Land-grabbers want Kumba GBTTC dead - Principal

George Njingwa Tambo, Principal of Government Bilingual Teachers Training College, GBTTC, Kumba, Southwest Region, has asserted that land-grabbers may render the institution homeless, if stringent administrative measures are not taken to forestall the arbitrary sale of the school land to private individuals.

Tambo raised the alarm to reporters in Kumba recently.

According to the Principal, the institution, which was created in 1936, remains one of the cradles of Anglophone education and politics that is still surviving, given that, great Statesmen like John Ngu Foncha, ST Muna and many others were trained in the institution as teachers.

Despite its rich history, the Principal said, the school remains almost abandoned to fate and unscrupulous land-grabbers.

Even though Tambo refused to name and shame those involved in the act, he maintained that, despite the want of evidence, he watches helplessly as houses and other individual investments are erected on the school land.

He explained that, as a school administrator, he has written to the appropriate quarters for action to be taken. To him, he has done what he could at his level and all he has been waiting for is a reply from higher quarters.

Meanwhile, during the graduation ceremony of the institution’s 89th batch recently, the student representative, Kingsley Essono Dipita, lamented that GBTTC Kumba was already in ruins.

Apart from the protracted land crisis, Dipita bemoaned the dilapidated nature of classrooms, dormitories, lack of water and electricity, as the major difficulties plaguing the hitherto citadel of learning. He challenged the Government to solve the acute darkness on campus to save the students from thieves.

Asked about information that, even the credits Government directs to the school ends up in private pockets before the institution is merely notified, Tambo objected commenting on the issue.

He said he has no knowledge of such allegations. He indicated that, recently, Government offered two new classrooms to the institution. Irrespective of the two classrooms, the sorry state of the school has emasculated the impact of the two new classrooms.

A one-time Trainer in the institution, who later proceeded to Hope Waddell Training Institution, HWTI, Calabar, advised Government to copy the Nigerian example by refurbishing the entire institution. According to the Trainer, Cameroon’s history, as a nation, can never be complete if schools such as GBTTC lose their identity.