Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Mimi Mefo Info
Published on 2024-04-15 12:02:15
They accuse the organizers of the lawyer training exam of having organized the competition in conditions that were clearly “inhumane.”
The candidates for the lawyer training exam that took place last Saturday have not yet recovered from their trauma. The conduct of the written tests for this exam was catastrophic according to some candidates. “We have just experienced real sorcery in Yaoundé. From deportation to confinement in the university campus in unbearable filth. I witnessed terrible scenes, such as a young lady collapsing in front of me at 11:00 pm due to hunger and fatigue. And those who made themselves comfortable by exposing their nudity to us. Unimaginable promiscuity. I do not understand how this bar is so dehumanized. How can those who operate in thought be so resistant to thought?” denounced a candidate who requested anonymity.
The aspiring lawyer recounts, “I was housed in lecture hall 1002 at the University of Yaoundé I and I wrote my exam with wet feet (I mean my shoes) due to the rain the day before. The first supposed test to start at 8:00 am began at 12 pm with a dictation interrupted by Master Zangue, who is a counselor of the bar association. The first test ended around 3:30 pm. We were then confined like cattle without food or water in this indescribably filthy environment, with our white shirts matched with our black ties to start the second test at 11:45 pm at night. Pure sorcery in the 21st century. We finished at 3:45 am and the bar authorities came and told us that for our safety, we had to sleep on these benches until 6:00 am to avoid being attacked on the campus itself. You can imagine our state as we left at 6:00 am in small groups like zombies with our white shirts that eventually changed to the local color,” adds, angered, this candidate. He calls for “the urgency of thought in a bar association lacking innovative thinking.”
Within the legal profession, the treatment given to candidates seems normal to some. “When we hear all these cries, we wonder what kind of lawyers we will have tomorrow? Being a lawyer is not a job for tourists. Sometimes we have hearings at the military court, we spend the whole night there, and the hearing ends at 6 am. If you can’t handle that, you won’t be a lawyer. Besides, it wasn’t different when we took our exam around 2010,” says a lawyer.
Another lawyer explains that certain elements must be considered before forming an opinion. “The tests for the lawyer training exam are designed on the day of the exam. As soon as one test ends, we start designing the next one to prevent leaks, and we must not forget the administrative aspect of everything that happens,” he says.
Master Claude Assira, treasurer of the bar association, is not indifferent. “It is indeed true that there is no smoke without fire and that a good part of the facts described in this document are true. I was not at the center of everything and the information about the nudity exhibition was not known to me until today. There is never a necessity for things to be done badly and I do not want to get lost in justifications or explanations that also exist but could give the impression that we are trying to divert attention. There is a time for everything and currently, the focus is on completing the process until the end and announcing the results,” he explains.
He adds, “many of these inconveniences are the result of a good intention: ensuring security, ethics, and integrity of the exam. There is also the fact of a dual organization where the Ministry of Justice and the Bar Association have not always been in perfect harmony.
In any case, a report of all this should be made so that future organizations can learn useful lessons and be better prepared.”
Joseph Essama
Read the original article(French) on Mimi Mefo Info
