BY CANUTE TANGWA (First published September 9, 2005)
Listen to this: “They (students) wanted it their way and they were advised not to go to the streets, the consequences of which, we told them, they might get killed. They refused. Some people say they were shot with live bullets. As far as I am concerned, Goliath was killed with a stone. And so stones are just as bad as bullets”. (dixit Herbert Endeley, Registrar the Anglo-Saxon University of Buea in The POST No. 0695).
Inasmuch as no one condones the destruction of property and provocative postures of students during the UB strike that led to the dead of two students, a modicum of level-headedness is required of the custodians of the Anglo-Saxon tradition at the University of Buea. At all times, level-headedness and honesty are indicators of intellectual depth, moral rectitude and a spirit of abstemiousness befitting of those called to manage the affairs of a university. Verbal rascality and grandstanding put off rather than rein in students.
Back to the issue; to those who are familiar with or have read about the management of strikes in Nigerian universities, there is a ringing similarity between the outburst of the Registrar of UB and a Nigerian university Vice-Chancellor who found it extremely difficult to distinguish between the smell of tear gas and smoke! Students had been tear-gassed and shot at by Nigerian police. Though this happened within a military context, the university authorities had a hard time explaining what happened.
The allusion to Goliath being mowed down by a stone-throwing David is a tacit acknowledgement of the victory of wits over muscles or intelligence over brute force. To a Christian, it is the victory of good over bad. Indeed, security forces had it really rough with striking students. “Endeley said several policemen were wounded as a result of stones thrown by students”.
In fact, every object on earth can be used for good or bad purposes but some objects are designed for specific purposes. For example, bullets are not playthings. They are manufactured to sniff life out of any living thing. A father cannot offer bullets as a birthday present to his son or daughter. However, a parent would readily offer a toy to his kid but the latter might use the toy to pierce the eyes of his playmate. In Buea for example, there are stones everywhere. They are used to build houses, roads and so on. During the UB strike, students used these useful stones to inflict wounds on policemen (Goliaths)!
Life is sacrosanct; including that of policemen. In a court of law it would be material to proof whether students were shot and killed with live bullets or with stones. This would attenuate or aggravate the sentence. But the bottom-line, even in the mind of a presiding judge, would be the loss of lives. Thus, live bullets or not, precious lives were lost and it is hard to understand why UB authorities are itchy to whitewash the police force before the Abouem Commission publishes its findings. It is difficult to understand the seeming disdain and cavalier manner with which university authorities treat the loss of lives.
There were insinuations or overt declarations about students being manipulated during the strike. Other actors saw political overtones in the student action. According to the Vice-Chancellor, “a critical look at their so-called by-laws also reveals political overtones”. She went further to state, “its ringleaders come from the same Faculty (the Faculty of Social and Management Sciences) and the same Department (Political Science)”.
In most third world universities, there is always the tendency to chase real or imaginary enemies from campuses; especially if such enemies belong to another political shade. Some examples would make this point clear. At its cradle, the University of Yaounde used to have a Department of Sociology. When students became unruly, certain brilliant intellectuals recommended the scrapping of the department because according to these supposed wiser minds, the primary cause of strikes at the university was the inculcation of revolutionary sociological ideas into students! A certain sociology lecturer, Patrick Wilmot, was bundled out of Nigeria manu militari during the Babangida years for allegedly inciting strikes in Nigerian universities. During the university of Yaounde crisis in the 90s, students were allegedly manipulated by politicians. At that time, the chorus was: « école aux écoliers, la politique aux politiciens »
Today, UB authorities want to make a repeat performance but they are hard pressed. Professor Chumbow of the University of Yaounde fell into this trap when his students went on strike. All that he could see at the beginning was manipulation. He backtracked. Times have changed, indeed. Apparently, the SDF is no longer the party that has enough time to manipulate the minds of mature university students. It has enough internal problems of its own to take care of. Is it the SCNC? However, when the searchlight is turned towards lecturers then the floodgates of blackmail, witch-hunting, backstabbing and lie-telling are open.
Last remark: seemingly, no one foresees the suppression of political science courses as a stopgap measure to quell student anger.
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