CPDM education of garbage in, garbage out

There is no gainsaying that the CPDM under the Biya New Deal government has made frantic efforts to modernize the educational system it inherited from late Ahmadou Ahidjo’s Cameroon National Union, CNU.

Before Biya’s ascension to power, Cameroon had only a single over-crowded State university. But today, Cameroon boasts of eight State universities and several private and vocational higher institutes of learning.

From the then Ministries of National Education and Higher Education and Scientific Research that were charged with molding Cameroonians, Cameroon’s Education Ministries have since then experienced some metamorphosis under the CPDM 31-year reign.

The 1993, educational reforms ushered in widespread innovations in Cameroon’s educational system. These innovations paved the way for other changes.
For example, in 2000, the Ministry of Technical Education and Vocational Training was carved out of the Ministry of National Education with late Louis Bapes Bapes as pioneer Minister.

This Ministry only existed for three year as it was completely dissolved and fused into the Ministry of Secondary Education in 2004.
The Biya regime also wrought the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

In 1988, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research was transformed into the Ministry of Higher Education, Computer Sciences and Scientific Research with Abdoulaye Babale as Minister.

The Ministry was later on christened as the Ministry of Scientific and Technical Research headed by Prof Henri Hogbe-Nlend.

The nomenclature of the Ministry was again changed to the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation under Prof. Magdalene Tchuinte.
The Ministries of Higher Education under Prof Agbor Tabi and Employment and Vocational Training under Zacharie Perevet are upshots of the Education Ministry.

Despite this frantic efforts and sporadic reforms made by the CPDM government to enhance quality education in Cameroon, the educational system is still plagued by a plethora of problems.

Politically Created Schools

In order to give a cosmetic impression that the CPDM regime has made education accessible to Cameroonians, politically motivated schools are set up in almost all the villages and neighbourhoods in Cameroon without the necessary structures, personnel and resources to man the institutions.

When such schools are established, motions of support are dispatched to Biya, while locals bear the burden of providing the structures and the teachers to teach their children.

Inadequate Structures And Personnel

After the CPDM 31-year reign, pupils, students and collegians still sit under trees to study, lecture rooms in university are overcrowded, while places like Fru-Awa, Akwaya, Mbekunyam, Bakassi lack teachers, especially Mathematics and French teachers, yet such places are CPDM strongholds.

Obsolete Curricular, Teaching Programmes

Most, if not all the school curricular and teaching programmes, are still pegged on the 1970s programmes on general education. These programmes have become obsolete and no longer meet the exigencies of the 21st century.

Graduates leave the university to become job seekers. The streets in Cameroon are inundated with graduates with no particular competence to meet the prescriptions of the job market.

Even the much talked about Technical Education has been relegated to the back burner, as laboratories of these technical schools across the country are in dire need of training equipment.

Worse still, the Biya regime has castrated technical colleges like Government Technical High Schools Ombe, Buea, Bamenda and Kumba, which were the cradles of Cameroonian technicians.

Anglophones are unable to produce technicians because there are no higher technical institutions in Cameroon to train them.

The 2011 elaboration of new programmes under the Competence Based Approach, CBA, method that was aimed at inculcating entrepreneurial spirit and molding the intellectual, civic and moral capacities of young Cameroonians to meet the challenges of the 21st century seems to have ended up in paper work.

Politicisation Of Educational System

The Biya regime has effectively politicised Cameroon’s educational system. Teachers are appointed to positions of responsibility based on their political inclination. The concept of meritocracy has been sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity and political allegiance.

Pro-opposition teachers are punitively transferred, suspended and witch-hunted, because of their political ideologies. The polarisation of the educational system has made the teaching-learning process difficult.

Insufficient Research Grants, Scholarship Opportunities
Lecturers in State universities have repeatedly gone on strike, accusing Government of not encouraging the quest for knowledge through research.

According to them, collegians can only be empowered if they are provided with up-to-date skills, which, they said, can only be gnarled through research.
The lecturers had repeatedly called on the Government to provide them with research grants.

Another worrying factor that has blighted the Cameroon education system is the award of scholarships. Some of the waning Cameroonian intellectuals said during the era of Ahidjo, they benefitted from Government scholarship to further their studies and came back to impact the lives of other Cameroonians.

But under the regime, scholarships are not only scarce, but the few that are available are awarded to people from certain political or linguistic backgrounds.

Brain Drain

Most of Cameroonian intellectuals under the Biya regime have fled the country for greener pastures abroad. This is because most of them are either forced to work under incompetent politicians or paid miserable salaries.

As such, most intellectuals prefer to be enslaved in a foreign land than to be in chains in their own country. Brain drain has further paralysed the education system under the Biya government.

Given the overwhelming difficulties affecting the Cameroon educational system, a seasoned educationist has described the products of such an educational system as “garbage in garbage out.”