By Sendy Forlemu
The Higher Institute of Business Management and Technology, HIBMAT, Buea, has awarded its first-ever Masters’s degree in Business Administration, MBA, with 11 out of the 12 students scoring “excellent” in their defences.
The students obtained the certification after a defence session on Saturday, March 12, which marked the end of their two-year course at the institution.
The 12 MBA pioneers came from the Departments of Human Resource Management, Management, Marketing and Accounting and Finance.
Prof. Andrew Vukengkeng, the Deputy Director of Higher School of Commerce and Management in Bamenda, who was part of the defence panel, said: “The Defence was a very interesting exercise and the students wrote on a variety of topics, which were very contemporary, and the students were very enthusiastic in the way they interacted with the jury members.”
From their performances, he remarked that “all the students had excellent grades and only one student scored very good.”
He added that the students and administration prepared well, urging the students to correct errors identified in their works for final submission.
Julie Brat Enongene, who defended: “The Effect of E-banking on Customer Satisfaction in the Banking Sector in Cameroon,” said the research aimed to solve some problems plaguing the banking sector in the country.
“My research was to find out why, despite the measures put in place like electronic banking, ATM…, customers still queue in banks. We are struggling to find out why this queue … so that, customers should not be coming to banks, to resent from the traditional way of banking into a digital way on banking,” she said.
Elvis Naseli Basemango, one of the new MBA holders, was awarded an excellent grade after his presentation on “The Effects of Credit Management on Financial Performance”.
He said the topic was motivated by the fact some microfinance institutions approve loans without using some indicators like customer capacity and collateral management and other indicators properly and this increases the level of loan delinquency, which has become common in Cameroon.
“This is most common in our country as they mostly focus on customer capacity. They need to access the income and the job stability of the customers before they approve a loan,” he said.
According to Emeritus Professor, Ibrahim Kashim Tala, Rector of HIBMAT, the defence of this first batch in MBA is a milestone for the institution.
“We are very happy that this first batch has not let us down and they have performed very well,” he said.
He urged the laureates to “go out and apply that knowledge they acquired here in the field and they should be our ambassadors”.
The Higher Institute of Business Management and Technology, HIBMAT, is affiliated to the University of Bamenda.