Cameroon:ENAP now training foreign students

  By Christopher Ambe

    A batch of  10  Gabonese students are already under going training at the Buea-based National School for Penitentiary Administration (ENAP) and the school ‘s 21^st  board of directors ,which  met recently, has  resolved to review its curriculum to meet international demands, The Recorder learned. The ten Gabonese students are the first batch of foreign students at ENAP.

   Jerome Doh Penbaga, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice in charge of the Penitentiary Administration, who chaired the Board meeting in Buea June 21, noted that with the Gabonese batch of 10(seven student administrators of prison and three student superintendents of prison) already under training at ENAP and the green light for five other countries to do same, there was that urgent need for the school to standardize its courses and improve on its didactic materials and equipment.

   ENAP now has as a major challenge to scout for funds to construct a modern campus at   its new site in Lysongo near Muea in Buea. ENAP acquired some 30 hectares Lysongo several years where it intends to build its modern campus and relocate from its present roadside campus near Clerks' Quarters.

   Getting the school’s computer laboratory well-equipped to facilitate internet connection, so that foreign students connect with their home countries is another priority project for the school.

   The Recorder learned that the international community has got so interested in products of ENAP.Some  fifteen 15 trained- in –Cameroon prison administrators are currently serving with the United Nations in Cote D'Ivoire and Central African Republic.

Mr. Doh Penbaga said the UN has requested for more of such personnel, a demand, which he added, would be looked into accordingly

   The Secretary of State also disclosed that more prisons would be constructed in the near future   to help decongest Cameroon’s overcrowded prisons. The Recorder gathered that Buea central prison, for example,which was  meant for some 200 inmates, now has over 500 of them.

  The ENAP board of directors lauded the sustained efforts of the ENAP director, Mrs. Immaculate Fonken, an administrator-general of Prison for making the school a centre of international attraction.

(First published in The Recorder newspaper,Cameroon,of July 1,2013)