On
the 31st of December, 2014, the Head of State, President Paul Biya
addressed the
nation and touched on pertinent key issues that affect the life
of the nation. His elocutions were viewed by many in diverse opinions. Dr. Nick
Ngwanyam, CEO of ST Louis University Institute of Health also listened to the
Head of State with keen interest and in the following interview makes a
dissection of some key aspects of the speech and proposes concrete remedies to
some of the problems.
 |
| Dr. Nick Ngwanyam |
Excerpts
Dr. you are one of the elite of
the North West Region and an entrepreneur. The head of State just addressed the
nation. Can we have your immediate reaction?
Thank you very much. As you
understand, everybody has been waiting for the Head of State’s speech and it
came just in time. Despite the difficulties that we have, he looked quite
relaxed and his body language was positive. Of course, we know that he as Head
of State and the father of the nation has been going through a lot of stress
especially with what has been happening in the North of Cameroon. He tells us
that he was expecting that in 2014, we will all be embarking on correcting our
economic problems and getting some growth but he sees himself and the nation
taken off track to fight this insurgency. He looked quite relaxed and I guess
so probably because his military tactics have paid off.
He spoke
and touched a number of sectors. Which of them have been of interest to you?
The head of state dealt with two key
areas. First the security issue which is mostly in the north of Cameroon as we
speak and then the economics. He stated very clearly that there is no way we
can have that economic growth without having peace and security. So peace and security
are necessary for us to have the planned economic growth. You know, he has put
in place this contingency plan to help us develop very rapidly in three years.
A program for which a thousand billion has been laid aside and therefore, we
are looking forward to have that growth. Even as he wishes and he makes
available these facilities, I still have my fears.
You have
the fears like some people who are in the opposition; they see this contingency
plan as another white elephant in Cameroon.
No it is not a white elephant
project. The president is just selling us some difficult to comprehend goods.
The issue here is that Cameroon is not developing as far as I am concerned not
because we lack the means or the people but there is something that is inherently
wrong in Cameroon and it does not matter how the president feels about it or
his good intentions.
It does not matter what he says, it
is not about a speech. It is about the Cameroonian. To be able to develop in
every setting, it does not matter how much capital you have. The human
capital is the most important thing that you have to deal with. In
fact, managing human beings is one of the most difficult things. If you want to
grow, you must pay attention to the human person and I would want to think that
in Cameroon, we have not paid attention to the human person and that is why we
are failing. Countries that do not have the same potentials like us do better
than us because they pay attention to the human person. Let me put it another
way, if you most succeed, there are a couple of things that you ought to know.
It does not matter whether you are succeeding as an individual, as a company,
as an enterprise or a nation. It is the same thing. The human person is behind
that success.
Therefore,
attitude, behavior and character are very important. In Cameroon as a whole, the way we appoint people in the
civil service or “parastatal” and so on is that we do not respect merits
in this country. That is where the first problem begins.
You can have the best programs and
whatever, but if you do not make sure that your personnel is well catered for
and you respect merit in the way you apportion work and responsibility it will
not work. If we take zombies and put them ahead and you put people who are
worth their salt behind, it will never work. That is what I have been observing
in our country. People who do not have capacities are put in leadership
positions or are put in charge of the budget and things like that and
the people who have the capacity to do it are left in the cold. Therefore, when
you get people who do not have capacity sitting in there, they only play around
with politics and more politics to protect themselves and do not do the
technical work.
It has come to a point where we have
to forget a little bit about politics and pay more attention to technical work.
We are not giving merit its due and you would see this kind of lapses with the
“concour” system. To get into a medical school, you see the wrong student gets
there and the brightest students are left out. Polytechnic is the same and
having scholarships to go abroad, you see the wrong people going. The
children of villagers and paupers who are very sharp but have no backing are
kept behind. This is the kind of thing I am talking about. We need to
be able to make sure that we give merit its due and make sure that be it the
child of a farmer or a tapper should be able to rise as long as he or she has
the capacity. We must create that enabling environment.
Know that for any person to grow, 25%
of your success depends on your education and 75% on your attitude. In
our schools and families, we are not paying much attention to the attitude of
our children, the attitude of our fathers and mothers, the attitude of our
workers. We just think that because people go to school and get
certificates; that is enough. It is not. It you want people with the
best attitudes, look at Japanese, South Koreans they have got the best attitude
to work, and all Asians have a better attitude to work more than us Africans. We
spend more of our time wrongly and that is another thing. How do we use
our time? Do we use our time effectively? That is a problem. We do not know how
to use time in Cameroon so much so that you see responsible people who are
supposed to be at work first; they come to work at ten AM, and at eleven
o’clock AM; they are the first to leave. You will see people who are supposed
to be a work who on the streets drinking beer. We do not have a culture
of work in our system.
These are some of the basic things
that we need to correct before we start talking about any growth. If we
do not correct all these things, it does not matter how much the President
wishes, it would not work.
What about the youths?
When we are talking about economic
growth and all what not, it is not about the elderly. It is about the youths. We
as a nation, we have to pay attention to the youths. What do we teach them?
What are they studying? Are we really giving them the opportunities? That is
it.
When we are talking about
opportunities to the youths, it is not about giving them 350,000 jobs in the
civil service. That is not what is going to create us that growth. It is
about building the capacities of the youths so that they can strengthen the
private sector by creating jobs. All the companies and industries that we
want are not going to be created by old people. The old people might supply the
land but it is the youths that are going to make that work.
Therefore, it is time for us to lay
a red carpet for all our youths in the Diasporas who are into technology to
come back. We should give them the incentive and the leeway to come back and do
the best for our country. It is about paying attention to the youths,
changing what our students are studying in the universities today as I have
said severally, our curricular are the wrong ones.
We are studying things that were
laid down for us in 1960 so that we could just be able to read and communicate
with the White man. The curricular for 1960 was for communication and nobody is
using it today. If you go and ask the South Koreans and all the countries that
have emerged, they have a curricular that has to do more with professional
education, technological advancement and proper management etc. If you go
to America today and find out how they are studying, you will see that when a
doctor goes into a medical school, he is not only studying medicine, that is
boxed mentality. He studies medicine but studies for an MBA so that he comes
out as a doctor and knows how to manage.
Management is not something that we
should go to ENAM to learn. ENAM has outlived its usefulness. You do not set a
school apart for people to go and learn how to manage and throw their weight
around. Everybody should become a technician then those technicians take
courses in management. If they want to know how government runs, they are given
a six months course so that they can manage state enterprises.
If you go to South Korea that has
made it, to Germany and other Asian countries, they do not have schools like
ENAM where you go to learn management but they have managers, real managers
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
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