Prime Minister Perry G. Christie said his Government intends to enact appropriate legislation to establish the University of The Bahamas as soon as the strategic planning is complete.
“I expect to be informed of the status of our march forward in the very short term,” Prime Minister Christie said in his commencement address at the graduation exercises at Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville, Jamaica, on Sunday, August 13. The Prime Minister said it is important to realize that the Caribbean region and its peoples were stamped with an “expiry date” that predates their birth.
“The Caribbean and any country you can name in the area or on its circumference, have been viewed for more than five centuries as places of extraction, not as candidates for serious development.
“They said we couldn’t govern ourselves or support stable governments. We have done so. They said that we could not build stable economies. Yet, despite the best efforts of the metropolitan lands to disrupt or at the very lease subjugate, we persist with our dignity intact.
“The notion of independent, respected tertiary institutions in the Caribbean region, built by our hands, managed sustainably by us, was thought to be a contradiction in terms,” the Prime Minister said.
He said the Northern Caribbean University, which started as a an orphan child to be relegated to the dust heap like Cinderella, is evidence of the strength and persistence and burgeoning growth of Seventh-Day Adventist witness in the Caribbean.
He said the university has fashioned men and women like president of The Bahamas Conference pastor Leonard Johnson and former president the late pastor Keith Albury, Dr. Althea Moncur McMillan, the first Provost of the university and his high school classmate; Dr. Kevin Moss, physician, Theresa Edwards, attorney; Desmond Edwards, attorney; and the late cultural icon Kayla Lockhart-Edwards.
“These are people who give the lie to today’s dictum that you cannot be moral and govern successfully, that you cannot find financial solvency with being rapacious,” Prime Minister Christie said. He said the university also gives the lie to the skepticism regarding the region’s ability to construct institutions of worth and endurance.
“You are now within shooting distance of your 100th anniversary. I would say that in itself constitutes longevity,” he said.
The Prime Minister said the university has grown in capacity and quality to the point where it awarded its first doctorates in 2005.
“I would say that there is plenty to indicate worth in this and any of your long list of achievements, which include your own television and radio facilities,” he said.
The Prime Minister also accepted “with an extraordinary degree of pride” the enrolment of a 12-year-old Bahamian as the youngest student at the university.
“If the pioneers of this university had surrendered to mediocrity or to the view that they could not, then we would not be here today. So I am proud of the 12-year-old who will be a freshman theology major in September,” Prime Minister Christie said.
The Prime Minister noted that the College of The Bahamas has also had to fight the same negativism for the past three decades and yet forges ahead.
“Despite the obstacles, we are preparing students who are in demand as researchers in the most rigorous of first world institutions. Our alumni can be found, as are yours, in leadership positions across every economic sector of The Bahamas.
“Moreover, it is the studied intention of The Bahamas Government to enact the appropriate legislation to establish the University of The Bahamas, as soon as the strategic planning is complete,” Prime Minister Christie said.
He said that despite the sometimes overwhelming challenges, the Caribbean has done well in its institutions of higher learning, but its story is still pretty much at the dawn.
The Prime Minister said the answer to the question of the moment ﾖ where do we go from here and the new day and the new age roll in ﾖ is that the region must have recourse to the question of resource management which, in turn, lies in brotherhood and mutually respectful cooperation and partnership.
