At least one thousand children has seen their chances of going to school this academic year boosted after receiving didactic materials from the Minister Delegate at the Ministry of External Relations in charge of the Commonwealth, Felix Mbayu.
The Minister made the donations on Saturday August 18 at his Old Town neighbourhood in Bamenda as he encouraged parents to educate their children in a bid to keep them from societal ills.
During his regular annual come together with pupils and students to celebrate the importance of education which he received from his parents some 53 years ago, Felix Mbayu called on parents to give their children a bright future by educating them instead of giving them guns, knives, tramadol and other weapons.
Over 1000 students and pupils were gathered to receive school gadgets ahead of the 2018/2019 academic year in a memorial ceremony in honour of Felix Mbayu’s parents who died in August 1953.
“In memory of my mother …I usually come back to Bamenda to the family home where I was born to meet with the people of the neighborhood with whom I grew up and to share. I usually do that in August. I give them school supplies while in December, I give them some little food for Christmas,”Felix Mbayu said
Many children have dropped out of school as a result of threats from armed men pushing for a separatist agenda in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon for the past year and a half.
However, Felix Mbayu stressed to the parents present that education is the only social equalizer which has enabled a child from a modest strata of the society like him to serve the country both at home and abroad. Thus it is an infringement on human rights to deny a child access to education as has been the case in the region.
School boycott shoul never be used as a justifiable form of resistance, he said while re-echoing dialogue as the only means to sail out of the impasse.
“There is no course which justifies burning down schools. By doing all of that you are taking away the weapon for individual emancipation which everybody has the right too,”he said.
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