Cho Ayaba has employed here to debunk the crab that you have written here. If you have really spent time and resources in school, I do not want to belief that you can spend so much time and energy blaming the victim! Those children need our support out there. It would appear to me that you do not even understand the genesis of the crisis at that university. Let me tell you that the problems started since the early 1990s. Today your write up seems to be pointing an accusing finger on the Southern Cameroons struggle. You seem to be writting for LRC. Please, if you do not have something to say, you better not write the crab that you have written, because if you attended school out here with those same conditions at Buea, you would not have gotten to the level that you now have.

 

Peter Teforlack

From: Ayaba Cho Lucas SOUTHERN CAMEROONS INDEPENDENCE <yabaluc@hotmail.com>
To: "ambasbay@googlegroups.com" <ambasbay@googlegroups.com>; "camnetwork@yahoogroups.com" <camnetwork@yahoogroups.com>; "cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com" <cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com>; "accdf@yahoogroups.com" <accdf@yahoogroups.com>; "mankonforum@yahoogroups.com" <mankonforum@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2013 3:28 AM
Subject: ON THE UNREST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BUEA. REACTING TO DR. MBAH

Dear Dr. Mbah,

I read your letter caption 'A WORD OF ADVICE TO UBSU' with a lot of interest. I have also read the reaction of other writers. At the same time that I was reading your consequentialist theses I was also reading the well written and researched letter to the president of La Republiqe du Cameroun authored by my colleagues in the struggle for our liberation. These two letters draw interesting parallel which every single individual should attempt to understand. In SCAPO's letter to Biya, they draw the attention of Yaounde to many instances where dialogue was prescribed by the UN; requested by our people, proposed by Kofi Annan and declared by the African Commission on human and people's rights. In all of these instances, SCAPO argues in its letter, Yaoundé chose the course of violence. It assassinated those who opted for dialogue, murdered those who peaceful gathered to celebrate a day it has spent billions today trying to celebrate. Your letter codenamed advice challenges those who have been brutalized, tortured and jailed. It hails the system and calls its laws sacrosanct. I can understand your position.

You wrote: One question that comes to mind is whether UBSU should have taken it upon itself to react. It was not a jurist speaking on their behalf; no, it was they themselves. But UBSU forgot that now that the court has stepped in and even handed down a sentence, the whole matter has shifted into a higher gear. It is now beyond the university and the vice chancellor.

Dr. Mbah, after reading your rich and exhaustive profile, I begin to wonder if the experiences you garner all through your intellectual journey enriched you in any way. We are all witnesses of the reaction to the Zimmerman trial which acquitted him for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The reaction of most black Americans, Civil rights Movements and even President Obama were all political reactions. I would therefor suggest that you enrich yourself properly on matters of political struggles and have a deeper understanding on how governments react to issues that should have been addressed politically. You might have also read the reaction of the American political system on the actions of civil rights leaders in the early sixties. They attempted to use the court. As you may also have recently learned, Mandela argued that during his Rivona trial, he was not interested in using the courts to test the law. Rather he wanted to use the courts to expose the system and its shortcomings since the laws were designed and constructed to sustain the very system he was struggling to dismantle. In this regard UBSU's reaction is perfectly in order. Its lawyers will continue to fight the rulling knowing full well that the struggle of the students on the streets will be an important determinant on how the facts are adjudicated in the court of law. It is very sickening to understand how you can draw any parallel between what happen to Dominic Strasskan and the students of the University of Buea. This sort of parallel exposes an underlying disconnect between the reality of the University of Buea and a genuine application of your intellectual knowhow as a scholar. And this is the sort of conflation of genuine intellectual dispositions and charged political positions that has haunted our intellectuals for a very long time. The gaping vacuum is thus for you to attempt to make a genuine assessment of your endowed experience and the reality of a strife which I perceive strictly out of your realm

You wrote: The law is sacrosanct.

I will not attempt to take you beyond the remit of the law of the occupying regime. By using the definite article, I will suppose you allude to the law that was used in judging and sentencing of the students. Yet you have failed to expose the law in your theses cum advice. I will also suppose you have not read that particular law since your introduction clearly alludes to the fact that you have yet to read the full judgment let alone the law that was used in weighing the facts and the degree of punishment. Since you used the DSK case in your argument, I will want to draw your attention to the same jurisdiction. Would you say that the 'Stand your ground law' that led to the murder of Trayvon and the acquittal of Zimmerman is sacrosanct? Your profile places you as a social scientist. Any social scientist is well aware of the fact that social attitudes, situations are constantly changing and deconstructing supposed immutable objective realities of yesterday. And since laws are built from these attitudes and situations, they are subject to human challenge on a daily basis. UBSU like any other person should challenge and question the instituions of State. A state that runs on two constitutions and presidential decrees that are not subject to any judicial review should have its verdicts challenged both on the merit, the soundness of the law and the motive of its drafters. UBSU cannot trust a state that murders its members, undertakes no investigation on the circumstances of the killings; kidnaps and tortures its members; jails others and uses varied sections of its criminal code to attempt to pass judgment on an issue of poilitical disagreements. It is the same institution and its laws that were used to try and sentence my friends at the Yaounde military court. While some of them were acquitted the procedural and substantive premise of their trial has since been challenged by the Human Rights Committee and condemned by many other institutions. To surrender to sacrosanctity and the inviolability of the premise of the law, the objective correctness of institutions built through fraud and violence is an outdated mentality that men of your statue defend at their peril and should never subscribe to.

You wrote: News travels fast. UBSU should therefore not undermine the extent to which their action can damage the university. Repeated striking give the world the erroneous impression that Cameroon is insecure. Foreign investors will be discouraged and tourists will go elsewhere

I have avoided your hypothetical unforeseen consequences because they are outright trash not worth commenting on. The index of political instability in its 2009/10 ranking, ranked Cameroun 47, even more unstable than it was in 2007. UBSU is adding nothing to the level of instability which are rooted in economic distress indicators, social tensions between the governed and the rulers and the ultra vires nature of the polity of the Yaoundé junta. The more reason why UBSU should reject a political trial of its members and leaders is rooted in the nature of the institution of the state, the lack of coherent and consistent method in the discharge of duties, the action of political appointees of the state and the rejection of dialogue as a means of resolving conflicts. The public image of the University of Buea has long been determined by other factors beyond the control of any student or group of students. It was determined once when the regime attempted to replaced merit with nepotism in the recruitment of medical students. The students have shown constantly since the creation of the university that they can study even in spaces where there are neither benches, nor library nor even laboratory. The generation of students of this university has been subjected to all forms of institutional humiliation. Yet the thousands who have graduated with distinction is a demonstration of the determination of the students to study under such conditions of humiliation.

 

You wrote of the cheering crowd: Firstly, all such people can offer the Union is talk and nothing but cheap talk. When the union is in trouble, none of them will step forward to assist. If UBSU is banned, they will not be the ones to lift the ban. If students are dismissed, they cannot readmit them. If the university is closed won, they will not be able to reopen it.

The university authorities, colonial puppet chiefs and internet monsters have been very quick at blaming cheering crowds and active supporters. They have sort desperately to undermine the judgment of UBSU officials and the credibility of thousands of students. Their point has been that these students cannot be that clever to determine our machinations. There must be some unseen hands behind their reaction. They have used the end of world argument to attempt to instill fear and have built apocalyptic hypothetical consequences to attempt to force their will on students. Very few have taken the time to look at the issues that have brought about these numerous strife's in the university. Dear Mr. Mbah, UBSU has been banned before; students expelled before; others threatened, tortured and killed. Each time these extreme methods are used to frighten and cow down students, a more energetic UBSU has reemerged and a more determined generation of students are born in the university of Buea. Your lecture should have been directed to the regime. Don't you think there comes a time when the Americans realized in Iraq and Afghanistan that carpet bombing of villages was not going to get the population to succumb to their sacrosanct values, laws and way of life? What do you think these students can loss anymore? They fought for the creation of this university. The argument of your ilk then was, it was better to continue to study in half-baked English in Yaoundé than create political instability in demanding the creation of the University of Buea. Time has defeated that argument. Also then the regime accused the SDF and other section of the Southern Cameroons society for being the cheering crowd. While CANSA members were being victimized and other constituted group members stood their ground political prostitutes were predicting doomsdays. When the blood of patriots watered the field and caused the germination of UB, Djeuma, Endeley. Titanji and others emerged as field supervisors in the same plantation they fought so had to prevent. There are always consequences to every action. You can try to mitigate the effect of some of those consequences but you should never run away from innovation because there are possibilities the immediate outcome might have some adverse effects. Your consequentialist theses also negate the benefit of protest in the development of a tolerant society. It also failed to allude to the numerous benefits that the sacrifices of others have brought to millions of others. It deliberately ignores historical realities in the power of sacrifice and attempts frivolously to hype a subjective consequentialist position that hides a biased motivation. It would be important for you to make a small survey of what has happened to students who have been expelled from the University of Buea. The result will shock you and I am sure it will be a motivation to the thousands of students who continue to be threatened with real and imagined consequences for daring sacrosanct laws.

You wrote in your apotheosis that we must consider the action taken by the court as the crescendo in this matter and start climbing down

Again, I will give you the benefit of context in dishing this advice. But before returning to context, I will remind you that not every conflict gets to a crescendo with the marriage of a political imprisonment and climbing down. The Rivona trial set the stage for a long and costly political battle that bled to the defeat of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The trial and imprisonment of SCYL members led to an intense international mobilization that finally exposed the regimes methods, its institutions and galvanized our people around the concept of justice. The arrest, trial and imprisonment of Charles Taylor and the kidnapping of Laurent Ghagbo and arraignment before the ICC has galvanized opponents of the ideological institutions of the ICC designed to use the law as an extension of neocolonial tendencies. So Mr. Mbah, every conflict has its specific historical realities and their mode of termination and consequent post conflict situations have principally been determined by the vanquished and not the victor. UBSU today is the vanquished party in a political court theater designed by the victor to achieve specific political objectives. The situation in the University of Buea shall not be determined by the Courts. It shall be determined by UBSU as it has done since 1993. The Baforchu people must realize that it is not only a snake that lies beyond the hiding places of cricket. The greatest treasures in the world are buried at that same level and even beyond.

Camerounese students pay low compared to Britain. Mr Mbah in Britain, students are provided with the best libraries, labs and other research facilities. They are provided with a loan scheme which they can decide to augment with a free more than 2000 pounds grant. They are provided with subsidized public transport systems. They are provided with a vast array of other grant possibilities from the hundreds of thousands of charities scattered across the country. And this is where it even gets interesting. Despite the burdensome nature of the loan, they can get a job while studying and if the unemployment rate is any statistic to go by most will be employed somehow and will be able in their lifetime to continue to pay the debt, have health care and other social services. Compare this to the student who lives Baforchu to study in UB. The student surely comes from a home whose parents have been dried up by a corrupt and ineffective oligarchy that has laud it over them for generation. The student takes a ride to buea carrying bags of potatoes, rice, cooking oil. He/she pays the trip down to Buea, pays fees, pays rents, photocopier, buys everything you need to live in a 12sqm space. The student has no health insurance and is battered every day by mosquitoes fuelled by a rotten Council that cannot clean its city. The student has to survive this pressure and still graduate to sell the potatoes farm in Baforchu to bribe his way to getting a job or to pay his way into exile. Oh yes, I do not know what adage the Baforchu people have coined for this. Don't dig far beyond the rat mole hole, I suppose, because there lurks the unseen hand of the HIV virus.

The way forward is for you and others to shut the hell up. Your prescription is for a different ailment and it may cause irredeemable consequences. You started  your consequentialist monologue with a covet attempt to use you profile to mask your ineffective analytical power. You thrived on the culture of self-evidence provided by a colorful career and ended up concluding with a surrender hypotheses as the way forward. Your analysis failed woefully to capture the holistic nature of the conflict. This conflict is not divorced from the political satire that has grabbed the Camerounese state for the past fifty years. And as SCAPO's extensive letter has shown, we are dealing with a regime that rejected the UN premise of peaceful coexistence; redesigned that notion of coexistence and named itself the mother state; used constructed tales and violence to force down its narrative of history: rejected dialogue in the drawing up of its own laws and forced down a law on the population designed through faxes and telephone calls; organized elections, rigged them and imprisoned and torture those who won; tied up journalists and shut down papers and stations and empty public coffers to build foreign reserves in foreign countries. This is the holistic state that you think UBSU and its cheering fans should submit to because it passes your sacrosanct test? Isn't it really childish and insane that most of you avoid the issues and start attacking the students on their level of colonial English? What is your level of Baforchu 101? Does something like academic writing mean anything to you as an instrument in strengthening writing abilities? Do you really think that even born Brits demonstrate mastery in the English language that you should be proud of? When I read your very rich profile and experience, I was expecting a well-researched piece in which you clearly begin by defining your parameters, stating clearly your sources and method in generating information or any hypotheses and more importantly a piece that enhances the credibility of the author. I was not disappointed. You came across like this inexperience Doctor arrogant enough of his general knowledge on issues and bent on using his profile to turn a subjective opinion into objective reality.

I have and continue to advice UBSU never to take their struggle entirely into the boardroom. Negotiations must move hand in hand with creativee street action or atleast the threat of it. And because street actions impose certain realities that are generated by events on the streets, they should never deny themselves the right to fight back. It is a moral position to take in the face of senseless violence from the thugs occupying our land and its distant analysts bent in getting UBSU to the surrender table with their hands tied behind their backs and their friends locked up in jail.

Sorry, I didn't state my profile at the beginning of this piece. So permit me do it here.

Cho Ayaba

STILL A STUDENT.

University of Buea, Southern Cameroons.

 

 

Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 04:49:09 +0100
From: louis_egbe@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Re: [camnetwork] ON THE UNREST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BUEA
To: ambasbay@googlegroups.com; camnetwork@yahoogroups.com; cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com; accdf@yahoogroups.com; mankonforum@yahoogroups.com

What one wonders is this: What kind of students will spend their student lives trying to fight a university? Do they read at all? That may account for their poor grammar and low intellectual power. Holding a meeting  in a village behind the Mountain? Tell me about it! Do these students know who live behind the mountain?

These students were warned that they'd face jail. Now, another warning: If you start a fight again, it will no longer be a court matter. You may be gunned down toute en suite.

Just take up your books, and read them. That's all you can do. Game over.

A word is sufficient.

Mbua

From: Mishe Fon <mishefon@yahoo.com>
To: "camnetwork@yahoogroups.com" <camnetwork@yahoogroups.com>; "cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com" <cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com>; "accdf@yahoogroups.com" <accdf@yahoogroups.com>; "mankonforum@yahoogroups.com" <mankonforum@yahoogroups.com>; "ambasbay@googlegroups.com" <ambasbay@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, 28 July 2013, 0:51
Subject: Fw: [camnetwork] ON THE UNREST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BUEA

 

Dr. Mbah Tikum Azonga

 

Well Balanced approach at conflict resolution. I sincerely don't know who gives advice to the "Collective of UBSU" but some of their incendiary postings on the Internet in very murky and sometimes sub-standard English Language makes some of us doubt the credibility of these students. Crafting a reasonable and straight forward "Communique" should not be that difficult for Graduate and Under Graduate students of "Anglophone" Education.

 

I personally find the verdict of the Court in this case to be extremely severe and out of place. Usually Student protests/riots that have ended in the Court system elsewhere saw maximum fines or penalties of at most three months or some kind of suspended sentence. Keep in mind that these are young Cameroonians (future leaders...that is, if the SHIDON TIGHT Oligarchs who have refused to retire even at 80 can decide to Shake Skin and allow Young Cameroonians to take over). I know Cameroonians who graduated from Ngoa with "Matrise en Quelque Chose" since 1982 when tonton chopped Ahidjo's chair WHO have never had to put their expertise at the service of their country. Some of them barely manged to become Ecole Normale TEACHERS posted and "oublier complement" to remote enclaves of Cameroon. Imagine sending a young graduate from Buea to go and teach in CES de Nguelemedouka (where is that???). Little wonder the gates of  European and American Embassies are flooded on a daily basis with our young citizens, cooking up all kinds of "dokkies and mitives", fleeing the country in droves for greener pastures.

 

Cameroon Government came up with Operation 1500, 2500 and most recently 25,000 massive recruitment into the Public Service which have all turned out to be a massive "Political Mirage and Fraud of gargantuan proportions". How could a Government under very strict PPTE (tight Financial restrictions from donor participants) boastfully talk of revamping its ailing Civil Service with an injection of twenty five thousand new RECRUITS. I am not an Accountant but any Mbutuku will want to know: What were the budgetary allocations for that Fiscal Year (when the President announced this magnanimous Gift to his Compatriots) that took care of these new supposed "Hires"? Did the National Assembly approve of that Budget? When was it passed into Law? How many were actually hired and how many are on Government Payroll as we speak.

 

I honestly sympathize with UBSU but I agree with you intoto that the UBSU "Executives" are going about it the wrong way. They have to respect the Court decisions and seek redress as you brilliantly point out by consulting with Legal luminaries instead of rushing to the Internet with have baked uncouth diatribe. Sometimes I read some of their "Communique" and I ask myself who these fellows really are?

The problems of the University of Buea are many and varied...from the Students, to you the Lecturers/Administrators and the Cameroon Government itself. For lasting peace to reign in that University, a lot of soul searching by all and sundry has to be engaged immediately. 

My Two Cents

Mishe Fon

   
Subject: [camnetwork] ON THE UNREST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BUEA

A WORD OF ADVICE TO UBSU (UNIVERSITY OF BUEA)

1. FIRST THINGS FIRST

The court has handed down sentences on the students of the University
of Buea who were awaiting trial for their alleged part in disturbances
that rocked the university recently. Nonetheless, the details of the
sentences are beyond the present piece of dispatch. The purpose of the
epistle is to counsel members of UBSU and offer them advice on where
to go from here; in other words, the way forward. UBSU members reading
this may say there is nothing I am telling them that they do not know
already. No, let them hold their horses, for there is a French saying
that "Abondance de biens ne nuit pas". I urge them to read through
this piece of writing carefully and reflect seriously on its content.
By the way, what I say here is entirely my own creation, with no input
from anyone else.

2. WHO AM I TO PREACH TO YOU?

I have been a student and a student leader too. I have loved the time
spent at the University of Buea teaching Journalism and Mass
Communication as well as the two general courses, FRENCH 101 and
FRENCH 102. I have been a college principal. When I taught French and
Spanish in a London High School, I was made a Form Tutor, a Head of
Year and Chairman of the school's Public Relations. At the same
school, I was elected unopposed as the institution's Staff
Representative. Once when as an international journalist I traveled to
Brazzaville (Republic of Congo) to cover the first-ever Conference of
African Scientists organized by the then OAU and UNESCO, my stay in
Brazzaville coincided with the annual assembly of Cameroonian students
in that country. They invited me as a guest of honour. When I got up
to speak, I dissuaded them from going on a strike they had intended to
use to have their problems solved. That was at the time when our
government was sponsoring thousands of students in foreign
universities. I advised them to contact the ambassador and put their
problems directly to him. They did, and it worked. On another
occasion, when the ENS the lone institution on the Bambili campus and
I was a part time French teacher there, I arrived one day to find that
support staffs were on a sit-in strike. After speaking briefly with
them, I went to the director and asked whether he would allow me to
talk to the workers. He gave me the green light and I spoke with them.
They called off the strike and went back to work. So if I am advising
UBSU, I where I am coming from.

3. A WORD TOO MANY

Shortly after the court ruling of this week, UBSU through the
Camnetwork discussion forum on internet reacted rather prematurely,
rashly and hastily. It used language that was discordant and
uncomfortable. The UBSU message was entitled: "Buea High Court Failed
Justice". It said inter alia, "a strategic meeting is therefore billed
on Sunday 28th July at the village behind the Buea Mountain". UBSU
also warns: "We call on UB students wherever they are to prepare.
Since the University Administration has decided to go on this way then
War we declare unto UB....Peace will declare unknown in UB.....the
reactions shall be spontaneous and it shall follow generations upon
generations....It could not come now but it will eventually come".
This is no doubt a call to arms; or if you prefer, sabre rattling.
This meeting called for Sunday 28th July has already been announced.
But has UBSU applied and obtained authorization to hold it? It calls
on UB students "wherever they are, to prepare". How? More shocking is
the reprehensible warning: "War we declare unto UB…Peace will declare
unknown in UB".

Some of these statements can clearly incriminate UBSU. If that happens
then it means that UBSU has shot itself in the foot and sold itself
short.

4. THE GAPING VACUUM

One question that comes to mind is whether UBSU should have taken it
upon itself to react. It was not a jurist speaking on their behalf;
no, it was they themselves. But UBSU forgot that now that the court
has stepped in and even handed down a sentence, the whole matter has
shifted into a higher gear. It is now beyond the university and the
vice chancellor. The statement of UBSU gives the impression that they
are their own lawyers. Why so? When a French top ranking official was
accused of sexual impropriety towards a woman and was insulted and
humiliated, he said nothing but allowed his lawyers to do all the
talking. Why did UBSU choose to go it alone? Why did it choose to be
the lone ranger?

5. THE LAW IS SACROSANCT

UBSU has described the court ruling as a "failure". By so doing, the
union is questioning and challenging the authority of the law and the
law courts, and by extension, the institutions of the Republic. Some
pleas had been voiced in favour of the release of the detained
students. That did not happen. Instead, the court went ahead and tried
them and has now rendered its verdict. The court's decision must be
respected. This does not mean that they can not disagree with what the
court says. But there are ways of doing it, one of which is to lodge
an appeal against the decision. That is best done by a lawyer. UBSU
has not looked at that option. The decision taken by the court is
surely one that is likely to be upheld by the authorities: the
Minister, the Prime minister and the president of the Republic. This
is because the law is the law, even if as someone described it, "the
law is an ass".

6. SOME (UNFORESEEN) CONSEQUENCES

UBSU must thread carefully because further action on their part
henceforth may lead to the disbandment of the Union, as a way of
enabling peace to reign on campus. In extreme cases, the university
may be closed down perhaps for a week, a month, a semester or even a
year. Nigeria is one example where universities have been closed down
due to student unrest. Once that happens, a whole year can be lost and
the authorities may now use methods of (re)enrolment which exclude
unruly or potentially dangerous students. The university may also
permanently exclude some students from the institution. If that
happens, they may find it difficult to enrol elsewhere and may even
find it difficult to leave the country and study abroad. So far, the
minister of higher education has not reacted as such; neither has the
prime minister nor president of the Republic. Once when there was a
student strike at the then lone University of Yaoundé, the Head of
State at the time, Ahmadou Ahidjo openly warned students: "L`ordre
regnera à L`université par tous les moyens!" It was an angry voice,
and so students immediately returned to class. UBSU must realize that
the scenario has changed since their conflict began and consequently
fine-tune their approach.

7. THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BUEA

News travels fast. UBSU should therefore not undermine the extent to
which their action can damage the university. Repeated striking give
the world the erroneous impression that Cameroon is insecure. Foreign
investors will be discouraged and tourists will go elsewhere. Another
point is that the University of Buea has been earmarked to host one of
the institutions of the Pan African University, created by the African
Union. Continuous unrest can either move it out of the University of
Buea or out of Cameroon totally. So who loses? One question that
should be asked is why it is that the University of Buea has topped
the chart for student strikes and unrest, of all the state
universities. Why?

7. THE CHEERING CROWDS

People may have sympathized with UBSU. Some are no doubt still egging
on the union to stay in defiance even of the court of law. That is not
a good thing to do. Firstly, all such people can offer the Union is
talk and nothing but cheap talk. When the union is in trouble, none of
them will step forward to assist. If UBSU is banned, they will not be
the ones to lift the ban. If students are dismissed, they can not
readmit them. If the university is closed won, they will not be able
to reopen it.

This fan club syndrome reminds me of student unrests that took place
in China some years ago. Western media and their politicians cheered
the students and urged them to carry on. However, when the Chinese
government ruthlessly clamped down on them and they capitulated, the
West swallowed its tongue. When America invaded Libya, cheering crowds
stood on roof tops and applauded. When the Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein was executed, the same people rejoiced and some threw parties
in jubilation. But today, many Iraqis regret it because life in the
country has greatly declined, to a level far below that which obtained
at the time of Saddam. UBSU must know that any event that is staged
publicly will always have its share of spectators. But it does not
necessarily mean that the act being performed is right. One head of
state looked at the mammoth crowds that had come out for his
installation ceremony and remarked that he was sure if he was about to
be executed the turn out would be equally high. So, UBSU, do not trust
appearances. Far off hills look green.

8. THE APOTHEOSIS

Every conflict gets to a crescendo. After that the curb begins to
fall. Let us consider the action taken by the court as the crescendo
in this matter and start climbing down. UBSU must not insist on
fighting because it wants to score the winning goal. Besides, it is
difficult to fight the institution or even the republic. A French
aphorism says, rather tellingly, "on ne gagne pas à tous les coups".
In Baforchu, we say: "if you dig too deeply for a cricket, you may
come up with a snake".

9. THE CAMEROONIAN STUDENT AS A RACE APART

University Students in our country have it good and sometimes it is
healthy for one to stop and count one's blessings. Cameroon is one of
the few countries where university fees are so low. Even in Britain,
British students still pay an amount that comparatively makes that
paid in Cameroon look derisory. There has been a lot of talk about the
need for government to loosen its grip on universities. I agree.
However, there is a saying that who pays the piper dictates the tune.
As long as funding universities is still a government activity, it
will be difficult to get it to reduce its role it. If the government
were to withdraw financially and make universities fend for
themselves, would they?

10. THE WAY FORWARD

Now that the saga has reached a point of no return, so to speak, if
UBSU is wise, it should sue for peace. It should take the bull by the
horns, swallow the bitter pill and undertake to restore peace on
campus. If UBSU moves in that direction, the act may displease some
observers and supporters. But in the end, the gesture will have won
the admiration of the world community. That is because it is easier
for the human being to say, "shut up!" than to say "I am sorry". Two
of the world's greatest enemies to each other: Israel and Palestine,
have realized the importance of dialogue. Warring factions in
Apartheid South Africa realized it and set up the Peace and
Reconciliation Committee where they each spoke from the heart, shed
tears and forgave each other. Here in Cameroon, both President Paul
Biya and Main Opposition Leader Ni John Fru Ndi have sat down and
talked. One guest on the French national Radio, RFI commented recently
that wars end up with the warring factions sitting down and talking.
The world could in this way learn a big lesson from UBSU. Another
point is that there can not be two masters on the same ship. The Vice
Chancellor is the Head of the university and therefore boss over UBSU.
It is not the other way round.

UBSU, you can do it! Give peace a chance!

--
TIKUM MBAH AZONGA

PhD (Mass Communication), Mastaire ès Lettres  (Journalisme), PG Dip.
(French), Dip.Traducteur-Inteprète, Dip.(Prof Français Langue
Etrangère), Certifcado de Profesor de Español Lengua Extrangera
(DELE), Diplôme Chambre de Commerce de Paris, Cambidge Certificate of
Proficiency in English.


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