Mr. Dickson Achuo Enah
Research Assistant
Dickson Achuo Enah is a research assistant in the nonproliferation and disarmament program of the African Centre for Science and International Security in Yaounde, Cameroon. He is currently a Ph.D. research student in Animal Biology and Physiology in the University of Yaounde I since December 2015. In the university’s Hydrobiology and Environment Laboratory, his research focuses on analysis of physical, biological and chemical processes of environmental systems with a particular emphasis on the aquatic environment. He holds a Master of Science in Aquatic Entomology from the University of Yaounde I since January 2015.
Significantly, Enah contributed to a study on Lake Nyos (April-May 2014) that released a poisonous gas in 1986 that caused the deaths of at least 1700 people in the northwest area of Cameroon. Chemical, isotopic, geologic, and medical evidence support the hypotheses that (i) the bulk of gas released was carbon dioxide that had been stored in the lake’s hypolimnion, (ii) the victims exposed to the gas cloud died of carbon dioxide asphyxiation, (iii) the carbon dioxide was derived from magmatic sources, and (iv) there was no significant, direct volcanic activity involved. Nearly thirty years later, through the 2014 Study led by Pr. NOLA Moïse, Enah used the Van dorn water sampler and collected Lake Nyos water samples at depths ranging from 1- 230 meters. He then analyzed physical and chemical parameters including CO2 and O2 concentration, temperature, pH, color, turbidity, total dissolved solids. These properties are useful to identify organisms like ciliates, bacteria and viruses expected to recolonize the lake successfully. Based on the result, deductions can be made whether the lake’s environs aree safe for community rehabilitation.
Prior to the 2014 Lake Nyos study, Enah conducted a similar investigation on the sources, types and the effects of human pollution on unprotected city waters. For example, he studied the richness and diversity of blood worms, bioindicators of pollution whose egg masses are natural reservoir of Vibro cholera, in Olezoa stream in Yaounde, a polluted stream flowing through students residential quarters. He conducted a similar study on Lake Obili hat is used for controlled breeding and rearing of fish in Yaounde. The study found that the aquatic pollutants were man-made and mainly human faeces and house waste.
Beside his studies, Enah is passionate about training the next generation of Cameroon scientists. He delivers part time lectures on selected topics in chemistry and biology to secondary and high school students. Since March 2010, he teaches modules in animal and plant physiology, cytology, histology, taxonomy and ecology at Government high school Emana in Yaounde. Concurrently, since 2014, he teaches aspects of waste and water treatment, diseases and hygiene as part of human physiology course at Quality International School in Yaounde.