In 2005, the University of Buea organized an entrance examination into its School of Health, but the Minister of Higher Education forced the names of some candidates who did not even write the exam into the list of successful candidates. This provoked an outcry which spilled into a rampage. The security forces stepped in and four students died. Today the Ministry has simply contrived to be organizing a single entrance exam for all students wishing to enter any Health School in the country. In this way, the government alone decides who gets admitted into which higher education school of health, the result being that all higher education schools of health in the Anglophone zones are now flooded with Francophones while regional balance is ignored. Out of the 850 students who were admitted in the 2013 academic year in these health schools, Anglophones did not amount for up to 50. The Anglophone people are therefore being elbowed out in all spheres of life. This assessment is more poignant when it is considered that a few years ago, the government suddenly closed down the faculties of health which were being run by the Catholic and the Presbyterian churches in the Anglophone zones. The hidden agenda as some saw it was to reduce the impact of the denominational formation as they did in 1975 by closing down private confessional teacher training colleges in the Anglophone Regions.
More recently it has been the question of the two HTTTCs, one in Bambili and the other in Kumba. Already, the one in Bambili is flooded by francophone teachers and administrators as well as students, thanks to the open (and sometimes hidden) admission and recruitment conditions set by government. There has been an outcry because the questions for the entrance exam into HTTTC Kumba were to be translated into French to give the Francophones an added advantage that the Anglophones never enjoy in similar circumstances anywhere. In spite of the complaints, the questions still ended up being translated.
It is necessary to note that these are only the surface issues gleaned from a plethora of many other issues and factors.
Government's High-Handedness
In Anglo-Saxon countries the university environment is sacrosanct and is treated with far greater esteem by governments. Police and uniformed men are non-grata in the university vicinity. University dons and officials are not tossed about, appointed and dismissed with reckless abandon as it is the case with Cameroon.
That is why they are elected. But in Cameroon two Vice Chancellors of the University of Buea have been ignominiously dismissed for holding fast unto Anglophone values in Cameroon. And coincidentally both served for only eleven months and were ignominiously thrown out, one, because he stood against the Minister's hijack of the results of the entrance exam to the Health School of the University of Buea (as described above); the other, ostensibly for standing against giving Francophone students unfair chances for entry into the HTTTC Kumba by getting entrance examination questions translated into French. This is an example of the biased implementation of the bicultural option of the country which has the dangerous potentiality of breeding conflict.
The Isuue of Common Law Syllabus
The conspiracy to scrape Common Law out of the university syllabuses brings to a climax the attempt to annihilate the Anglophone socio-cultural values. This decision to remove the Common Law was taken without the knowledge and consent of neither stakeholder nor experts in curriculum studies and policy analysis of Anglophone origin.
Dominance of French Culture in an Anglo-Saxon University
There seems to be a gradual "Francophonisation" of the lone Anglo-Saxon university of Cameroon when even the staff is becoming more and more Francophone. Presently the Dean of the Faculty of Education in the University of Buea is a francophone and as if to reinforce this, the French Cultural Centre which used to be located at the Bongo Square in Buea has now been transferred to the campus of the University of Buea, thereby accentuating the "Francophonisation" of the University. One wonders how it was not the British Council that was made to be established in the University's campus.
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