Barristers Benjamin Enow Agbor and Nji Aben Valentine, respectively President and Secretary General of FAKLA in a press release Tuesday, May 12, 2020 said the reason advanced for the termination of Agbor Balla’s contract is untenable as no factual breaches have been raised.

Indeed, a disciplinary panel “unanimously agreed” that Agbor Balla’s contract be terminated at the end of a Disciplinary Hearing Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at the Board Room of the Central Administrative Block despite Agbor Nkongho’s “boycott”.

The rights activist is said to have breached professional obligations when he set an exam question on the Anglophone Crisis in a first semester level one course titled “Political and Constitutional History of Cameroon”. The question read: “The Anglophone crisis since 2016 was caused by lawyers’ and teachers’ strikes. Assess the validity of this statement. (40 marks).”

The Disciplinary Panel resolved that the question violates Article 40 and 42 (paragraph 1) of decree no. 93/027 of 19 January 1993, modified and completed by decree no. 2005/342 of 10 September 2005, to define provisions common to all university institutions.

Expected to enter appearance in defense, Human Rights Lawyer Agbor Balla rather sought the services of Sheriff-Bailiff Tapa Justin Lebrin to serve the Vice-Chancellor his “Appearance Under Protest”. In the four-page “protest”, Agbor Balla picked holes in the disciplinary hearing, positing that it fell short of due process.

Based on the outcome of the Disciplinary Panel, UB Vice-Chancellor Professor Ngomo Horace Manga decided to “terminate with immediate effect the Contract of Mr. Felix Nkongho Agbor Balla recruited as Instructor in the Department of Law through decision No. 2015/0514/UB/AcA/TTSD/TSS of June 2, 2015”.

Fako Lawyers says while it is not their concern to interfere with the labour relationship between the University of Buea and its employees, “the circumstances of the said dismissal which was ventilated on social media platforms raises pertinent human rights concerns which the Mandate of the Fako Lawyers Association obliges it to deplore.”

FAKLA holds strongly that the reason advanced for the dismissal of “the learned gentleman” is untenable as no factual breaches have been raised. “This amounts to an attempt at the censorship of the assessment procedure in a University that was created as an Anglo-Saxon University,” the lawyers maintain.

They fault UB for failing to provide an explanation as to how such an “innocent question” violates the university’s rules”.

FAKLA further notes that, at the time learned Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla was indicted for setting the said question in the University of Buea in 2020, the same and similar questions were set by other lecturers in the University of Yaoundé II – Soa.

One such question read: “The Anglophone problem in Cameroon in its new developments since 2016, is it nationalism or ethnicity? Discuss.”

Fako Lawyers observe that the lecturer who set the above question has not been sanctioned and indeed should not be sanctioned because there is no travesty in both questions.

They however submit that: “The circumstances preceding this spectacle and the speed with which the events unfolded on social media, leaves no one in doubt that the allegations and subsequent dismissal of Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla was not only politically motivated but he was in fact discriminatorily targeted and slayed. We therefore view the dismissal of Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla as political victimisation and an infringement of his human rights.

“FAKLA considers it anathema that in a University, the sphere of knowledge should be limited by the nature of questions asked in an examination. Neither does it condone the politicisation of the University.

“FAKLA weeps for the University of Buea, that in spite of the fact that it was created to operate as an Anglo-Saxon University – one of whose cardinal characteristics should be its autonomy and independence, the administration of the University now allows itself to be manipulated by politicians and political considerations.”

Agbor Balla has previously served as President of the Fako Lawyers Association. He is founder/president of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, CHRDA. He says he has briefed his lawyer and will meet with UB in court following his dismissal. Cameroon-Info.Net understands that Agbor Balla’s contract dated June 2, 2015 was due to expire in April 2021.