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Editorial
The
validation of academic activities in all the three facets of university life in
which scholars engage themselves in some universities within the Commonwealth
finds outlet in this volume. This is a continuation of the pact signed at the
Commonwealth Summer School in Buea, Cameroon in 2011 when this journal was
created and launched by the Minister of Higher Education. This peer-reviewed
journal is interested in original scientific work within the Commonwealth. This
volume is testimony to this fact as it contains contributions not only from
scholars in Cameroon, but also from those elsewhere within the Commonwealth,
notably, Nigeria. Another specificity of this volume is its reflection of the
spirit of the Commonwealth wherein, English can cohabit with other languages
like French. The acceptance of Rwanda within the Commonwealth may thus parallel
the inclusion of articles in French (2) in this number and subsequent ones.
In her paper entitled Film, Télévision
et Hétérogénéité Culturelle en Contexte Postcolonial Africain ‘Film, Television
and Cultural Heterogeneity in Postcolonial Africa’, Angoua contends that the
current tendency in Africa, particularly in Cameroon to imitate western stardom
exposes Africans to film productions from the west where educative projects are
at variance with the culture of the consumers of these products thus bringing
about germs of underdevelopment. She holds that western films screened on local
media have led to a noticeable transformation of behaviour leading to the
destruction of African culture. She questions whether it is not more judicious
for a society to orientate their production towards their endogenous
sociocultural heritage. Using Mole’s theory of culture and the dynamic and
critical approach, she explores the degrading sociocultural values relating to
education and concludes that a critical analysis of the film and television
enterprise in Cameroon and postcolonial Africa presents a double facetted
globalisation.
In another paper written in Moliere’s
language, Oumarou discusses L’Inclusion
Scolaire des Enfants Nomades dans le Logone et Chari (Extrême-Nord du
Cameroun) ‘The Educational Inclusion of Nomad Children in the Logone and
Chari Division of the Far North Region of Cameroon’. The paper examines the
strategies that the educational policy in Cameroon has adopted since 1960, for
the education of nomad children in the Logone and Chari Division of the Far
North Region of Cameroon. The researcher reveals that as soon as Cameroon
became independent, Government put in place in 1960 the ‘Nomad School’ and the
‘Road Junction School’ for nomad children. He states that Government is
currently using positive discrimination in order to foster an educational
policy of inclusion for nomad children. This, to the researcher, is a positive
education action that leads to human resource development. This paper is
parallel to Ngwu et al (CJSC Vol. 1 No 2).
The other six articles included in this
number are in English. They treat various themes ranging from conflict
resolution through literary education and environment; exoglosia and linguistic
ecology; language policy and administrative decentralisation; education for
democratic citizenship; to the reporting of violent insurgences like the Boko
Haram Insurgence in Nigeria.
Two papers tackle the literary
perspectives of Literature and environment and Literature and education. In the
former, Moba posits that modern African poetry is a people-oriented literature
in which environmental conservation and preservation is the sine quo non for
our very survival and that, this preoccupation has of recent emerged as one of
the permanent issues in contemporary African Literature. He uses Osundare
(poet) who is of the opinion that there is an inseparable relationship between
man and his environment in which case, man’s quest should not be to suppress
the wilderness but to strive to tame and live in harmony with that wild. In the
latter paper, Toh underscores the necessity to celebrate the link between black
people of the western hemisphere with those in the continent using literature
from diasporic space. He further posits that although African-Americans and
Afro-Caribbeans for the most part refuse being Africans, there is a
connectivity between the mother continent and its diasporic descendants that
seems to challenge the passage of time and space. To him therefore, discourse
from the western hemisphere, written by descendants of slave and migrants needs
to be read and taught by Africans in the continent not from an ‘exotic gaze’
but as works that can help the post independent African define ‘self’.
Concerning conflict resolution, Talla
examines the role raffia palm wine played in settling land disputes, one of the
many disputes that plagued societies in the Tikar country of Mbum, Donga
Mantung Division of the North West Region of Cameroon. His paper seeks to
ascertain the extent to which this conflict resolution mechanism was effective
in the land as well as the effectiveness of the other institutions implemented
by the colonial masters and the subsequent governments relative to land disputes.
In relation to language, Metuge
discusses the impact of exoglosia on African languages drawing from Akosse. He
establishes that in spite of the benefits of English/French bilingualism in
Cameroon, the gradual decline in the use of the Mother Tongue especially among
the younger generation of Africans is a cause for concern. According to Metuge,
contrary to the upheld universal principle to give instruction in a child’s
mother tongue (UNESCO, 1953), the complex multilingual and multiethnic nature of
emerging African nations made such a decision untenable at the dawn of
independence in the 1960s. This consequently shaped the language policy that we
have today in Cameroon. As far as language policy is concerned, Ubanako
believes that this has to be informed by current governance. He argues that the
new form of decentralised governance in Cameroon with power transferred to
local council governments, the policy of Official Bilingualism is outdated. To
him, considering the fact that official language bilingualism has remained too
centralised for many decades, many observers expected that the situation of
official bilingualism which is guarantor of social cohesion and national
integration would be addressed clearly in the new decentralisation law.
Chiatoh in his paper believes that the
learning made available to citizens in postcolonial Africa where education is
still fashioned predominantly along colonial policy lines is inadequate. He
sees the curriculum content, the language of instruction and the pedagogic
techniques and methods used in this context as not reflecting local reality.
Consequently, he questions the values that Cameroon education promotes in their
educational system.
Reporting
Violent Insurgences in Postcolonial Nigeria: An Analysis of Audience Assessment
of Nigerian Broadcast Media Reportage of Boko Haram Insurgence is the paper
that closes this volume. In it, Okoro and Chukwuma state that the Boko Haram
terrorism is one of the most violent that Nigeria has experienced since
independence. The authors believe that in order to find a lasting solution to
this abysmal problem, the media have an expedient role to play and this demands
a great deal of caution in their reportage of the insurgency. It is in this
perspective that they investigated the role of the media and found out among
other things, that the broadcast media have been biased in their reportage of
the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria.
This is therefore a rich number
containing nine thoroughly researched papers that deal with various aspects of
scientific research within the spirit of the Commonwealth.
