 |
| Dr. Nick Ngwanyam, CEO Saint Louis University, Bamenda |
-Doctor Louis Ngwanyam -CEO Saint
Louis Biomedical University, Bamenda, Cameroon
Cameroon is in a Cul de Sac viewed
from every perspective. As a very experienced personality in the health sector
could you use your domain as a spring board to shed light on the reasons behind
this situation?
Yes the
bottom line is that we are not productive. There is a saying which goes that
you cannot give what you don’t have. If you pretend to give what you don’t have
then you are a fake. Cameroon is not productive because she doesn’t know how to
produce. It boils back to the educational system from where everything is learnt.
The knowledge base we are having in Cameroon is not productive knowledge. It is
a system based on what was put in place in 1960 which allowed us to communicate
with the colonial masters. Other countries with which we started at the same
time like South Korea went out for Engineering and Technology so as to enable
them to be productive. This made it possible to add value to what they already
had. In Cameroon young people who leave High School and even the university can
neither write letters nor solve problems. They cannot think in the abstract or
get things done because the education that has been put in place does not
trigger meditation.
In practical terms, what obtains in
the average Cameroonian campus?
Students
simply read the teachers’ notes and regurgitate the notes after which they are
given a degree with no element of research. They don’t go out for themselves to
find out how things work. As a journalist you must know the key questions of
where, when, why, who and how. In our universities, we simply provide answers
to these questions. For instance, Who was
the first President of Cameroon? When did Cameroon gain independence? If
you study like this you can never produce results or yield fruits.
Studies
should trigger meditation. They should be capable of brainstorming and making
things happen. Why is it that developed
and shorter banana species produce more than the tall wild species that we have
in our villages? What do Scientists do to come out with improved species that
come out with greater yields? What happens to produce a change in colour from
green to red in a tomato? These are the kind of questions that our children
should be asking. Brain tickling questions that push the machinery towards
productivity? How can soap that is made
from palm oil be used to remove palm oil stains from a shirt? Why is the road
between Bafoussam and Bamenda in such a sorrowful state? This question will
take them to issues such as the life span of tar that is used on our roads and
the effect of fires that were burnt on the tar during political uprisings in
our political history. Fire reduces the cohesive power of tar. Students should
be capable of asking and having answers to the how and why of their daily lives.
Some think it is an attitude problem
that presently disturbs Cameroon considering the fact that you have some very
intelligent people in this country.
Cameroon
might have some of the best minds. If you have Cameroonians who’ve studied out
and returned home and copied what they have seen out as well as come home with
the mind sets of the people where they studied then they will be as productive
as any other creative set of people. But this is not dominantly the case. The
thought process of the average Cameroonian is wrong and when this is the case,
you will certainly produce something which is wrong. We’ve got more problems
with our thought processes and if we don’t correct it we
will never get out of our limbo. So I think we have a problem of attitude. We
don’t know that our attitudes have got to be right for us to succeed and we
think that we can always fake it. We must come back to the truth as the bible
says that the truth shall set you free. The truth here is not just about
believing in God but the truth in every aspect of our lives. We must be
principled and so if we go against principle, we will be punished for it. On
this issue of principle God sends rain to the farms of both the believers and
the non believers alike. Back to principle; if you follow the ordering of the
seasons then you will benefit from the rain fall but if you don’t then the
rains will be of no use to you irrespective of whether you are a believer or
not. To follow the truth involves being principled and when we don’t we pay the
price that Cameroon is paying at the moment.
What about the fact that deserving Cameroonians
hardly ever get anything in return?
This brings us to merit which is still another aspect of
truth. There is this thing called GIGO in computer language. Garbage in garbage
out is the perfect description of Cameroon at the moment. When we do our
competitive examinations to send students to CUSS, ENAM, P and T and all sorts
of professional schools, the question we should be asking is, are those the best students
found in Cameroon? When we say that this year we have selected 150 students to
enter the University Center for Health Sciences-CUSS, are those the best 150 in the country? Of course no. We have other
ways of selecting which do not represent the truth and that’s where the problem
lies. It is all about working with the truth and respecting the truth. If this
is done, 80% of the problems of Cameroon will be corrected. You see the child
of a peasant who is very intelligent sees the doors shut onto him while the
children of some well placed people who watch TV from the morning to the evening who
cannot even write their names take their places. The country is going to
collapse if we keep on doing this.
I trained as a Medical Doctor in CUSS but because I also had
an opportunity to be trained in Nairobi and in London and I have the opportunity
of traveling I can tell you that our health services are not doing very well.
I’m using the health services as an example since other sectors are the same. Something
is wrong some where and until we lay our hands on what is actually wrong then we
will be dancing in circles.
We have about 6000
Medical Doctors and professors in Cameroon. If we were to do an experiment and go to Boston
University and bring a professor in Medicine from there to come and test our
Doctors and professors, the question is how many of us will pass that exam which
is set following international standards? It’s a thousand dollar question. If
health services in some countries in Western Europe are rated at 90% then what
score will you give our health services? An honest answer to this question will
reveal that even if we increase the number of medical doctors in Cameroon to
12000 a very little change in quality will be registered.
In specific terms what
do you think South Korea, Singapore and Hongkong, countries with which we
started out at the same time are doing that we are not?
They understood long ago that the key lies in proper
education and also having the right attitude and character. These are things
that we have neglected and we are going to pay dearly for them.
Are you also of the
opinion that colonial masters also contributed in the way Africa took off?
If I say yes, my answer will be 50% correct. Because if
colonial masters are going away without showing you what to do to survive then
it will take a long time for you to discover what it is that is important. They
put us on the wrong track and we are studying the wrong things so that they
could come back and continue to feed on us. Now that we have the means such as
the internet from which to get the truth we should know what is important. We
have our backs against the wall and we have to rethink our strategies real
fast. It is time to export more than we import and to add value to our raw
materials and create jobs for our youths.
To be continued......
No comments:
Post a Comment