Cameroon :UB Vice-Chancellor, managers receive The Nation’s Transparency Awards

Picture 1:Christopher Ambe Shu(right) hands award to Prof. Titanji
Picture 2: Prof Titanji (middle displaying award),Harry McYemti(right) and Christopher Ambe in family photo

Professor Vincent P.K .Titanji, Vice-Chancellor(VC) of University of Buea(UB), Cameroon’s lone Anglo-Saxon varsity, has been honored for his stringent and transparent management of the institution by The Nation, a Yaoundé Based News magazine, whose publisher is veteran journalist Asong Ndifor.

Professor Titanji, who has been Vice-chancellor of University of Buea for less than two years, is one of few managers of public and private institutions in Cameroon identified by The Nation as laureates of The Nation 2007 Transparency Award.

According to the award- giver Publisher Asong Ndifor, the award is a yearly event and intended to encourage stringent management and transparency in Cameroon, a country which has been ranked at least twice as the most corrupt nation in the world by Transparency International, a Berlin-based good governance watchdog. He said the winners were selected from many nominations by a committee of people of integrity, based on objective criteria.

Other winners of the award include: Henry Njalla Quan, general manger of Cameroon Development Corporation; Sama Ignatius, general manager of Cameroon Civil Aviation; Obi Optun Wanobi Osang, general manager of PAMOL Plantations Plc;Richard Tita Fombon,Mayor of Tiko ; Daniel Matute,Mayor of Limbe 1 and Barrister Ntumfor Nico Halle,Northwest Representative at the National Elections Observatory(NEO)

A public ceremony was last April 4 organized in the conference hall of Fakoship Plaza in Buea, chaired Barrister Dang Aleh Elias, during which the laureates received their awards amid thunderous applause. Barrister Dang congratulated the laureates and urged them to continue to be management models, so that others could emulate them.

But conspicuously absent that day was laureate Professor Vincent P K.Titanji who was reportedly on mission in Yaoundé

On Wednesday,April 16, Christopher Ambe Shu, publisher of The Recorder Newspaper and special envoy of the award organizers led a two-man delegation that included Harry McYemti Ndienla(journalist of The Guardian Post) to the University of Buea to hand the Transparency Award to the Vice-chancellor.

Warmly received by the vice-chancellor, Christopher Ambe Shu then briefed Professor Titanji on the relevance of the award, handed it and urged him to keep up the spirit.

In response, the Vice –Chancellor said, “I feel greatly honored and I accept this award with all humility, knowing that the work of human beings can always be improved on. I will do my best to live up to the ideals of this award”
The Vice-Chancellor appealed to other holders of public offices to be patriotic and put the common interest first in discharging their various duties. “I think it is very easy to work in the public sector because the rules and regulations are very clearly written down. All we need to do is, follow them intelligently and you have little or no problem”

During the presentation of the awards to laureates last April 4 in Buea, Ntumfor Barrister Nico had given a talk on transparency.
He remarked, “Transparency is instituted as a means of holding people in public offices or institutions accountable and it is also a big tool to fight corruption
“An activity is therefore transparent if all information is open and easily available…Transparency ought to be the affair of every Cameroonian as this helps to promote good governance. Good governance is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end.”
Nico Halle recommended that, in every circumstance, public interest should be prime over private interest.
He also used the occasion to laud the Cameroonian press for its continued “fight against corruption and embezzlement on the one hand and the struggle for the strengthening of our budding democracy on the other hand”