The Cameroon Protestant College, CPC Bali in a two-in-one ceremony brought together former students and current students in an opportunity to fraternize and share old memories.
The come together of Saturday, March 23, was for the ex-students with the acronym BOBA to celebrate the golden jubilee of their association, and as well commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of CPC Bali, their alma mater
The President General of BOBA created in 1974, Professor Duga Ernest Titanji at the celebration, called all to observe a moment of silence for mates gone to the world beyond.
The President General of BOBA, Professor Duga Ernest Titanji
Prof. Titanji just like Jesus Christ who commissioned his disciplines to be fishers of men, commissioned BOBANS to “Go Find That Missing Classmate”. To facilitate the classmate hunting class lists from 1949 to 2023 are published in the anniversary magazine.
Handling the spirit aspect of the anniversary, Rev. Fai Michael, representing the Presbyterian Church Moderator, inspired by Paul’s letter to the Romans, reminded the BOBANs to see in their lives, the handiwork of God, using them to shine a light in the lives of the students who came and are still to come after them. He equally expressed the wish for the young ones to continue in the footsteps of BOBANS, the same view expressed by the principal of CPC Bali Nuberd Ransome in his address.
Mr. Nuberd Ransome also appreciated BOBA for the renovation of seven classrooms, and two boys’ dormitories, currently offering a renewable full scholarship to three students till they graduate at the start of the current academic year.
Like Oliver Twis, the Principal outlined some challenges still facing the school like raising funds to meet qualified personnel demand for high pay packages, insufficient funds for renovations, and updating the computer lab
Members of the Bali Old Boys Association had the luxury of chanting the CPC anthem once more, before filing under their respective batches, from the class of 1953 to 2028 for an incredible match pass to the admiration of guests and dignitaries.
The custodian of the people of Bali Nyonga, Fon Dr. Doh Ganyonga III, thanked CPC Bali for continually educating Cameroonians, and that allocating land for the construction of the school was the right decision.
Former PM who is a BOBAN matching with his class
Northwest governor Adolph Lele Lafrique in his intervention, listed some great personalities who are former students.
“… former secretary general of the African Union, they have given to us a Prime Minister, Ministers, director generals, Doctors, heads of political parties with an esteemed reputation
The event concluded with the award of prizes to winners of sporting disciplines organized in the buildup to the celebrations.
The Cameroon Protestant College, CPC Bali was born in 1949 as Basel Mission College. It later became the Cameroon Protestant College when the Baptist mission began participating in the running of the school.
Ma Bertha Titanji represented the Pioneer Girls who enrolled into CPC in 1972
It started with fifty-eight students and three members of staff as a first-cycle secondary school before the institution of the second cycle. It was only for boys hence the name Bali Old Boys Association. The first girl was welcomed into the school in 1972 and in 1995 girls were allowed in the first cycle.
BOBANS left the anniversary with an engagement to raise funds for an anniversary gift towards their alma mater which is the construction of the BOBA multipurpose Hall.
ERSO’s members in white t-shirts with Awarded Administrators of GBHS Down Town Bamenda.
The Ethical Reform Society Organization with the acronym ERSO in a mission to promote the universal principles of integrity, has presented integrity Awards to some meritorious administrators of the Government Bilingual Secondary School of Down Town Bamenda.
Three members of the administrative staff of GBHS Down Town received Integrity Awards in front of the Principal Madam Adey Judith, the teaching staff, and the students at the assembly ground on Friday, January 05, 2024.
Taba Ebenezar, leader of the ERSO delegation opined that the choice of GBHS Down Town is just by God’s guidance.
“Teachers are very influential people. When they do the right thing and you give them a tap on the back, they will do more and Students will eventually become like them, as they are models to these students. So coming to Down Town and giving them a tap on the back is a way to impact the future generation”, he added.
Talking to Standard Chronicle, the Principal of Government Bilingual Secondary School, Madam Adey Judith said the three Collaborators awarded, Takoh Gladys, Asana Felicia Akwese, and Nubet Wilson are square pegs in square holes.
“We are privileged to be the pioneer school for Ethical Reform Society Organization to come and give Awards to meritorious administrators of this institution. The choices of those Awarded are just the rights persons, they set the pace for this institution, and they are putting their all into the smooth functioning of GBHS Down Town. The applause from the students attests to this. I hope this Organization will come again next time to Award teachers and students.” Madam Adey added.
Madam Takoh Gladys, a vice principal who couples as the Mezam Representative to the Northwest Regional Assembly reacted after receiving her Award by saying that she never knew her efforts were being recognized.
“I must confess that I was taken unaware but am overwhelmed with such a recognition amongst my colleagues. I want to say that everywhere you have to work as if you will never have the opportunity again. I promise that I will continue to do what I have been and even better for more recognition to come.
Madam Takoh Gladys receiving her recognition
I am a community leader and a representative of Mezam in the Northwest Regional Assembly. This Award is just confirming that I was the right person to represent my community and I will continue to do that. I thank the Ethical Reform Society Organization for their recognition has come to encourage us to do more work.” Madam Takoh added.
Ethical Reform Society Organization was created in 2023 and is a faith-based organization with a mission to encourage accountability, transparency, and integrity. With the slogan: Be the change you want to see which comes from Proverbs 21: 21. Membership is open to any moral individual who wants to see a better society.
The Muteff community in Fundong Sub Division in the Boyo Division of the North West Region of Cameroon might have had little access to typical mass media outlets like newspapers, radio, and television but it never lacked its share of traditional narrow media newsstands and newsagents. One of such newsstands was a certain Bobe Babelly, an ambulant merchant who constantly traveled to far-flung communities and towns, and upon his return ventilated as many pieces of news and information to everyone who cared to listen. As children, we took every piece of information he disseminated as gospel truth.
One day, I was narrating a piece of information to my father, Bobe Jude Thaddeus Fulai Biyong and he inquired where I got the news from. When I told him I got it from Bobe Babelly, he told me another way to say something wasn’t true was to say you got it from Bobe Babelly. When I tried to find out how he concluded, he asked whether I had never found out why Bobe Takong nicknamed Babelly ‘nkangte-mbe’; meaning someone who just imagines things and says. Bobe Takong was one laissez-faire man in Muteff who nicknamed people according to their actions and behaviors, and sometimes with exactitude. Bobe Babelly was, however, not the only newsstand or newsagent in the community that was involved in sensationalism, disinformation, and misinformation.
Villagers referred to some who spread all kinds of information without any prior verification as ‘nyoh-ibally’, which when translated would mean the equivalent of the famous ‘Radio Mille Collines’ that ignited the Rwandan genocide. Although I continued relying on Bobe Babelly each time he returned from his business trips for information concerning happenings around the world (and he narrated the stories with relish), I took them with a pinch of salt.
Bobe Babelly might have been the forerunner of disinformation and misinformation in our society but newspapers, radio, and television channels are today suffering from a huge decline in trust from consumers. Since 2017 when the minority existentialist conflict in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon degenerated into a full-blown deadly armed conflict, trust in the media (including the traditional media) has come in short supply.
Last year I had a conversation with a hitherto avid consumer of the Cameroon media landscape and he told me at first he could die defending a piece of information simply because he heard it on radio, TV, or read from a newspaper. Anything in print was gospel truth to him. Then he was betrayed by the media sometime in 2018. Activists had announced a lockdown of the town of Bamenda, and that fateful morning he had an urgent file to treat in an office at Up Station, Bamenda. As usual, he tuned the Regional Station of the Cameroon Radio and Television, CRTV, for updates before he could leave the house.
The journalist on air announced repeatedly that circulation was going on normally in town without any cause for concern. Trusting in the media, he took his car and quickly navigated through New Road, Nkwen-Bamenda. No sooner did he engage the Station Hill than a mob pounded on his car and almost took away his life from him. He concluded that since he had barely cheated death because he had trusted in the radio, he would decline listening to the radio, watching TV, or believing in everything he read in print. Just as my trust in Bobe Babelly as a news source declined after my father’s fact-checking abilities, my interlocutor’s trust in Cameroon news media declined after the unfortunate incident that almost took his life. His case is a microcosm of the macrocosm. Something needs to be done fast to rekindle the trust of listeners, viewers, and readers in Cameroon.
Few issues in Cameroon today can spark more debate than media bias. Although most people today tend to evaluate media bias from their perspectives — their own biases (if a news report or editorial content agrees with us, we tend to think, not that it is biased, but that it got things right) — criticism from all sides is not a sure sign that the media are performing well. We at The Colbert Factor are honest enough to accept this and do the needful to gain more trust from our readers and supporters.
That is why we have decided to partner with the Trusting News Project, a U.S.-based research and training project that empowers journalists to demonstrate credibility and earn trust from the communities they aim to serve by helping them understand each other. With their research-backed newsroom-tested strategies, Trusting News would help The Colbert Factor platform build a better relationship with you our readers.
Beginning this 2024, we are committed to taking responsibility for earning your trust. Given the lack of transparency in the way some media gather, treat, and disseminate information, and given that there is plenty of irresponsibly produced information out there, this new partnership aims to help us produce worthy content. It would help us understand what leads to distrust in the news so we can correct the record about our integrity and build relationships with new audiences. This requires humility.
Given that distrust happens when journalists fail to represent the values, views, and experiences of part of their community, the Trusting News Project would help us see how our lens on society shows up in the work we do and what to do about it. Not that the decline in trust in the media is limited to Cameroon or African media alone. The decline is global, but unlike in Cameroon, the U.S. media is making a conscious effort to regain trust in its audiences.
In a world in which news consumers are confused and exhausted by information, responsible journalists should be transparent and proactive about why they are worthy of trust. In such a perilous time as we live in, communities need access to news that reflects their diverse lives and values and is responsive to their priorities and feedback. As part of our trusting news engagement, we are committed, going forward, to comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comforted who are holding back social change.
But, this is not an easy, cheap, or profitable job. The Colbert Factor is a solution-oriented, independent non-profit content creation medium. It serves as the ‘first draft’ for newspapers, radio and TV stations, online news outlets, and blogs. We don’t have ads and we are independent of corporate and government interests.
You can help us continue creating more investigative, balanced, fair, reliable, credible, and educative content, by donating your widow’s mite through MTN momo number: 677852476
…And you would be contributing to a free press.
Happy New Year 2024 to all our esteemed readers who continued to support us even when we did not deserve your trust. It’s because of you that we commit anew to do everything to earn your trust, going forward.
Happy New Year 2024 to all our esteemed readers who continued to support us even when we did not deserve your trust. It’s because of you that we commit anew to do everything to earn your trust, going forward.
From right to left, Mayor Chenwi Peter of the Bamenda II Council, and Ghejung Awunti, Commissioner for Economic Development at the NWRA
The Bamenda II mayor has been nicknamed ‘Second Jesus On Earth’ during the routine donation of didactic materials for an effective resumption of the 2023/2024 academic year.
This appellation was given to Mayor Chenwi Peter by Ngalle Richard, President of Persons with Disabilities within the Bamenda II Municipality Friday, September 1, 2023.
Appreciating the Mayor and the Council for always reaching out to those with disabilities, Ngalle Richard like Oliver Twist pleaded that schools should be constructed in a way to ease access for PWDs
Talking to Standard Chronicles, Mayor Chenwi Peter opined that the lone industry in the North West Region and the Bamenda II Municipality is education. And it is normal for this industry to be given the most needed attention and support.
The Mayor added that with the relative peace many who left the Municipality to other regions for studies are back and is the responsibility of the Council to support resume with ease this 2023/2024 academic year.
Reacting to the gesture, Madam Titachu, representing the buyam sellams of the Bamenda main market, thanked the Mayor and re-echoed that school must go.
This act of benevolence of the Bamenda II Council culminated with the Peace and Development Initiative of the Northwest Regional Assembly Project. A project that engaged 103 students in holiday jobs with a financial package at the end to support their parents for back-to-school preparations.
Didactic materials pending distribution.
Ghejung Awunti, Commissioner for Economic Development on behalf of the Northwest Regional Assembly said the children did well in cleaning streets, opening blocked gutters, and the Cleaning public offices.
Awunti added that such a gesture to assist students with money to facilitate their going 5o school involves all the seven Divisions in the region, and is motivated by the fact that the NWRA believes education is the cornerstone for development.
Elected in 2020, the Bamenda II Mayor and his Council have made it a yearly responsibility to support students, parents, and persons with disabilities for an effective start to every school year.
The people of Bambui in Tubah subdivision took the commitment in a meeting recently that brought together the different stakeholders and the population. They all rallied behind the DO, mayor,MP, the fon, the village chairman and some concerned elites.
They a unique mission which was to clean the different abandoned campuses and the vandalized council building. The people have made it clear that it’s time to wave fear and ensure that children effectively get back to the classrooms for the 2022/2023 academic year.
Bambui village suffered her own fair share of the socio political crisis and this greatly affected the education sector. It should be noted that from the onset of the crisis in 2016, most of these structures and institutions were attacked, vandalized and even used as hide outs by separatist fighters.
With changing Times and situation, plus the urgent need for peace and stability, the population answered to the call of the fon of Bambui Angafor lll , the DO Narcisse Metouge, MP, Agho Oliver mayor Tanjong martin, elites in the likes of Mulutakwe Sunday, controller Bamenda city council, Atibatim Cyprian, regional assembly councilor from Tubah etc.
This could be clearly reflected from the massive turnout of the population who had to wave fear with utmost desire for change in order to ensure that schools resume effectively in Bambui and for Tubah council premise in the administrative headquarters.
The different speakers at the event saluted the bravery of the population and for their quest to ensure that peace returns to the village. Elites like the Bamenda city controller said the massive turnout was a dream come true and a major breakthrough in the hands of the dying anglophone crisis.
The regional assembly councilor Tubah thanked the population and the village at large for their cooperation for schools to effectively resume in the village and for peace to regain it’s course while promising to support pupils and students with school materials. For now Bambui is ready for back to school 2022/ 2023 academic year.
Standard Chronicle 