Candidates’ ‘hard road to The Place To Be’

The apparent quest to be part of the University of Buea, aka “The Place To Be”, is, by all means, as fresh as it was, decades after this first ever Anglo-Saxon style tertiary institution was set up.

Candidates from all over the national territory and even beyond, aspire to study here, despite the fact of several other such institutions of higher learning having been created to decentralise the set up.

Whereas many other universities open its doors to candidates with mere passes at the GCE Advanced Level, it takes more than this for one to gain admission into The Place To Be”. Such high standards set by UB have undoubtedly spurred candidates into aiming higher for such grades as would qualify them a place in UB. Hence, the unusual scramble to be admitted into this Buea-based institution of higher learning.

During the past one week, both the candidates who think that they have met the prerequisite points for the UB admission and those who are just hoping to scrape through have been queuing up to beat the deadline of submitting application forms as well as meeting up with other admission requirements. But this is being done at great cost, especially for those of them living far from the mountain town.

It could even be described as a nightmare for many who are only just realising that the registration process is a bit dicier than they had thought. For example when it comes to paying in the registration fee, candidates are left with the Hobson’s choice of paying it into an ECOBANK account.

Hence the long queues at the bank’s Buea two branches. During the past two weeks or thereabout, many students who come with the hope of completing this process end up leaving the banks’ premises in the evenings weary and disappointed. Those who have left from other towns and villages say it is very frustrating for them because they feel insecure in a strange town and worse of all, some say they barely even have something to eat.

Odette Akumbom says that every morning they routinely line up in front of the bank and when it is closing time, they are casually asked to come back the next day for the same exercise. There are hardly any shelters forcing some candidates to stay under heavy rains to ensure that they achieve this “trauma” of setting out for the Golden Fleece.

A rather weary Fred Mbella, another aspiring U B undergraduate, told The Post that “the registration process into UB is difficult and frustrating and I don’t even feel like dropping my file any longer.”

Onella Bernis Nkwenti like many other candidates The Post accosted felt that the sweet prospect of belonging to “The Place To Be” was being inadvertently dampened by the rather tedious hard road of ECOBANK registration process.