A bilateral meeting between elites of Tubah subdivision and Tafah Edokat, Vice Chancellor of the University of Bamenda, UBa, has concluded that the university needs at least 100 MFCFA to get the Faculties of Arts, and Law to go operational.
Peter Abety Alange, national coordinator of the popular Tubah Union for Peace, Progress, Prosperity and Power, TUP4, who led the Tubah elites to meet the Vice Chancellor told the Journal that the amount in question is intended to put in place new infrastructure and to rehabilitate other structures already in place that could accommodate students when the faculties are finally created.
The infrastructure, according to Abety, would include among other things; amphi-theatres, administrative buildings and other lecture halls.
Abety disclosed that TUP4 in a bit to see the dream come true has begun a fund-raising campaign to raise the anticipated sum. Tubah Council within the fund-raising agenda, Abety disclosed, has already pledged the sum of 22MFCFA while some few elites have raised 2MFCFA.
"Our intention is to get the faculty of Arts and that of Law go operational in the near future," he quipped.
Tubah elites are of the opinion that the two faculties are the most giant in almost all universities across the country. Should the faculties go operational, an influx of students would stream into the town, leading to a high demand for rooms. The high demand according to a Tubah elite would stem the constant drop in the demand of students' hostels in Tubah.
According to Abety, the high-level delegation of TUP4 led by him in the company of Tubah Fons, Mayor, deputy Senator, Regina Mundi, among others, met with UBa VC and explained Tubah inhabitants' worries about issues affecting the growth of the university, including that of decentralization. He said they both reached understanding at the end of the discussions.
"The vice chancellor said the faculty of Arts which people have been demanding would have long been established but for the fact that there was no infrastructure to host the number of students that would have cued into the faculty." Abety said.
He added that the delegation assured the VC that Tubah elites were going to support him and the university by raising funds to rehabilitate several unoccupied buildings of the Cameroon College of Arts, Science and Technology, CCAST Bambili, Regional School of Agriculture, Bambili and others.
Upon hearing the declaration, Abety said the Vice Chancellor, excited, assured them that ahead of the completion of the rehabilitation, the population of Tubah could count on him that UBa Faculty of Arts would go operational.
It's worth noting that "the University of Bamenda strategic development plan 2014 - 2028," which spelt out how the University was going to be partitioned within 15 years (2014 - 2028), transformed the entire Tubah municipality into a ghost town.
Construction projects were abandoned, rendering close to 3000 labourers - bricklayers; brick molders, plumbers, painters, carpenters, including even building material dealers, jobless. Over some 500 students' residential buildings were left unoccupied, leading to economic hardship in Tubah.
A member of the Bambui / Bambili landlords' association even told the Journal that several landlords were threatening suicide having borrowed several hundreds of millions from financial institutions to put up buildings that no one was renting for the debts to be repaid.
