UBa-IRAD Seal Convention Deal

Despite claims by some Bambili elites seeking for notice that the Higher Teachers Training College , ENS could host all the schools and facilities of the University of the Future, it is becoming increasingly clear that in order to expand and accommodate the ever-increasing student population, UBa needs infrastructural support beyond the ENS campus. It is for this reason that a convention was signed last October 10, 2012 on the University of Bamenda campus between its Vice Chancellor and the Director General of the Institute of Agronomic Research , known by its French acronym as IRAD. The convention which formerly gives UBa access to IRAD structures situated in Bambili also allows them an opportunity to make use of IRAD researchers.

The convention signing between Prof. Edward Tafah Edokat and Dr. Noe Woin has been interpreted as the “Widows Mighty Might” as it comes in time to rescue the University of Bamenda with accommodation this 2012/2013 academic year.

During the signing ceremony, Prof. Edward Edokat said IRAD was really a friend in need and in deed as it saw the needs of the University and came to their rescue. He said ever since the creation of the University in 2010, it has not ceased growing in programmes, schools and faculties.

“The students’ enrolment is growing at a geometric rate but the available infrastructure has not respected that growth paradigm”, Prof Edokat said. He stressed that with already three schools and two faculties crammed in the former ENS site, it was bringing “inexpressive pressure on the facilities which were meant to salvage the learning needs of a few thousand students”. The institution, he said, was in “dire need of infrastructure especially laboratories as an emergency measure to salvage practical teaching-learning exigencies in the science programmes. The signing of the convention was seen as bringing relief to the institution. The Vice Chancellor saw in the Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, the moving of the University into “a new phase where interests and ideas converge and where discipline interlace to give a pluri-disciplinary flare confirming the view that “there is no hard-line that balkanize knowledge”.

On his part, the Director General of IRAD saw the convention signing as a history making event given that one such ever event only took place in 2008 between IRAD and the University of Ngaoundere. He saw in it an honour for IRAD to accompany the University of the Future. He outlined that by that convention, IRAD was putting at the disposal of UBa laboratories, office space and classrooms as defined in the MOU. This to him, was because IRAD was conscious of the fact that science could not be complete without the laboratory which is always very expensive to build. IRAD, he said has over time acquired a number of laboratories which were being used to advance knowledge and research. He urged UBa authorities to make use of the facilities allocated to them and also called on them to “make use of competent scientists of IRAD as lecturers and supervisors with due respect to their ranks”. With years of research and experience, the Director General said IRAD staff could be an asset to UBa. The signing ceremony ended with merry making