Government & ENAM Graduates

Dear All,

The Government or Civil Service of Cameroon is littered with people 

who graduated from a higher institution of learning called ENAM.

ENAM stands for "Ecole Normale de l'Administration et de la Magistrature".

This school has its antecedents in France whereby in the French system of

education there were and still exist what they call "Grandes Ecoles".  You 

can liken these "Grandes Ecoles" in France to for example certain colleges

with Universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College in London etc..

In the American system, for lack of a better comparison, just say they are

supposed to be the equivalents of Ivy League schools.

The Problem

In France, especially from the 1990s onwards, their Grandes Ecoles had

to be re-oriented completely.  In fact there was a major over haul in the

French educational system throughout the 1990s resulting in a major

impact in how these institutional Grandes Ecoles were positioned, their

study syllabi etc.....

In Cameroon, a country that claims to mimick France for the most part,

the French educational system that operates there continues to be that which

was inherited in 1958 during the colonial days from the French V Republic of

Valery Giscard d'Estaing.  I think it was him.  Or was it Pompidou?  Arghh, Whatever .....

That is why in Cameroon in the French educational system, in secondary school

they still have BEPC, Breve, and  then BACaulaureat in terminale.

Enter ENAM.

After BAC, you get into ENAM in a lower cycle.

After your first degree you get into ENAM into a higher cycle.

Admission into ENAM involved a written exam and an ORAL exam.

Suffice to say that from the 990s onwards entrance into ENAM  has

been thoroughly bastardized.

People who go through ENAM are taught to PUSH PAPER.

They are taught to PUSH PAPER in ALL aspects of the ADMINISTRATION,

JUSTICE, CUSTOMS, LABOUR, HUMANITIES, SOCIAL WELFARE etc...

In the process of teaching these people how to PUSH PAPER, they are 

taught to create an air of importance, to buoy up some halo around themselves

to look vital to the people around them and the organization they work in.

The compound and net effect of all of this is a corrupt administration that is

steeped in lethargic processing of just about every PAPER that has to be PUSHED.

Before a clerk passes on a paper from A to B, you give something, from B to C,

you give something, C to D, something is given and the process continues ad infinitum.

President Paul Biya in Cameroon since 1982, that is roughly 33 years ago, found

favour with ENAM graduates, given his very own training from France.  Of the

over 400+ ministers that have been through various Biya administrations, a good

75% of them came from ENAM. That is the CORE REASON why Cameroon

CANNOT move forward economically in this 21st century.  That is why when

President Biya wants Cameroon to be an emerging country and recruits ENAM

graduates they put a years of 2035 on it.  They all reason according to the 

PAPER that they are PUSHING.

I am afraid, I will have to tell many of these people simply that the world is going 

GREEN and no longer requires people to be PUSHING PAPER.

A few years ago, I told those people in Cameroon that they

can ELIMINATE at least 10 ministries by employing less than

100 computer programmers whose umbilical chords are buried

in Cameroon, for a contract period of less than 3 years to 

automate everything that ENAM Graduates have been doing

manually in Cameroon for the past 30+ years.

This will not eliminate jobs, but it will rather create more

jobs at a different level of abstraction.

I suggest that ENAM be shutdown symbolically for one year.

After all if it takes those people in Cameroon 8 years to set a BAR exam,

why not shutdown ENAM for ONLY one year.  During the course of 

that one year, ENAM should undergo a completely different orientation.

Let them even change it to a REAL LAW School.

And then other components of the place can be changed to some

TECHNOLOGICAL BUSINESS Component or so.

Blessed Be Cameroon
Pa Fru Ndeh