Defence Minister Bows To Pressure After CATTU Petitions Biya

2 Not 3 ‘A’ Level Papers Required for Entrance
By Musa Isa

Less than a week after the Cameroon Teachers’ Trade Union, CATTU wrote to the Head of State against a violation, there has been a sharp response. Last weekend, the airwaves of CRTV were inundated by an announcement from Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, Minister of Defence. Considered to have been in response to President Paul Biya’s instructions, Mebe Ngo’o corrected an error which he made over the equation of the GCE ‘A’ level pass, with the Baccalaureate. This, over the admission of candidates into the combined military academy (EMIA) in Yaounde.
Henceforth, interested candidates would be required to have obtained a pass at the GCE ‘A’ level of two subjects, not three as Mebe Ngo’o intentionally imposed. Reacting to this development, Christopher Bunai Atanga, the Interim Executive Secretary of CATTU, told Chronicle that the credit goes first to the Head of State: “He listened to us after we made that clarion call”, quipped Atanga.
The CATTU scribe also opined that the credit equally goes to the Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Defence, “who acknowledged that there was an error in what he did and came back to correct it”.
Atanga added that “it is clear in Cameroon that the equivalent of Baccalaureate is a pass at the GCE Advanced level in 2 papers”, reiterating that the Minister of Defence committed a big error for the second time.
CATTU therefore urges all young Cameroonians with a GCE “A” level pass in 2 papers to take advantage of this correction, to register for the entrance examination into EMIA.
It was a memo, titled “Victimization of GCE certificate holders and violation of presidential text on certification”, addressed to President Paul Biya that pricked the reaction. Co-signed by Atanga and Amuntung Joseph (National President of the Union of Parent Teachers’ Association- UPTA), they noted with indignation and dissatisfaction the persistent violation of the 1998 law on the orientation of education in Cameroon by the Minister of Defence.
They had been pricked by two communiqués on the recruitment of Cameroonians into the various corps of the national army before petitioning the Head of State. Biya was thereon told that, equating a pass in the Baccalaureate general irrespective of Grade to a pass in 3 GCE ‘A’ level papers instead of a pass in 2, is not only a gross violation of the law of the land on certification, but also an act of discrimination, exclusion, victimization, injustice and denigration of the Anglophone sub system of education.
Like 3 years ago, when the same error was committed by Mebe Ngo’o and the Prime Minister called him to order, this time, Chronicle learnt that it was President Biya who intervened.
Already analysts say this is a very positive mark to the Atanga regime of CATTU, less than 3 months as interim SG, following the death of Simon Nkwenti.