Youth throng army recruitment centres

The five recent years have seen an amazing increase in the number of youths applying to join the national defence and police forces.

It is now understandable why scores of youths have been seen in the last five years swarming administrative offices.

Army and police recruitment exercises have become not only opportunities for youths to secure jobs, but most especially to participate in the efforts to keep the country’s borders and safeguard peace in the country amidst growing threats from some conflict-affected neighbouring countries.

For Besong Smith, 22, who travelled all the way to Yaounde from Mamfe in Manyu Division of the South West Region, to register for the ongoing recruitment into the Police Forces, no error can be made about his intentions. “I cannot sit in my native hometown selling fuel when my country is being attacked from all angles by enemies who have infiltrated into our towns.

I want to fish them out and face them if I am recruited into the Police,” he told Cameroon Tribune with all the energy that only a rare kind of patriotism could muster.

Judging from the figures of those applying, the turnout according to security sources, could only be evidence of rising patriotism and awareness amongst youths of the need to be part of government efforts to safeguard peace.

In a recent interview with the Director of Human Resources at the General Delegation for National Security, Pierre Marie Ngouanom, CT disclosed that 70,021 applications had been registered online with 30,197 files validated, as at January 24, 2015; all, for a total of just 4,700 places. The level of interest is awful.

The scenario was similar last January 2014 with the approaching deadline for submission of documents for the recruitment of 4,850 soldiers and gendarmes into the Armed Forces for Cameroonians of both sexes aged between 18 and 23.

Those who were successful will in the months ahead complete training and be sent to the field to contribute to the protection of the fatherland.

Security sources say this number brings to over 10,000 soldiers recruited within the last ten years, leaving a far larger number still itchy to get into the Armed Forces despite often bad news of soldiers killed at the warfront against Boko Haram.