Kini Nsom
4 September 2008
Competitive examinations into professional schools in Cameroon are characterised by heavy fraud.
About 70 percent of those who are recruited into such schools and eventually into the public service gain admission through fraud.Last week, The Foundation For Human Rights and Development, FHRD, raised an alarm when it published a detailed report on "The State of Bribery and Corruption in Cameroon's Professional Schools and Recruitment into the Public Service".
The report signed by the NGO's Executive President, Afanyi Ngeh, reveals that only 30 percent of the candidates admitted in professional schools like the National School of Administration and Magistracy, ENAM, the Higher Teachers Training College, ENS, the Higher Institute of Youths and Sports, INJS, the Advanced School of Mass Communication, ASMAC, the Higher School of Engineering, Polytechnic, and the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, pass through merit.
70 percent of such candidates use bribery and corruption, influence peddling and political godfathers to get recruited."Our study of the recruitment of students into ENS Yaounde over the past two years points to the fact that only 20 percent enter through merit, about 20 percent are recruited through recommendation by persons holding high-level positions in government such as cabinet Ministers, Directors and other influential personalities", says the report.
The 26-page report equally reveals that more than 60 percent of recruitments are allegedly done through the exchange of money. The writers of the report say the main sources of the study are; confessions from students in some institutions who confirm having entered through offering a bribe, members of the public who confirm that family members entered these schools after offering money.
Some students also confirm that some elite intervened for them to be granted admission.
The NGO also used data obtained from interviews and questionnaires to establish the report. The report covers the period from May 2006 to July 2008.
Going by the document, meritocracy, in the circumstances, has been sacrificed on the altar of bribery and corruption. Thus, the majority of those who get into the public service are those who buy their way into such schools.
Although ENAM Director, Benoit Ndong Souhmet, refuted the allegation recently, it is reported that the students pay as much as FCFA 3 million to get into ENAM. Given that the private sector is weak and unreliable, working in the public service, to most Cameroonians, is the only sure way to have economic security.
The FHRD report quotes many young Cameroonians as saying they are desperate to have a matriculation number in the public service that will permit them to be paid by the State Treasury and enable them have pension when they finally retire.
Such a phenomenon increased given that the last massive recruitment of graduates into the public service before the rise of the economic crisis happened in 1986 when 1700 graduates were employed. Since then many graduates face unemployment. The human rights foundation also points an accusing finger at the failed political transition to a genuine democracy as one of the main causes of corruption.
It says there is lack of accountability and transparency in the management of public affairs in Cameroon. It stated that rigged elections finally give rise to people in public offices who are under no obligation to be accountable to the masses. They strive on corruption.
The report states: "The use of patronage is an outstanding factor that has helped in erecting corruption to the royal throne that it occupies". The oldest corrupt method of recruiting students into ENS, reads the report, is not through the sale of places, but through patronage.
According to the study, patronage gives rise to the nation-killing prevailing vices such as tribalism, nepotism and favouritism. In this category, the relations, friends and tribes persons of the politically powerful have a direct entry into ENS with little regard to their qualification. The report states: "Elite use the name of the ruling party and constitute themselves into lobby groups through which they place persons into institutions of higher learning".
Notorious ENS
The study is particularly critical of recruitment into ENS. It partly reads, "Towards the end of this period (1992 and 1997) there was a Minister of Higher Education who hails from one of the Divisions with the worst in terms of road network, who flooded ENS Bambili with his village girls and boys".
It is alleged that during the electoral campaigns, students and every unemployed person who needed a matriculation number, needed just to join the campaign caravan of the ruling party.
It is said that between 1992 and 1997, a good number of those who gained admission into professional schools were people who have links with the ruling party. From 1997, the buying of places into ENS is said to have become almost official. The report states that candidates paid as much as FCFA one million and 1.3 million to get into ENS in 2006.
The writers of the report say most of the students who admitted having bribed their way into ENS refused to call names of those who took the money from them."We learned that during the 2008 session between March and May, places in most departments in ENS like History, Philosophy, LMA, Guidance and Counselling, Computer Studies were selling between FCFA 1.5 million.
By mid June, students who went to buy places reported that some departments such as History were already full."From mid June we gathered that a place in the Department of Philosophy rose to FCFA 2 million," reads an excerpt of the report.
This year, the report states, a place in the department of Guidance and Counselling rose to FCFA 2.5 million. It was also discovered that 90 percent of candidates recruited to study Philosophy do not have a University degree in the subject. Of the 18 students in Year Five, only two have university degrees, amongst all the other 16 who do not have are women.
The report screams that from the primary school to the highest rung of the State, corruption sits comfortably as a national girlfriend, waiting for an outing. This is the situation that caused Transparency International, TI, to rate Cameroon twice as the most corrupt country in the world.
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from all indication shows that cameroon is really characterised by heavy fraud.And that is not good because there are so many students here in cameroon who are inteligent but can not afford the money for birbe.And that is why cameroon will remain underdevolope.