By Martin Jumbam
I believe it is last year that Cameroon’s Head of State, Mr. Paul Biya, presided over ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of Cameroon's School of Administration and Magistracy, commonly known by its French acronym ‘ENAM’. In one flowery speech after another, we heard how much the nation is, or should be, grateful to ENAM, being the institution that has, over the past fifty years, provided the ‘grease’ that has been oiling the Cameroonian state administration machinery.
That ENAM has supplied the bulk of the top administrators in whose hands lies the entire state machinery, notably the executive and the judiciary arms, is not open to debate. But to ask Cameroonians to show gratitude to those administrators for the work they have been doing over the past fifty years is asking too much of them. Recent events have clearly shown that if our country has lifted the unenviable trophy of the most corrupt country in the world two years in a row, ENAM graduates, who dominate the entire economy (taxation, customs), not to mention the magistracy, are largely to blame for it.
Not that long ago, a French Catholic organization accused Mr. Biya of allegedly looting Cameroon’s treasury and stashing the proceeds in tax-safe havens abroad. More recently still, a group of Cameroonian citizens living in France brought similar charges against Mr. Biya in French courts. In a frantic and panicky response to these charges, Mr. Biya pounced on and forcefully enrolled a few unfortunate fellow treasury looters into two of Cameroon’s most notorious prisons, the dreaded “Universities” of Kondengui in Yaoundé and New Bell in Douala.
Mr. Biya’s so-called “Operation Sparrow Hawk” has netted, among its biggest catches, his former Economy and Finance Minister, Mr. Polycarp Abah Abah who, before being dropped from grace to grass, was the archetypal ENAM product, having graduated top of his class in that institution. He proudly referred to himself, whenever the least opportunity presented itself, as “Le Major de ma Promotion”, a “straight A student”, the valedictorian of his batch. Like Abah Abah, many of those Mr. Biya has arrested, and is still arresting, are ENAM products, a clear sign to the nation, and the world at large, that ENAM has little to be proud of in terms of ethics and morality.
Whither the Anglophone?
How have Anglophone graduates from ENAM been faring on this slippery ground of ethics and morality in public service? First of all, the Anglophone presence in ENAM can be divided into two distinct phases. The first was made up mainly of Grade Two and Grade Three primary school teachers who entered ENAM in the sixties and early seventies. Studies in French proved particularly challenging to many of them, who ended up in very low job positions in the ministries in Yaoundé, or in the provinces. Many are either retired or have already gone to their Maker. They all had sad stories to tell of their stay in ENAM.
The second category came into ENAM in the seventies and eighties. These were generally fresh graduates from the then lone University of Yaoundé. As secondary school leavers, many of them had been thoroughly schooled in French in their respective secondary schools west of the Mungo. The trials and tribulations they went through at the then lone University of Yaoundé prepared them well to confront the challenges of ENAM. Many succeeded, even beating their French counterparts in the process.
Anglophone determination to succeed
How have many of them fared in their professional life? It’s hard to say but a story is told of how one of them, freshly graduated from ENAM, began work as a tax inspector, Saint Matthew’s successor, in Douala. Burning inside him was the strong desire to succeed in his job. He was going to work so well that his boss (hierarchy) would be so impressed with him that, sooner rather than later, he would receive a promotion. He knew many tax inspectors and customs officers who thrived in taking bribes and growing excessively rich in the process. All his colleagues talked about glaring cases of corruption in their ranks and many yearned to grow rich as quickly as possible. But not our young man who was determined to be different. Nothing mattered to him except work well done.
His first test case came barely six months into his job. He had carried out a thorough assessment of a business tycoon’s company in Douala and found a huge deficit in the latter’s tax payment. When this man’s case had dropped on his lap, some of his friends came to congratulate him, green with envy. They all said how generous the man was and asked their friend to ‘squeeze’ him real hard. Our friend merely smiled and said he would do his best. Inside him, however, he was determined not to spoil his job with a bribe.
Cash-stuffed envelope
In the morning of the day he was to present his report to his boss, our friend was in his office earlier than usual. He was putting finishing touches to his report when his office door was suddenly pushed open. He was about to scream: “Who the hell…!!” when the man, whose company he was auditing, rushed into the room, a briefcase in hand. Without uttering a word, he dropped a huge brown envelope on our young friend’s desk, turned round and walked out of the room. He said not a word! No good morning! No goodbye!
The young tax collector was completely dumbstruck. What was going on? What had that man just dropped on his desk? Money? He touched the envelope and nearly froze on the spot. Yes, indeed, it was money and much money too, from what he could see. He was used to seeing money and that quantity definitely ran into tens of millions of francs CFA. His hands were shaking so much that the report he was working on dropped on the floor but he just didn’t have the strength to pick it up. He was still wondering if he was dreaming when he again heard other footsteps walking to his door. What was he to do? In one swift action, he opened the drawer of his desk and dropped in the envelope. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it would drop out of its cage.
Was it the tycoon coming back to explain to him what that envelope was for? No, it was the cleaning lady who had come in earlier than usual. She said something about hurrying to finish her work so she could go to the hospital. Whatever it was she was saying, our friend barely heard a few words. He was so anxious to have her out of the office that he merely grunted and bent down to pick up the report he had worked on so diligently for so many months. The figures of unpaid taxes ran into several hundreds of millions of francs CFA. What was he to do with that report?
Limply, he dropped it into another drawer and decided to quickly leave the office for fear one of his colleagues might come in and meet him. As he was about to leave he suddenly remembered the cash-stuffed envelope. What was he to do with it? He couldn’t possibly leave it there! He took it out of the drawer and tried to stuff it into his coat pocket but it was too bulky to fit in. He then opened his briefcase, dropped in the envelope and made for the door.
Long walk to his car
The short distance to his car, parked a few yards away, looked like a mile. It turned out to be the longest distance our friend ever walked. He felt as if everyone's eyes were on him even though he knew there was no one around at the time. He nearly fell on his face after stubbing his foot on a small stone. What was he to do with all that money? he wondered, his heart pounding in his chest like a piston. When he reached home, he felt as if the veins on his neck and arms would explode as blood coursed through them at high speed. His body suddenly generated enormous heat and before long he was in bed trembling with a high fever. And that is how he failed to show up for work that day, and the next day, and throughout the week. The report against the business tycoon finally ended up in flames behind his house; and the cash-stuffed envelope in a small box under his bed. It contained too much money for him to deposit in his bank. What would he tell anyone who might be curious to know where all that money came from?
A few months later, our friend’s boss received a watered-down version of the original report, which basically said: “Rien à signaler” (Nothing to write home about!). His colleagues gave him a knowing wink; a silent language he was beginning to read and to understand so well. As days and weeks and months went by, our friend began to laugh at his own naivety. Why, he wondered, had he been so worried about a few million francs CFA when all his friends boasted of several hundreds of millions from less lucrative customers to write off their taxes? Why was he so afraid of something as simple as money from a tax evader? After all, was it not the State the man was cheating? Was the State anyone in particular? The more he thought about it, the more he felt that he had done nothing really wrong, as such. It was all right, from time to time, to take for oneself what belongs to all. After all, has he not recovered more money for the State than all his colleagues combined?
Go and multiply!
With money, life in Douala became really ‘sweet’. What with all those chicks, the “sweet sixteens” from Lycée Joss, Collège Alfred Saker, Collège Libermann; the daughters of the well-to-do whose companies he was auditing. What was wrong with him ‘auditing’ their daughters as well? In the process of ‘auditing’ women, he planted many seeds that sprouted and bloomed and blossomed all over the Republic. Wherever he worked, he planted seeds, proof of his legendary indomitable virility. But taking care of his brood has never been a problem at all. Is it the cash lacking, or what? He doubled over with laughter, as he shared his adventures with his colleagues, who had similar tales to tell.
Several years later, our friend’s drawer was to open and close several times a day, engulfing in its bowel huge cash-stuffed envelopes. Wasn't that what being a tax collector in a city like Douala was all about? Were all his friends not doing the same thing, his boss included? What else was new?
Today, our Anglophone friend is rumoured to be worth his weight in gold. Landed property in his name, or in that of his numerous children, stretches from Bertoua to Bafoussam; from the coastal city of Kribi to Kousseri at the banks of Lake Chad; just about everywhere he has worked. An ENAM product, par excellence.
It has been, and will continue to be, my long held position that ENAM epitomises corruption in Cameroon. The fight against corruption, if it has to be genuine, has to begin with the shutting down of that institution. It is no secret that the overwhelming majority of our administrators are products of ENAM. But the question is "what are the criteria for admission into ENAM?" The answer is blowing in the wind. The corruption inherent in the admission of students, accounts for the corrupt practises of its graduates.
Posted by: Ngomba | December 08, 2010 at 08:04 PM
This is some great writeup! Congratulations! It is unfortunate that an institution of training be found to blame for the conduct of its ex-trainees. The conduct of our anglophone friend upon reception of the first bribe, shows that 'bribe-taking' has never been one of the subjects taught in ENAM. What the teachers at ENAM teach is how to handle administrative matters rightfully - just like the anglophone tax controller did with the file he received. This shows that he received the proper training which should normally have been applied if not for the corruption he did not go out to look for. To blame an institution or better still, close ENAM because of the conduct of its ex-students after graduation, to me, seems like blaming the Pope when some remote village homosexual priest is caught redhanded. Corruption is at the entrance of ENAM and after graduating, corruption is on the field.
In one word, corruption has eaten into the fabrics of the Cameroonian society. Prayer remains our only hopeful arm against the plague.
Posted by: Emmanuel FOFUNG Mfonfu | December 09, 2010 at 05:39 AM
Interesting. this story started off scientifically but tailed off for the larger in imagination & fantasy. this summarizes the now shallow fallacious summarization of salient situations/conditions in our country: where subjective opinion is raised to scientific fact for the consumption of the gullible, undiscerning, the uncritical and the uncurious. true Enam like all sectors of our public life are all infected by the redoubtable virus of curruption and malgovernance (if u deny then beg the question: the plague be it in our churches, schools, ndjangis, devt assocns, teams, feca-whatevers--where we are swindle, pilfer, loot & what have u...are these extra-administrative bodies manned & run by Enamarques?). i will never exculpate the corrupt enamarques, but to circumscribe & quarantine the scourge to the "école du lac" & its products "par excellence" is to throw a wrong & facile stone ...an unscientific case of selective culpabilisation and flagellation. tell me which corps of our national life is holy & unsmeared, & i will ask them to throw that first stone!
i will debunk our critic's case & premise with some few facts:
1) Entrance Examination: 20 801 registered candidates in 2008 and more in 2010 all pushed by same number of parents and guardians that have never been to Enam, most...so these Cameroonians are hankering to prepare these their wards for thievry & only thievry!
2) Enam has trained more just about 7500 in 51 years and if do some relative subtractive arithmetic of those who died, retired, travelled out elsewhere, joined international organisations, joined the private sector (...and i personally know a good number who fall in all the above categories) in these fifty one years , then you will get what infirm number out of the 160.000 functionaries active in the administration, and ask urself if the fallacious magnification of Enam influence in the administration is not inspired by something else other than fact & reality.
3) Some purpot they occupy top positions, but that is mere ignorance of the facts on the ground: most ministries are specialised and contrl their own selection of topbrass staff by virtue of their specialisation eg: iric & minrex, university dons & minesup, agro-veterinary experts & minagri/minepia, rese archers & minresi, teachers & minedub/minesec, injs & minsep/minjeune, enass & minproff/minas, emia, enap, police school for their respective corps etc... same still goes for parastal directors: who the enamrques in crtv, sopecam, sonara, chantier naval, snh, scdp, mideno, soweda, unvda, semry, arsel, telecom authority, camtel,civil aviation, airport authority, port autonome, sic, credit foncier etc, & same for government delegates, same for varsity rectors/vc's...let's be factual, statistical & intelligible: see thru the veil of the apparent! can enam graduates ever beat these numbers ...and in their own very sectors?!
4) Only another sorry ignorance of the fabric of the cameroon administration will lead a flimsy analyst to overlook the omnipresence of teachers & injs graduates that cuts across all boards in appointments into all ministries and adminitrations:. their numbers defy all barriers! they positionings in these administrations leave them with nothing to envy from enamarques who are tightly confined to theire ares of specialisation for the most part. so, from now hence our fabulous analyst should read nominations btween the lines when he/she next sees them...he will know who are masters of our national triangle...carelessly drawn as it seems!
5) from the above point then, when our analyst/critic speaks of "enam product par excellence" and veers into a perjorative, negative examplar, one is tempted to ask if this analyst was masturbating on popular fantasms or really writing fact. "par excellence" to me refers to a paragon, an epitome, a reference/referential standard in a given field or experience. so the examples of enamarques who have led or worked meritoriously in private, national, regional, international organisations are in his affabulation enjoying some exclusion from this vicious paragon & reductive paradigm! what about our abt the referencing/referrals to some of our enam-manned administrations for other countries to copy: this happened in customs sector (sydonia etc ), taxes (our vat/tva experience) & recently in ivory coast transposing our stores accounting, (public sector logistics/patrimonial accounting - a typically cameroonian public finance innovation & experience, developpped & advanced by enam products "par excellence"!) control/audit into their national law...swear prophets & their homelands!
6) our analyst slams & excoriates enam products & i imagine he/she has no knowledge about the international configuration of the school that has trained & graduated, & continues to graduate students from rwanda, burundi, congo brazza, chad etc. if it is not a strain of inverterate cynicism what does he imagine (as his/hers is a very gifted exercise in imagination!) continues to make these states to pay fabulous sums to train their prospective functionaries in enam, that is if they had not seen some productivity accruing froim the school's programs & formation.
7) and talking of imagination & fables (as a symbol & fact of popular fantasy & fantasms), see the incoherent and unconvincing slip in the discourse that resists the suspension of disbelief: our congenial & naive, moralistic tax inspector who receives no bribes, shuns corruption, but is said to have a car after 06 mths of work!...man, on what salarty can he purchase a car after 06 mths...on a basic salary of circa 150.000frs for an inspector & circa 130.000frs for a controller! that is a long , tall tale.
*i am no devil's advocate, but it is disgusting when public information so factlessly & fallaciously opinionated. i have always been a partisan for the dissolution & disetablishment of enam & all the "grandes écoles" & their debatably abusive matricular sinecures and élitist trappings. enam, ens, esstic, iric, injs, etc... yes, i ve been an apostle of the fact that these schools & their training should be part & parcel of the university system with no concours attached: you want to be a teacher of math, enroll in the dept of education & do "math education", u want to do taxation, read accounting or law & specialise in taxation masters etc, that is to borrow from the anglosaxon experience. i buy this and all of it. but what i wanted to debunk above is the spurious & specious fact that corruption, malgovernance, mismgt are the monopoly one pseudo-influential caste: enamarques. and by the same token i am not saying that they are not invovled in such malpractices. i want to logically pinpoiunt the fact that corruption & allied ills cuts deeply thru all sectors of national life...even where u will never trace the presence of an enamarque, at least wearing his enam apparel: like the church,political parties, schools, ndjangis, devt assocns & all other non-administrative bodies that constitute the larger part of our national life. to center & quaratine the woes of this nation on an ostracised enam is senseless, sadistic, manipulative & almost jealous (don't excuse me - pull ur trigger now!) scapegoatism. the ill is in us all: corrupting & corrupted. our problem is systemic & system-generated: we should not confuse substance & shadow...like jean zoa, like j. fru ndi, like you other, biya is no enamarque, at least!
ngonso maryjane
Posted by: ngonso | December 10, 2010 at 04:07 PM
Mary Ngonso, Do you take or demand bribes?
ENAM graduates manage the legal, administrative and financial machinery of la republique du Cameroun. They are powerful.
When Wall street collapsed because of the shenanigans of MBAs from America's leading universities, the business schools have not shied away from reexamining what they are instilling in their young charges.
You, maryjane are not a devils advocate. You are an apologist for a corrupt, diabolical institution of people on the make and on the take. I say that while agreeing with you about the pervasive culture of corruption. Biya did not start corruption. It was already well established under ahidjo
Posted by: Ndi Ndima | December 11, 2010 at 05:43 PM
dear ndi ndima,
you dont just get it: like what i ve lengthily argued above, u still fall into the caste of inveterate fallacious critics who pass on the corrupt buck to others in that ur "holier than thou fashion"...u have burnt(gravé,like a CD)ur opinions on ur mind & analyses makes no sense to u. to explicit & explicate fallacious thinking is not to apologise: u miss the point - & which i abundantly stated in last section. seems opiated by ur "opinions" u do selective reading & grind in selective amnesia... i then can understand how easily u choose the cheap underbelt cuts of argumentum ad hominem by asking if i take or receive bribes...i will return u the question (not as an apology for bribery)just to know how un-hypocritical you are...honestly (hand on ur bosom & swear): have u never given or received a bribe?...throw the first stone!
throw that stone at ur glass house... while i am wondering if it is not the same factless, fallacious crass manipulation of truth that it is the MBA's that brought the financial crises: are most/all speculators MBA holders and Ivy Leaguers...u know the statistical answer, and it veers away from the apparent & fictional! the ill is in us all...point that finger twds u first!
Posted by: Ngonso | December 16, 2010 at 11:26 AM
You protesteth too much, Ngonso. Usually a sign of one whose ox has been gored and is taking things very personally.
Posted by: ndi ndima | December 21, 2010 at 07:49 AM
mr ndi ndima. this shld be my last post to u personally...since u persistently lack the sensibly nuanced nous to distinguish "logic" from "apology" (in interpreting my text)& dodged my bounced-back question: "i will return u the question (not as an apology for bribery)just to know how un-hypocritical you are...honestly (hand on ur bosom & swear): have u never given or received a bribe?...throw the first stone!"...answer that clearly b4 i know the psychologist/psychanalyst u are to decode " a sign of one whose ox has been gored and is taking things very personally." u were 1st to go ad hominem & i told u above & took u to task & u escaped my question as repeated here. and b4 i go, make ur choice of words right & mind how use "protest" & "apology" to my text...get out of ur burnt out grind talk some good sense before the bells jingle...happy yuletide! this is my last mail on this issue...at least with u.
Posted by: ngonso | December 24, 2010 at 05:53 AM
I totally agree with Ms Ngonso. It is of course very easy to draw public sympathy and stir a series of jealousy-propelled comments by mere mention of ENAM. This pathetic and statistically lame analysis, (hopefully standing to benefit from Ngonso’s concrete figures), coupled with trivially predictable comments, usually proportional to the pain suffered by most commentators after failing the entrance exam into ENAM n times, should not really attract more attention than the occasionally inconsequential beating of a moth’s wing ever did. Reason, it assumes the validity of such a lamentably simply equation as CAMEROON MINUS ENAM = HOLY COUNTRY. If the analyst’s obviously sentimental and simplistic measure of a job that is not really easy, is not fuelled by some isolated loathsome incidence with a tax inspector having given birth to sporadic hatred for same, I would in all equity and fairness ask him to proceed to analyze the corruption involved in the ‘entrance’ into other schools (not by way of justification of the ENAM entrance corruption, but of underlining a more general ill), ranging (yes!) from Minor to Major seminaries, from primary to doctoral schools, from even the Ngiri to the Nwerong houses.
As for disintegrating ENAM, I would like to call the attention of commentators to the fact that the taxation corps counts today close to 2000 products of ENAM and more than 3500 contractuels d’administration formed in those very universities you are advocating, some as unconcerned with taxation as having graduated from translation schools and monastry-like institutions.
I hold it firmly that corruption in our fatherland is a chain linking all sectors.
And about the banal way in which this analysis presents the work of a taxation inspector, it would appear that the only pain involved in amassing wealth for the inspectors is that of the token task of stretching their hands to take the money or the fatigue involved in carrying the stuffed envelopes to their cars. The reality of the need to put the finest brains together to see where a computerized account is willfully flawed, the endless hours of toiling from 7h to 21h (many have collapsed here under the unbearable weight of this terrible work), the ridicule of having your son call you ‘uncle’ because you are always at work, the sturdy challenge from the ever increasing tax consultants that inspectors have to face and beat to collect revenue for civil servants to collect as salaries, are all dexterously unknown.
When I know that ‘who knows it feels it’ was never so true as in this case, I can only describe all this frivolous charade of a write- up as ‘un grand n’importe quoi’ .
Posted by: big | December 28, 2010 at 09:22 AM
When and what we eat may affect our nighttime rest, if not our tendency toward bad dreams!
Posted by: Coach Factory Store | February 24, 2011 at 08:42 PM
this blog is so informative,I will study at ENAM and will do whatever it takes to be admitted there.If jobs have become so scarce that our government needs to sell them to us then I`d rather buy than spend my life grumbling and criticising at those who did.The system is broken no doubt,I`ve spent hours job hunting,working 6 to 6 with no salary,rents and transportation to take care of no one can say it in worse terms,we all have felt the pinch.hopefully corruption will be well out on its way to extinction so I wont be subject to unhypo or hypocritical opinions and hopefully my night rest which is so important wont be affected.:)what I need is a job,social security number which I really feel I`m entitled to as a Cameroonian then I`m cool.I`d fight to get into any job sector not only ENAM if I knew there was a way to get in there.Just need a job to do,do it well and happily stand up to fight corruption for a better future for generations to come.Dont want to even call Biyas name or anything,cos being unemployment,oversabi and politics taste like raw gnuts and crayfish.with the after taste too long after u spat it out.So dear bloggers I will be back here one day in the near future to give you an update.In the meantime hit me by email for those of you who apparently have some inside info :) on my new dream job.thats Cameroon for us o.Long live our fatherland!!!
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