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Cameroon: Buea's Lone Archivist Gives Up Ghost
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Cameroon Tribune (Yaoundé)
28 February 2008
Posted to the web 28 February 2008
Nkeze Mbonwoh
After retirement, he did 15 more years of voluntary service with no successor.
Self-traineed archivist, Prince Mbain Henry Ankia who served at the South West Provincial Archives for 40 years, has died. His corpse was buried in his native Laikom ( Boyo Division) last weekend. Prince Mbain passed on 15th February at 64. He was the lone attendant of the Provincial Archives in Buea. Since his retirement from civil service in 1994, Prince Mbain has stayed on voluntary service for 15 years waiting to train a successor, to no avail.
News of Prince Mbain's death flew round Buea sending a chill through the spines of research and scholars dealing with the archives in the past or future.
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Pathetically, Prince Mbain's book-loving fingers knew all the thousands of volumes, files and documents in the Buea Archives. He was the only survivor of some 15 staff members who worked with the archives in the key days and have either retired or died. The passion for the survival of the 1960 - born Cameroon Archives kept Prince Mbain on and on. No new staff was ever recruited for training so as to succeed him. Mbain equally failed to contract even private trainees to foresee any future need. And so, the Buea archives are left in the orphancy. Tabloids like the National Daily Cameroon Tribune and the Post, had sounded the warning of the need to have some one trained to succeed Prince Mbain. Authorities gave a blind eye and lent deaf ears. It has happened and the titular Ministry of Culture has a task at hand to keep the Buea Archives alive. Even the highest qualified archivist, will require a long time to acquaint with the highly solicited Buea Archives.
Nwalimu George Ngwane, educationist, panAfricanist, writer and play right working at the Provincial Delegation of Culture in Buea expressed regrets of the loss of Prince Mbain in such terms: "I knew Prince Mbain was weary and feeble. He told me on the 11th February that he had consulted at Mbingo Baptist Hospital. I saw lots of nationals and foreigners filing into the Archives daily. The Buea Archives is actually the lungs of the Provincial Delegation of Culture and has actually provided oxygen to the Ministry of Culture. I got to know it when I was the Provincial Delegate of Culture here in Buea".
The Provincial Archives in Buea is a jewel to intellectuals, politicians, historians and just any one who enjoys facts. Yet apart from lack of man power, the physical maintenance of the archives leaves much to be desired. It still can boast only of the micro-file machine bought in 1968 which, in effect, is defective.
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