As the images of the bestiality, indignities and other inhumane acts perpetrated against armless students in the University of Buea and elsewhere in the Southern Cameroons incessantly play in my mind and hopefully those of reasonable people, I wonder how any reasonable person can in good conscience call for a resumption of schools without first providing answers to the plethora of questions these crimes have elicited.

The militarisation of schools and places of learning violate the sanctity of sound education. The absence of the internet deprives students and knowledge seekers the modern tools of learning. Most conditions for free dispensation of education and knowledge are presently absent from our schools and places of learning. The blame cannot be put on the victims and parents whose primary duty is to ensure the safety of their children and assurances that the education provided to their children meets the standards in civilized societies worldwide.

We the parents, have watched the educational system imposed in our community bastardised and regulated by presidential fiat intended to serve a political and colonial agenda. Faculty administration in our public universities has been handed down to ruling party stooges and academic racketeers. Time and again, we were shocked to see our children sent out of school to conduct public demonstrations of support of a false god-president to boast the career objectives of handpicked university administrators. Although deemed to be at school, our children were indeed deprived of access to universally accepted quality education which is guaranteed by international human rights treaties.

The war cry that school must open without freeing the captives and hostages whose only crime was raising awareness on these violations of international human rights law and the wicked ploy to force-start schools without providing enduring solutions to the egregious violations that have eviscerated the soul and conscience of the Southern Cameroons is heartless, provocative and unacceptable.

If the images of the indignities perpetrated on armless girls captured from the intimate privacy of their Molyko hostels, the raped, the murdered, the tortured, the abducted and the incarcerated do not agitate the minds of those calling for a resumption of schools while these violations persist, then their agenda in doing so, must be to satisfy to the criminal proclivities of the false god whom they love and worship and not the supposed interest of our children.

Lest we forget, the ongoing boycott of schools and symbols of oppression is no longer a teachers’ or lawyers’ strike. It is a logical step in the revolt against more than half a century of provocations, oppression, egregious violations and systemic criminality. The imposed structures that oversaw the implementation of these inhumane policies have simply collapsed on their own weight. The slave master must have known that a house built on sand must collapse. So, therefore, the messengers of deception who assured the slave master that the motions of support supposedly thanking the slave master for systemic crimes against their own people are by calling for a resumption of classes while these violations endure, preaching the wrong sermons to the wrong audience. They should be telling their slave master the truth and there is only one truth: enough is enough.

Chief Charles A.Taku