Concept of the University of Bamenda: Centralized or Decentralized?

John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University is among the most famous attempts to define a liberal arts education. Originally written in 1852 in response to a papal proposal for a Roman Catholic University in Ireland, The Idea of a University served as an intellectual manifesto for Catholics who had long been an oppressed minority in the British Isles. Full emancipation occurred for them only in 1829 prior to that date, the Catholic church had been denied political rights in England and Ireland as well as admission to the great British Universities, Oxford and Cambridge.

Newman (1801-90) a well known Anglican priest who had converted to the Roman Catholic, wrote The Idea of a University to explore what a Catholic university would be like- how it might merge religious and secular concerns. He was also responding to a world growing ever more secular in its interests, more scientific in its methods, more utilitarian in its philosophy. Revolutions in technology and industrial organization seemed to be reshaping every human endeavour, including the university. Newman also postulated on the changes in the university system, such as the division of universities into various ‘schools’, the selection by students of their own programmes of study, and the establishment of areas of specialization (what we would call majors). His aim in this essay was to defend the value of learning for its own sake.

The idea of a university has remained a classical example of deliberative rhetoric: Newman is both recommending and defending the proposal of a catholic university. His thoughts and writings on the university faced both an entrenched Anglican tradition and a scholarly community learning in the direction of what is today called secular humanism. His book-length work did not focus on religious issues but rather on his goals for a liberal arts university.

President Paul Biya can be said to be our own John Henry Newman. President Paul Biya’s Idea of a University came to light way back in 1992-93 when he decided to break with history. Since independence in the 60s, Cameroon had only one university. The then University of Yaounde was certainly not only the pride of an average Cameroonian but also that of a Yaounde man. He would loved to own it as his own. It was certainly a pride to the Ewondo man that everybody in quest of a university education converged on Yaounde. Beyond bringing pride, the lone university of Yaounde drastically transformed the lives of ordinary people in Yaounde. Market women or bayam sellams made money enough not only to send their children to school but also send some for further studies abroad. Landlords or anybody that owned a small ‘carabout’ house became rich overnight as a result of the students influx and the need for accommodation. Supplies and small holders made enough millions for themselves because of the centralized Yaounde University.

When in 1993, President Paul Biya brought up his own Idea of a University and decided not only to decentralize to other regions but also to split the existing university into two, that is Yaounde I and Yaounde II in the same manner as Paris I and Paris II, no Yaounde or Ewondo man raised a finger. They saw in it a natural course of things.

In President Biya’s The Idea of a University, Buea which had hitherto just been an outreach center or an institution like Bambili became a full flesh university. Soa which never had anything before then became host to a specialized university taking away from the main university the faculties of Law, Economic and Political Sciences as well as the Advanced School of Mass Communication, ASMAC, the Institute of International Relations, IRIC and of course IFORD. Douala which originated had a Higher Technical Teachers Training College became another specialized university with special focus on Commerce and Economics. As if that was not enough, Ngaoundere which traditionally hosted a school of tourism became a university of its own expanding its faculties and schools by lips and bounds. Dschang that originally hosted a school of agriculture under Yaounde became a university offering what its clients requested. Recently President Paul Biya had to extend his own idea of a university by creating the University of the Sahel in Maroua with its own share of schools and faculties. Only in December 2010, he looked at his mighty works and did not despair but rather decided to perfect it by creating what Higher Education Minister, Jacque Fame Ndongo has since called, the University of the Future. Perhaps, this is where it makes all the difference.

Going by Cardinal Newman’s idea of a university, it would become crystal clear that the idea of dividing a university into sections like the arts, sciences, schools and departments only came later, and not without resistance. Even issues like the selection of programmes by students were not common and came with lots of resistance. Specializations or what is today called Major, only came later, still not without stiff resistance.

From the foregoing, it is but crystal clear that the concept of a university is an evolutionary one not static. The issue today is about the ongoing debate about the University of Bamenda.

UBa: University of the Future

A university of the future, it should be expected, would have nothing to do with the university of the past. The Idea of the University of the past was that students be brought to one large campus where lectures are done interchangeably. Late Professor Emeritus, Fonlon, simplified the idea of a university when he wrote: “To Every Freshman”. It was the expansion and domestication of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University. He saw in the essentials of a university a library or bookshop and large ‘amphis’. Today with an improvement in road network communications and the New Information and Communications, ICTs as well as the availability and accessibility of electronic libraries, the concept of a centralized university no longer holds. The University of the Future therefore has nothing to do with that of the past. By that reasoning therefore, it is not because the University of Buea, Douala, Yaounde, Ngaoundere, Dschang and Maroua are situated in one campus and in one geographical location that every university should be like that. Even if this were to be a joke in bad taste, it would have been said that what is called the International University of Bamenda situated along the Bamenda Commercial Avenue claims to have a campus in distant Nigeria and is threatening to open another in Tombel and of course, Ebolowa.

Dr. Ngwanyam’s Concept of UBa.

No sooner did President Biya created the University of Bamenda than one of the most reasoned intellectuals and political analyst Dr. Ngwanyam proposed a plan to distribute university schools and faculties to all the divisions of the North West region. To him, that was about the best way of making the University of Bamenda a true university of the future. At the time so many Cameroonians saw in his widely published postulations the rantings of a confused medical doctor. Two long years after, the idea has stubbornly refused to die. It has taken even on a more scientific twist. In Dr Ngwanyam’s imagination he saw in the coming of the university of Bamenda a means to foster the development and by extension the disenclavement of the region. Noted for their foresight, North Westerners saw in the coming of the university to extend higher education to the hinterlands. Dr. Ngwanyam’s division of the university was not done haphazardly. It followed a particularly researched pattern- each division was to get the school or faculty that marched its natural resources or talents. This was not the first endeavour. The Catholic Church, true to the doctrine of Cardinal Newman had already started that experiment some three years ago when the Idea of the University for the Bamenda archdiocese came about. The main campus was designed for Bamenda while the faculty of Health Sciences moved to Kumbo and the school of Agriculture to Mamfe. This idea has not destroyed the coordination of activities in the university in anyway. Rather, it has made the university a problem-solver or solution rather than a problem.

UBa: Centralized or Decentralized?

For now that seem to be like most of those things that start like questions without answers and end up like answers without questions. It seems like the Greek mythology where a woman was asked by the king to choose between dead and death. The question is at the center of the future of the University of Bamenda as the University of the Future. Both Prof Abety and Bambili Fons have attempted to reduce the debate to a question of more hectares of land. Just few more hectares. What a shame. As the debate continues we suggest a rereading of Dr. Ngwanyam’s proposal.