Courtesy of CRTV Radio Programme (60 Minutes with Wain Paul Ngam)
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
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| Dr. Nick Ngwanyam |
On the 6th of May 1972, late President Amadou Ahidjo
informed the political bureau of the Cameroon National Union-CNU that he had
plans to abolish the federal system that prevailed since the first of October
1961. On the 9th of May 1972, he was at the National Assembly to inform the
people’s representatives about his decision.
After his outings at the National assembly Ministers and top
ranking personalities of his regime were dispatched to their areas of origin to
campaign for the abolition of the federal system and on the 20th May
1972, Cameroonians were voting in a referendum to endorse the president’s
decision. Cameroon then moved from a federal to a unitary state. The 20th
of May then became Cameroon’s national day.
Today we will focus on the theme of the 2015 National Day
activities which has to do with defense forces and vital forces working in
synergy to maintain peace. We will also talk about a seemingly new outfit, Club
des Amis du President Biya or friends of President Biya-CAPBIYA.
Guest on this discourse, is a member of CAPBIYA, Dr. Nick Ngwanyam. He first
reacts to the theme of the 2015 National Day.
That is the way the nation was supposed to be functioning
though it looks like we were stressed by the Boko Haram and the SELECA rebels
for us to realize that we cannot do without each other. So there is nothing new
about the theme except that we are discovering what we were supposed to be
doing just because we have been put under stress. All the components of the
nation are supposed to function together so that we can have peace,
development, love and feel that the nation belongs to everybody. With the
stress we have been going through, we are learning that lesson the hard way
that we can not survive if we do not come together.
Are you saying that this is the beginning of that
synergy between the defense forces and vital forces?
Yes, you might call it synergy between the defense forces and
vital forces, but we can rephrase it and call it synergy in the whole country,
synergy in all sectors. Yesterday you would have thought probably that “bensikins”
are not important. When we talk of vital forces; who is a vital force? If you
try to define that, someone might think it is the professors who are the vital
forces, it is the ministers who are vital forces or people who have all the
millions that are the vital forces. No every Cameroonian is a force to reckon
with. Every Cameroonian, a grandmother, a woman and a baby, everybody has
something to contribute so that we can survive together. That vital force therefore,
actually refers to everybody.
When we are talking about vital forces in this
case, we are referring to those who have coughed out the financial resources to
make sure that the military boys are comfortable as they fight.
That is not true about vital forces. If you think that your
money makes you a vital force, you got it all wrong because some of the people
who have coughed out the money; if you ask them to even take a leisure trip to
Maroua now, they would not go. There are
people who have sacrificed more than all your money put together. Those
soldiers who are sacrificing their lives, those families whose children are up
there, those families whose husbands and fathers are up there, they are
sacrificing more than what your pockets can cough up. So if you think that you
are a vital force because you gave a few millions; that is wrong.
How do you want people who are not having that
money to contribute to help?
It looks like the nation has kind of understood the lessons.
It is not about money. It is first
about patriotism, love for the nation or country.
That is the most important thing. If you do not have the love
for your nation; then it does not matter whatever thing you do, it will not
hold. If we are fighting like we have been fighting Boko Haram; the little boy
on the motorcycle who gives the information that there is danger over there; it
is safe down there and that information saves lives; that boy is bringing to
the table a better chip for bargain.
He is actually contributing more than the millions you can
ever cough up. What we are doing in the nation, we have come to realize that we
can not really neglect anybody. A lot of people would neglect their house helps,
drivers and in the hospital those that keep hygiene and sanitation, in the radio
house like this might be the journalist might think that he is more important
than the technician. No something like that does not exist. It is only in the
poor and underdeveloped countries like this one where we have these class
barriers. In real societies, everyone is important.
You have watched the celebrations of the national
days over the years; what do you make of the approach we give to the
celebrations?
Well I am glad you call them celebrations before; but this
time around the celebration would have a different meaning. We just used to gather around, tell ourselves some few
stories, and bring ourselves some history notes, dust them whether they are;
right or wrong is not the issue. Whatever the issue is, is not important.
Wherever the truth lies probably is not important and then we have ourselves a
great day and we go drink and dance. That is all. And we do this year in year
out and we do not really address ourselves to the key issues. This time around,
we have realized that until we start talking as one where there is no
Anglophone and no Francophone, no army no civilian and there is no
“commandement” and no ‘pieton’ or whatever. When
we begin to realize that Cameroon can not function until we come together under
one umbrella; we would begin to respect each other for whom we are.
That is the most important thing and until we get that
right. Until we realize that no tribe is
more important than the other, that no job position is more important than the
other; and until we realize that even for one reason or the other if you are
making more money; if you understand that you have to contribute for the good
of the community; if you realize that if you have been given a job, the job is
not for your family, tribesmen, it is for the common good.
If we now begin to realize and grow out of our greedy
selfishness and begin to embrace the concept of common good, this is what this
theme of the 20th May is all about-working together for common good if we have
to rephrase it. If we begin to get this
into our understanding, then the country would get out of its mess.
You were part of this celebration when you were
still a student. Do you have the impression that the pupils or students today
would make the difference you have just talked about?
No. The students today do not know what common good is. We
have killed the spirit of common good in our nation. The spirit of common good
is the spirit that was supposed to be preached and practiced by the adults so
that the children can copy what they see being done. But we have been hearing
one thing and seeing something else happening.
If we sincerely carry out a study amongst our youths, they
would tell you that life is more about me and myself. Caring about the neighbor
and realizing that the child across the street is equally your responsibility
is something they are not aware of. Probably with the present dispensation and
circumstances, we are beginning to understand that we ought to care for each
other more.
Since you are talking about pupils and students,
should we only blame the teachers?
It is about a system, a philosophy. It is about a mindset and
if we do not correct that mindset so that everybody, be they professors at the
university, students in the high schools or primary schools know that it is not
about self; it would not work.
That thinking has gone down for many years and is deep down
into the bones, so we need to be able to refresh and redefine everything and
give everybody in Cameroon a different understanding. This would be not just by
saying but by doing. That is why I love the giving that has been coming from
the nation in support of the army; those that are suffering and their families.
It starts from somewhere where you also have to participate in solving that problem;
so that the women who have been contributing from Batouri, Ndian, Ntundip and
from everywhere to that cause begin to feel that they belong to one great
nation under President Paul Biya. Whether you like him or not at this material
moment, he is the leader of the country and we need to come together to support
him otherwise someone else would steal our country.
In 1972, you were still in secondary school. Would
you say that by that time you understood what the celebration meant other than
what the students understand today?
No. I got a certain understanding and for so many years this
understanding has been going on. I am not so sure whether my understanding is
right or wrong. I do not know whether the spirit with which the national day
was crafted is still the same spirit that is maintained today. I am not so sure
whether everybody is happy but the most important thing is that it is time we
begin to look at each other eyeball o eyeball whether mistakes were made or not
and begin to do things better.
Dr.
Ngwanyam, when the Head of State has to visit a region, people of that region
start preparing gifts, some creating associations. All these are in a bit to
please the Head of State. When he was going to Bamenda for celebrations to mark
the 50th Anniversary of the armed Forces, you guys of the North West
region created an association known as Friends of President Biya. What was the
intention?
You are talking about this outfit
called CAP-BIYA. It was an outfit
that was meant for youths; an umbrella that would gather youths, gather people
so that we begin to think together to see how we can support the president to
succeed in his objectives and vision. By then this vision was not very clear. In
2010 and afterwards, the President has come up with vision 2035 which is a
vision expounded all over the national territory. CAP-BIYA is therefore,
refocusing on this vision 2035 and finding out what we should be thinking. How
should we be working so that vision 2035 becomes a real success? It is not only
about President Paul Biya. He has crafted the vision and the vision is going to
live past him into the couple of centuries that are coming. If we sow the right seeds now and do the
right things, vision 2035 would be a reality.
It means
that you created the outfit then waited for a slogan from the president.
No. We created an outfit to
support him in all his positive activities. You know every year he tells the
nation, let us do this or that. There
were short term goals fighting for peace, fighting for that and so on but 2035
is a long term goal. We have short term goals to achieve. We are talking about
peace, fighting terrorism, fighting tribalism and corruption. Corruption
somehow has been a song in the nation. You cannot keep on talking corruption.
We have to go past that level and
find out what are the root causes of corruption and begin to attack at that
level. Just talking corruption would not solve any problem. We have to start
revisiting themes like rigor and moralization, love for each other and work
ethics and looking at our education. All these things put together were coming
out in bits and pieces. But by vision 2035, he thought again and let us
refocus, redefine things and see how by 2035, we would be able to showcase this
and that.
We hear about vision 2035 and
probably most people do not understand what it is. Vision 2035 is a date, a
time line in which we are saying that by that time this and this should be
visible. We should be able to say that we have this and that. Vision 2035 is not a magic year.
We are not going to be drinking, dancing and sleeping and celebrating the way
we are now, cheating and telling lies and then when the bell rings for 2035,
Father Christmas would show up at our door and the nation would change. Vision
2035 is actually a philosophy. If we are doing the right thing, we would be
seeing the indications of 2035 as early as 2025. By 2035, we would actually be
mature not starting.
Our
concern here is that with such an outfit, the President does not learn anything
new from those who pass for members in the sense that when he listens to you,
you are only articulating his own ideas.
The president articulates ideas
and says let us do this. But we have to be able to break those things down to
be able to get results and get to 2035. We have to do a SWOT analysis. That is; what are our Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and what are our Threats. We access where we came from. We left in 1960
and here we are in 2015. What have we achieved? If we compare ourselves with
other nations that were on the same pedestal with us, what can we see? If we do
that analysis, we would see that we have not done well at all.
If we say that we have done well
then we deceive ourselves and are not ready for change. If you compare
yourselves with countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and so on we
realize that we are still in the dark. Even at this material moment as we
speak, small countries like Rwanda are putting things in place and are doing
very well. We are still in the dark ages as far as our mindsets are concerned. So
it is more first about accepting that we have not done very well, sitting down
and thinking the whole thing all through because as a man thinketh so shall he
be.
We are saying that our
thinking has not been good. We have
not been thinking our strategies right. We have to rethink the problems and
rethink the solutions. For those of you who understand the problem
tree, I have gone through this thinking myself and it boils down to the fact
that; number one-our educational
system is wrong.
Number
two our attitude to work are wrong, number three we are very selfish, we do not love each other
and number four, we are not patriotic.
When we begin to correct these things and lay the right foundation, then we can
get to 2035. But if we do not start looking at these things eyeball to eyeball,
we will never get there.
To talk of
the friends of President Paul Biya, were you saying that he has enemies in
Bamenda?
Well I am still going
to see somebody who does not have enemies. Jesus Christ himself had enemies. If
you are a human being and you do not have enemies, then something is wrong with
you somewhere. But enemies in themselves are not a bad thing because for those
of us who read inspirational books, in fact your enemies make you grow faster
than your friends. Your friends are people sometimes who would be telling you
lies. When you are naked they would tell you, you are well dressed. Those are
bad friends and of course, we should make a distinction between political
friends and genuine friends.
Maybe we
should understand this friendship very well. Let us be put this question to
you. Who are those God can call his friends?
If God is going to call
you his friend, then you must be someone who buys into God’s vision and God’s
vision is very simple. God created us to love him, praise him, to worship him,
to serve him and to work and love each other.
If you are able to do
these things you are God’s friend. In fact, the way it is put in the gospel of
Mathew, seek ye first the kingdom of God. Seeking the kingdom of God is by
doing all these things and by making sure that you make God your all and all
from morning till evening. Nothing distracts you and you live and dwell in the
presence of God. You do as God wants you to do. You wear a thinking cap that
corresponds to God’s plan for you and your community. It is just as simple as
that. It is not about some sacraments. It is about loving God, loving man,
loving yourself and doing what God wants you to be doing.
When you are facing the
stresses of life, keep asking yourself, if Jesus were here what would he
advise? If Jesus were in this circumstance, what would he do? It is about the mindset. Until now, President
Paul Biya saw some people he thought were his friends. You know all these
people who keep shouting you are the greatest without supporting him
in action are not true to him. They just come around, sing songs and
write motions of support. That is the wrong way of supporting the president.
If you are going to be
the friend of the president, you support the president’s ideology by action so
that he has results. What results would he have? You would be supporting him in
such a way that most youth will get work; we
would create employment in the country and when you are appointed into
an office of responsibility, it is by working so that when he comes to take
stock, you would have something to show. It would be about having two talents.
The president would give you two talents and when he comes to assess after some
time, you should be able to present him with five talents. But in Cameroon, he
would give somebody two talents, instead of working on the two talents; they
would reduce the talents to one talent and then try to cover up by praise
singing.
The issue
here is that in such outfits, the members try to position themselves. They want
the Head of State to know that some people somewhere are supporting him.
I do not know much
about that but the president this time is looking more at output than noise. If
you are going to be supporting the president, support your president with
action. It is about action and your actions speak louder than words. We used to
think that talking on television and just making noise; when you go to give
some few bags of garri you must take pictures of that to show. All those kind
of things do not count. The local people in your community, can they say that
they are better off because you had the opportunity to serve them?
This
association, was it going to accommodate the poor?
The association is not
about accommodating the poor or the rich. It is about helping people to refocus
on their thinking. To follow the president in his ideology and even bring on
board those positive things that would make the country grow. Even after the
president’s tenure of office, we would still be talking about CAP-BIYA. It is more about an ideology. It
is not really about the person and an ideology usually lives past the person.
We are talking about the Christian ideology these days, Muslim ideology with Mohamed.
These are ideologies that lived passed the persons.
When would
you guys talk of the friends of the president of the republic?
As of now, he is both
the president and the person. Probably you are right but it still refers to the
same thing. But when we say friends of President Paul Biya, we are looking at
President Paul Biya and what he stands for and trying to see how you can
support him wherever you are in the little thing that you are doing so that he
succeeds.
When we say that “he succeeds,” it is actually not him
but so that the country grows. We are going past him and we are looking at the
country and saying that if we change the way we have been doing business,
change the way we have been doing things and try to modify a few things, the
country would do better.
I want to
imagine that you have plans to go out there and recruit members by making
people to support the policies of the Head of State. Are you sure that some of
the members have the moral authority to go out there and recruit members?
You see the best
Christian is the one who repents at the eleventh hour. In this thing, we are
not saying that some people are so bad that they can not support the president.
But you must
repent before you go recruiting.
Yes. You must repent
before you go recruiting in the sense that you used to think just about
yourself, your children and so on. But
now you realize that it is more about the whole nation and all the youths. When
you see those children on “bensikin” know that it is your responsibility to help
them to be better people tomorrow.
Be thinking of what you
can do for those children to be better off. When you see a young man who is
riding ‘bensikin’ and he is twenty years old, at forty years would he still be
doing the same thing? Own a house? At forty would he be able to look after his
own family? It is this kind of global thinking when you try to make sure that
your neighbor’s child succeeds. That is what CAP-BIYA is all about.
Dr. Ngwanyam,
can some body that has not cared about rigor and moralization go out there to
talk about the Head of State to somebody?
If you do not want to
talk about it- you know people have not cared about rigor and moralization and
many of these values, they might find it very difficult to start singing a new
song, they can be quite and stop singing the old song and that would help.
I imagine
that those you want to recruit as members are the young people.
Yes. 2035 is about
young people. We do not want to talk about the old any longer. Some of the old
are causing us lot of obstruction now. They do not help the youth to think
right because they are seeing but the wrong values. If those old people now try
and get the new values, then they would be chanting a new song and not the old
one.
Would you
have a message for most of the young people out there who lack jobs?
The question is; they
lack jobs but we need to go down there and find out why they lack jobs. They lack jobs because they lack the
capacity. And why do they not have the capacity? They do not have the
capacity because training in our
schools and universities has been wrong.
It does not matter how
hard the youths try, they cannot correct that. It is the government’s
responsibility to correct our educational system so that the youths can study
the right thing.
I would use this
platform to again appeal to the nation and to the authorities that be; that we
need to actually change our educational system. It is going to be tough but
that is the only way. The other countries are doing well because of this thing
that they call D.I.Y-Do It Yourself.
It does not matter what you do, if you cannot do things yourself, it will
never work. Do things yourself as an individual, do things yourself
as a nation. If we take our country Cameroon for instance and we call the
Chinese to come and build our roads, sports complex, and our water situation;
as long as you call people to come and do things for you, you cannot get
anywhere.
As
long as your own youths cannot do those things for themselves, as long as they
cannot participate in that technological growth for your nation and contribute
in that development of your nation, you would never get anywhere.
We have to build the capacities of our youths to be able to solve our own
problems ourselves. That is the key. If you ask me how then, I would say that
we need to change the curricular in our schools.
If you look at the way
we study in our schools, the curricula are designed around two sets of
questions. If you look at the curricula of countries that have emerged, you
would see the differences. If you look at the curricula in Cameroon, the people
who designed the curricula; they wanted students to answer questions like when,
who, which and what. These questions do not allow for mental
development.
Nations that have
survived ask the other questions. The key questions they ask are why
and how. The thing is the child who is listening to me on the radio
should ask the question; how the radio works. How can this thing be broadcast
in Yaoundé and I am able to receive it in my house? How does it work? How is it
happening? Why is the fixed phone not as good as the mobile phone? This is how
we should be going about with our education.
But if you ask
questions like who is the minister of health? Who is the president of Gabon and
you are given ‘A’ Levels; that is not it. We
are learning the wrong things. When you begin to ask the why and the
how things work, you would begin to realize that these things are grouped under
a set of subjects which are referred to as STEM.
That is |Sciences, Technology
Engineering Mathematics. If we have a hundred children in the country, we
should do it in such a way that 60% of them are studying STEM. 40% can be
studying other things. But if you have a country where 95% of the students are
studying the wrong thing, the country would never develop.
Can we be
talking about the wrong thing or something that is not relevant again?
It
is
not relevant. You can not build a nation with that kind of thing. It is not
correct. It is just that in 1960 when we just got our independence and we
started putting structures in place, the Whiteman who understood what we should
be studying did not tell us the secret.
Still talking
about the young people, you intend to preach equal opportunities for all the
young people…
Equal opportunity is
not preaching. You have to do it. You have to provide equal opportunities for
all children. What do I mean by equal opportunity? When I look at it
critically, I am sure that we can prove it by doing some studies. If you go to
some schools, the school of engineering, the school of medicine, you would
realize that it is mostly the children of the big people who are in these
schools. The children of the poor are not really there and there is no even
distribution over the national territory. So there is something wrong in the
selection and we are saying that there should be equal opportunity for all
either you are poor or rich, an orphan or not, it should not matter. What
should matter should be your character and your level of intelligence and your
commitment to serve the nation and to serve humanity. When we get these things
right, the right people would begin to come up and we build our nation.
Certainly you
would have an uphill task. You would be talking to the employed and unemployed
youths. Those who are employed were not employed because they were very
intelligent.
That is correct. We are
talking of those who have been employed, where have they been employed and how
useful are they? If you do a critical study and you begin to find out the out
put of those that have been employed, you would agree with me that the civil
servants in Cameroon do not really work much. If you were to quantify their
work in relation to what is done in other countries and do a comparative study,
you would realize that in Cameroon we do not really work. We cannot define work
and we do not really know what work is. We do nothing and we get paid for it.
I am talking
about people who at the end of the take a salary.
Yes, you are talking
about a set of people to whom we distribute salaries without work. We have a
bunch of people on the list to whom we distribute salaries without work.
But those who
are receiving do not do anything extra.
That is an example of a
bad system and that is why we are saying that we should correct that and begin
to put the right persons in the right places. If we continue to do it the way
we have been doing, we would get no where. Let me put it in more concrete
terms. Let us suppose that the government were to create 600.000 jobs in the
civil service and we just gather more youths and put them on the pay roll,
Cameroon would only get worst and poorer. That would not be a solution.
When we are talking
about work and employment, there is something that we should try to explain
here. Work in the nation is found in the civil service and in the private
sector. When you go to the private sector, you have the formal and informal
sectors. It is actually the formal private sector and the informal sectors that
generate a lot of jobs in the country. It is not about the civil service. When
you talk about work in Cameroon and the under developed countries, everybody is
looking at the civil service. That is not the right place to look for work. So
if we are not having jobs in Cameroon, it is because that private sector has
not been developed.
That private sector is
not just developed by a presidential decree. It is developed by doing something
concrete and that is why ‘Do It Yourself’ becomes very
important. That is why STEM becomes very important. When you learn how to do
these things then you can create your own job. You can add value to things and
the wood that we are selling now must have been converted into very beautiful
furniture and done with before selling. That is a lot of money. If we were
doing it ourselves, then we would not be importing rice from China. These are
the kinds of things I am talking about. We have a lot of potentials but we have
not developed because of our poor training.
Can young
people who have received the right education be counted on if they are not
disciplined and honest?
No. There are a bunch
of things that go together. Your capacity and your aptitude and attitude are
very important. Aptitude is all that you have acquired in school, your training
and whatever. Now attitude is your character. Your success depends very much on your character. It constitutes
75% of your success. But even if you are the best guy in town and your aptitude
is not much, you would not be able to solve any problem. So your aptitude or your training is that
capacity to be able to solve problems. Then, when you have that knowledge, the
skills and the training and you are well behaved, that is honesty,
responsibility, integrity, accountability, creativity, and you bring them
together and add to your capacity, it causes an explosion. You become very
productive and everything that you touch would multiply. You would be rich and create jobs for others.
That is the kind of thing and therefore, CAP-BIYA wants to take the youths in
this direction.
Is it
possible for us to have the young people who have received the right kind of
education, disciplined, honest just by deciding to be honest, and disciplined
without the elders pushing them a bit?
That is why we are
saying that it is a collective effort where the elders, the youths and
everybody has got to understand what we have to do now to come out of our mess.
You are not doing it just for the sake of your family; we are doing it for the
sake of the nation. We are doing it for the sake of our collective good because
we have realized that if we do not do this, we are going to perish as a nation.
We have no choice whether we like it or not, we’ve got to do it.
Is it that
sometimes the elders are afraid of the young people to push them a bit to be
honest and disciplined?
Many of the elders you
have seen especially in politics and so on, have been showing the wrong example
and there is very little we can do. As we say, action speaks louder than words.
I know there
are some neighborhoods in Bamenda where you live; when you see young people
spend the whole day and night playing music, dancing, drinking and causing
atrocities and nobody says anything.
Yea! Nobody says
anything because we have left it drift so much that nobody knows the right
thing. So this is the bell we are ringing here to say, we have got to change
and stop what we are doing. Change and take it from a different angle.
Can these
friends of President Paul Biya help the young people who today are accused of
scamming? You know scammers?
Yes I do. I have been
scammed a couple of times myself. When
we say friends of President Paul Biya, no one is going to come to you like a
gendarme to force you. ‘Friends of President Paul Biya’ is a philosophy and
when we are talking on the radio now we are actually educating the nation. We
are saying, look young men and women; we have to start thinking differently. We
have to start working differently so that we can reap a different fruit. If we continue to harvest of the old tree
that is what we are going to continue to reap for the next one hundred years
and until we sow a new tree now, we are going to be reaping the rotten fruit.
You plan to
help in the transfer of technology. That is the key. How do you intend to
achieve that?
I noticed something. I as
Dr. Ngwanyam, I have been thinking a lot about technology and I started to
articulate in that area. I tried to bring some technology on board to Cameroon
but when I came with the technology especially in the medical field, many of my
colleagues were not responsive to technology. You would understand that even
now in Cameroon we have a lot of directors in the officers who depend on their
secretaries to open the internet for them. We are still afraid of technology so
we have to create an enabling environment where the young people start being
introduced to technology at young ages.
Technology is a very
exciting thing and if you try to take technology to people who are old, you
will not get it. We should introduce technology in our primary schools,
secondary schools and universities and we begin to show people a new way of
doing things. You know of course that these guys who draw plans of houses, they
used to do that with a pen and a ruler and so on. These days they use a
computer. I was listening to a custom officer over the radio from Douala and he
was talking about what the scanner has done for them and how it has improved on
their work at the port.
It means that
we have to go out there, acquire the technology and come back.
That is correct. We
really have to change our priorities. It is very unfortunate; we have about
five thousand professors and lecturers in our universities. There are just
about one thousand five hundred full professors. But what I would say is that
all these professors that we have are the professors of the old stock.
If we continue to work
only with the professors of the old stock, we will only reproduce the same
result. What is the result we have been getting from these professors? If we
say that all our children trained in these universities are not productive,
then what we are saying is that all what the professors are transmitting is not
productive. Therefore, we have to correct the professors, correct the students.
Correct the curriculum, correct the vision, correct the thinking and correct
everything. If we do not do that and we keep talking about it, it would not
work. The best way to correct it is to get up, sit up and begin to ask for
technical help from outside.
When you talk
of transfer of technology, people think that you are talking about young people
going out there to acquire the technology and come back.
There are different
ways of transferring technology. Even as we speak I would say that this nation
has lost a lot in terms of man power. I do not know what obtains these days but
in our days the state of Cameroon was giving scholarships for young people who
did very well at the GCE and the BAC to go out there and study. Even as we
speak, I know that many countries still give scholarships to our young people
to study. But these our young people who went out many years ago and studied
high tech remained there because the country was not receiving them back.
The country did not
create a platform for them to come back and reproduce what they have learnt.
The country did not do that. Some people who were coming from abroad seemed to
be a threat to those who were sitting in offices and they rather created
bottlenecks to frustrate them. So there has been no dialogue between our
children in the Diaspora and those of us who are here. It is time to say that
all our young children who are in the Diaspora who are well trained should come
back. It is time for us to create a favorable environment for them to come
back.
I was going
to ask how you and your friends of President Paul Biya intend to bring back
those guys. If you send them out there to go and acquire technology, you should
be prepared to give them the space.
Yes. You have to give
them the space to function. You have to create that enabling environment. To do
that, we can not talk about it now. There are ways and means of doing it.
Cameroon is one nation in which internet is very expensive. I do not know why
but there are many African countries where internet is not all that expensive.
At this material moment I think and I believe that we can get internet to our
primary and secondary schools free of charge and charge just a little for our
universities so that children should learn very fast. We can bring computers
into the country and make computer education cheap and affordable. Take
electricity everywhere and begin to see things happen. We can take our
television and radio everywhere and begin to use them for teaching not just for
dancing.
Members of
CAP-BIYA intend to tell him the truth always. Can you succeed?
I think telling the
truth is a good thing. I read about the truth and I read about something called
the white lie. The truth is good and
it is most ideal to tell the truth always. But even a bishop would tell a white
lie sometimes. For instant if a woman came and had a confession with the bishop
and says, “Bishop Look, I messed up this way.” The Bishop is not going to tell
the husband because that is the truth. This is a little bit of a white lie. You
can tell a white lie which can be justified but if lying is your modus operandi,
you have failed the nation.
Does God
accept white lies?
I do not know about this but I am sure it is
for debate. The fewer lies you tell the better it will be. But I also
understand that if you tell the truth always sometimes you can create more
problems. I think we tell more lies than we tell the truth which is not
helpful.
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
