Call to conscience: Please, allow learners in NW, SW resume classes hitch-free.

Irrespective of that hard comportment, there has been the voice of reason from far and near, insisting on the need for children in the North West and South West Regions, to be allowed to go to school. 

Everyone knows that children are gifts from God and that their future can only be guaranteed through proper education. 

It is on the basis of this sane reason that as the doors open for the 2024/2025 academic year nationwide today, there is once more a decent appeal for every child in the North West and South West Regions to be allowed to go to school hitch-free.

Whatever anyone thinks he/she is fighting to achieve within the context of the crisis in the two English-speaking Regions, analysts and experts have been clear on the fact that, children must be kept out of the issues.

They should be allowed to chart courses for their lives and be able to live to their full potentials and contribute to national development. 

After all, the historical issues of yesteryears, which some have been hanging on to block children in the two English-speaking Regions from going to school, did not happen in their time.

No matter from which angle and with what lenses one looks at it, the truth remains that the time has come for children in the North West and South West Regions, be allowed to go to school hitch-free. 

Be you separatists or nationalists, we all must admit that education is a must and should be so on the priority of everyone’s lists. 

Everyone, be they separatists or whatever appellation, nomenclature or identity they have taken, should dig down their inner souls and consciences to create a corridor for children in the North West and South West Regions to go to school hitch-free.

Those who have been drumming for effective schooling in the two English-speaking Regions across the board are not asking for anything much. This is not politics. The message is simple and clear, guarantee the future of Anglophone children of this generation, by allowing them to study in a peaceful and serene environment.

The right thing to do

Separatists, who have been on the hard position of school boycott, for the past seven years and are threatening to enter the eight-year maintaining the same stance, observers say, cannot deny that they don’t know the right thing to do.  They know what to do. They know denying Anglophone children the right to education is not only bad but a crime against humanity.

For the sake of the future, let these children go to school. Those residing abroad and drumming school boycott in the North West and South West Regions, know the importance of education. 

If it were not so, they wouldn’t be sending their children in the diaspora to school.

All The Guardian Post and other vocal voices are asking for, is for children in the North West and South West Regions be given the chance to go to school hitch-free. Keep them far from politics and confrontations. 

Stopping them from going to school is killing even some of the good points in the arguments to strength Anglophone rights in Cameroon.

Join effective schooling momentum

Making a U-turn and crusading effective schooling in the North West and South West Regions is not a crime. It is not also a sign of weakness. It is a show of wisdom, maturity and selflessness. 

Being selfless to a people must not only be through violence or other acrimonious activities. It can be done through letting go certain things in the interest of the innocent majority.

We are about beginning a new climb as a people, to reposition Anglophone children within the schooling map of Cameroon. Separatists can’t live in self-denial as though they are not aware of the losses in terms of human resources lost in the last seven academic years due to the unproductive school boycott campaigns. 

If no meaningful entity has identified with separatists from 2017 till date on the campaign against schools, this, many are saying, is just another window for them to reconsider their strategy and change position.  

Freedom fighters elsewhere have made it big without torturing children, maiming, killing them or denying them something as universal as the right to education.

Stop sacrificing future of Anglophone children 

For one thing, what is facing Anglophones as a people within the Cameroonian context, through the school boycott campaigns, many are saying, is bigger than separatists can imagine. 

The persistent calls for them to allow children go to school, others are saying and rightly so, is just another way of advising them to stop sacrificing their today and tomorrow.

They say despite the grounds covered in pushing for children to return to school, Anglophones are already being haunted by the errors of the last seven academic years. 

Successive generations of their Francophone brothers and sisters have covered milestones, which it is being said and obviously so, may turn out to be the real source of Anglophone’s self-marginalisation in the future.

As it stands, it is a generation at stake that people of all shades of opinion are unanimous, must be rescued. Through this prism, everyone agrees that separatists must make their own contribution through taking corrective measures to stand on the side of effective schooling in the crisis-hit Anglophone Regions.

It is about us; not Biya regime, other people

Increasingly, those in support of effective schooling in these two Regions argue and passionately so, that separatists must know that allowing children to go to school is for the benefit of successive Anglophone generations. 

The equation at hand, it is being further said, is not that of a people against a regime. They say it is about Anglophones avoiding a repeat of the slips of decades past, despite the abundance of illumination in this age.

Those who hold to this thought insists that this is about aborigines of the North West and South West Regions not annihilating themselves but coming together to ensure their offsprings are brilliantly lettered.

Don’t dim you light to power another

It is now emerging after seven years of separatist’s school boycott campaigns, that there has been mass exportation of Anglo-Saxon education values to the eight other French-speaking Regions of the country.

As good as it sounds, observers say it would have been best if that were happening under normal circumstances as a sign of national integration not under duress from separatists.

Persisting on such a path, analysts say, is separatists willingly dimming the light of Anglophones to power growth elsewhere, with nothing to show for in the North West and South West Regions. 

But at this hour, the voices for effective schooling have become louder than before. In this light, it is being said separatists must not be left out in respecting the right to education for every child in the North West and South West Regions.

Lest you forget, posterity will judge each and everyone of us for the actions of yesterday and today.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue N0:3224 of Monday September 9, 2024