With globalisation which has adverse effects on social values, the executive and legislative arms of government are working in synergy to halt the erosion of these values and to instil a culture of citizenship education for a better future leadership. Visibly, social values are fast eroding in society as many youths increasing consider what our forefathers stood and lived for as archaic and are thus embracing vice as a rule rather than an exception.

As part of their activities in the ongoing second session of the National Assembly for 2011 legislative year, Members of Parliament (MPs) under the banner, “Reseau Esperance Jeunesse” held a forum yesterday June 9, on ethics and civic education on the campus of Lycée Leclerc, Yaoundé. The aim was to once again remind school-going youths that the future of the country lies in their hands and upholding the country’s social and political values are synonymous with maintaining the uniqueness of the country in the future.

In speech or play, actors demonstrated the need for the love of fatherland, passing through the National Anthem, with its core phrase, “Cradle of our Fatherland” and the Motto of the country, “Peace, Work, Fatherland”. To ensure that this lives on, not only on paper, both the executive and the legislature advocated patriotism and selfless service by all and sundry.

In one of the two speeches, the Minister of Secondary Education, Louis Bapes Bapes, lauded the parliamentary initiative, stressing that it ties with government action through the ministries of Basic and Secondary Education, to ensure the respect of ethical values in the educational system for responsible citizenship. He said on the pretext of freedom, youths are doing anything and if nothing is done to halt the vices, society could in the future be destroyed. This, he added, would be disservice to the country’s founding fathers who toiled for a better Cameroon of today. The minister recommended civic education as the way out of vices.

In a lesson on “Education and Citizenship”, with focus on corruption, students of Lycée Leclerc cited some cases of the destroyer within and without the school milieu, shaming perpetrators as enemies of growth of a harmonious society of tomorrow. Their active participation in the lesson and a short play depicting corruption, was prove of the magnitude of the vice and others in the country, thereby justifying the need for the existence of the parliamentary network as well as the timely need for civic education in school.

Quoting President Paul Biya in one of his speeches, “What Cameroon do we want for our children,” Hon. Cavaye Yeguie Djibril said development passes through education and that it is only when a country has knowlegible men and women of integrity can its development be sustainable. He handed over a thousand civic education manuals to accompany efforts already undertaken by the education family to bring up patriotic citizens for a collective participation in the socio-economic development of the country.