The Ministry of Justice has released the results of the written exam into the Cameroon Bar, with 2,145 candidates declared successful out of 5,321 who sat in for the exam.
The test, written on April 13, was the first since 2014.
The successful candidates, who have now qualified as advocates-in-training, will further undergo an oral test starting June 4 at the National Advanced School of Magistracy (ENAM) in Yaounde, the Minister of Justice, Laurent Esso, stated in a document announcing the results.
The results of the oral test will determine the final number of pupil lawyers who will be admitted to the bar.
The exams were written on April 13 in Yaounde under the supervision of the Cameroon Bar Association and the Ministry of Justice.
However, candidates decried writing the exams under poor and strenuous conditions, with rainwater dripping into some exam halls and the exam extending up to 3 am.
In an interview with Cameroon Tribune after the exam was written, the Bar Council President, Battonnier Mbah Eric Mbah, acknowledged the challenges recorded but said they were well managed.
“Many things happened. But we overcame and the exams took place void of fraud,” he said.
“It is true that one of the examination halls had leakage problems, but the water was drained before the start of the session. No candidate should say that he or she wrote the exams while sitting on water. Water did not affect candidates who were writing the exams. Again, the issue of writing late into the night is not new. In 2003 when we wrote in our time, there were less than 1,000 candidates, but we finished at about 1:30 a.m. In 2014, the exams ended at about 3:00 a.m. This time around, we had around 5,321 candidates,” he added.
Although the law obliges the Minister of Justice to organize the Cameroon Bar exams every year, the examinations suffered a nine-year delay, with the Ministry advancing no reason for that.
Without this test, law graduates could not be admitted into the Bar.
The result was that Cameroonians aspiring to become lawyers had to study and graduate from foreign law schools, including those in Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, France, the USA, and The Gambia before they could be admitted into the Cameroon Bar.
