The reality of secularism in Africa and its impact on the lives and values of Africans has continued to generate some debate among scholars. On the one hand, there is a school of thought that considers secularism in Africa as a Western export/import. On the other hand are scholars who are of the opinion that there had existed in Africa, prior to the colonial encounter, informal secular approaches to governance within kingdoms and chiefdoms despite the lack of codification. Using the critical literature review and philosophical methods of conceptual and logical analyses with Cameroon’s educational system as case study, we reassess the two versions of secularism in Africa and argue that there is some conflict between the two trends. While the African version was characterized by a strong simultaneous distinction between and confluence of the spiritual and the secular, thereby upholding African cultural and moral values, Western secularism amplifies their separation causing more problems than it purports to address. X-raying the educational system in Cameroon we argue that Western ministered secularism in Africa is like the Biblical Saul’s armour imposed on David, which did not fit well on him. We note that Cameroon’s educational system in the epoque when it normalized the interplay between the secular and the sacred enjoyed high standards and values. In fact it was founded on religious values. The separation of religion from the state, and the trivialization of religion in post independent Cameroon have contributed in impoverishing standards of education in Cameroon. We espouse the view that a religious democracy can maintain her identity by actively deploying religious values to positively influence her political and educational systems, yet providing space for pluralism and the exercise of individual freedoms.