The Drama of Cameroon Intellectuals

By Azore Opio

It is believed that the intelligentsia are champions of truth and justice with the natural right to intervene in temporal matters on behalf, and for the good of mankind; that they exist at a distance from the politicians who are enmeshed in half-truths and compromises.

The intellectual is the impartial observer who only descends into the public arena in response to a crisis as against the politician's day-to-day contributions to government. Not everyone will agree to this, but let it be known that the intellectual's effectiveness in society depends on his /her vision; their ability to observe accurately social problems of their times and formulate solutions to them. (Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 1929).

Here, in Cameroon, intellectuals do not spend their time in laboratories or libraries making their names with new discoveries or improving on inventions. Instead several of them are on their knees praying to be appointment. Their diminished vitality is probably the taproot of Cameroon's problems and backward trends.

With fanaticism and prosopolepsy infecting the minds of the Cameroonian intellectuals, the power of dispassionate inquiry and the defence of rational thought are nil. The worship of utility and a tin god and the pernicious influence of Biyamania are all corrupters of the intellectuals' souls, making them acquiescent, and accomplices in the triumph of the modern tyranny and theft that devastate the nation.

No matter what the Cameroonian intellectuals' attitude, they have, no doubt, betrayed the cause and quest for democracy, in all its ramifications. They have abandoned democratic principles for an accommodating docility, failed to function as an educational conduit that appeals to reason and thus forfeited their natural constituencies to mediate among conflicting views.

They have, woefully, failed to articulate the needs of those dispossessed by the state. Instead, they have chosen to defend and perpetrate the existing zombie state of affairs in the country. You can see how little reason affects the current milieu and government policies.

But, perhaps, the new Vice Chancellor of the University of Buea, UB, might be an exceptional breed of intellectuals. He might part ways with the Cameroon state's yearning to assimilate and ideologically conquer the Cameroonian intellectual. There is, to be sure, little resemblance between the new VC and the big, bluff idol of the ex-UB regime.

I have often doubted the sanity of some intellectuals, just as Adolf Hitler had the most unpleasant recollections of the teachers who taught him. He thought, and quite often, perhaps rightly too, that most of them were "abnormal; somewhat mentally deranged…quite a few honest-to-God lunatics." Others, Hitler would recall later, were absolute tyrants! They had no sympathy with youths.

They relentlessly persecuted students as if they (students) were criminals, and even tried to turn them into erudite apes. Some teachers, if you will permit me to borrow from Hitler again, are "congenial idiots."

There are teachers who are bad-tempered, autocratic and self-opinionated. Revulsion towards them grows steadily. But there is one teacher who might, if, by some good fortune, he remains kind but firm, influence positive change in Buea University.

With his experience and closeness to humanity, unlike some zoo attendants, and by the fire of his words, his dazzling eloquence, he might make Cameroonians forget the past and transport the youths out of the millennium mists of feminine tyranny, into vivid reality that would appeal to the human sense of national honour, not tin-godism.

Cameroon has mediocre teachers-turned-politicians. They are shady men and women who have worked in the penumbra of the CPDM-led regime most of their lives, never quite provoking the democratic and legal systems into action. They are like blandiloquent used-clothes salesmen who try to convince you to see black as white.

Most of them are ingratiating if not unctuous; transparently currying favour from the head of state. This is compounded by the veritable sea of prosopopeia such as New Deal, Rigour and Morality, Grand Debat, Operation Antelope, Grands Ambition and so on. The cachexy of the political system tends to leave the ordinary citizen not too sanguine about the future of the youths as well as the economy.

Before the new administration was established, UB had reached that dangerous stage in her development when her roots were just beginning to pullulate. The ex-administrator and her cronies failed to put a happy face on the murder of two students during the April-May strike.

They turned the strike into a horrendous event. And their incessant cockalorum annoyed many Cameroonians. But change is breaking out slowly in Cameroon. At the same time, the bottom seems to be falling out of the world for tyrannical teachers and administrators.

Comments

[felix]

Azore Opio,
No message passed.
I don't understand what you or who you are after.Are you after the TRUTH,Who and What an Intellectual is, a teacher,the Hitler you pointed out,or some corrupt politicians ??.What criterial makes the New Vice Chancellor of the University of Buea, UB, might be an exceptional breed of intellectuals???.
Please it pays to look at the defination of Certain words before you take up your pen to fill a paper void which could have been use otherwise.
Its one thing to have the courage to write and onther to pass an information.

[Ngong Peter]

Felix,
You have said nothing.

[NFORSAMA]

who is this Felix if you have nothing to write about please be quiet ok?Stop making yourself stupid in public you can do that in private if you want.Any body has the right to write extensivley on any issue he or she wants.That should not be a problem.

[felix]

NFORSAMA
Is this what you wrote or what do you meant by ?? "Any body has the right to write extensivley on any issue he or she wants.That should not be a problem".
I am then a problem to you or doesn't I have a right to write as you pointed out in your statement?.With this sort of thinking and reasoning like Azore Opio I don't make any sense on what you are saying.
The most important thing about information is not just writing but what you write and to whome you are writing to(Chinwa Achebe No Longer at Ease), and having feedbacks like the question I put forward helps you only to learn.

[NjifenztBD(U.K)]

Sorry Azore Opio, you have just wasted this space.Quite frankly!But not worse than Mbonteh Charles.Too much verbosity and less sense and sensiblilty.