Embezzlement:

Mezam SDO blocks investigation on SDF mayor 

From Michael Ndi in Bamenda

The SDO for Mezam, Nguéle Nguéle Felix has out-rightly suspended a Tubah council commission of inquiry that was probing the management of some 26MFCFA by the council’s former mayor, Stanislaus Sofa. Nguéle annulled the commission last Friday during a stormy evaluation meeting of the SDF-run council.

Going by the senior civil administrator, the inquiry commission was suspended because he deemed it not well constituted. However, most Tubah councilors have received the unprecedented suspension in bad fate, suspecting that something unusual might have transpired between the supervisory authority and the former mayor.

According to the first deputy mayor of Tubah, Wechui Barnabas, the erstwhile mayor in an attempt to render his stewardship account while at the helm of the council, surprised the councillors when he disclosed that he spent a whopping sum of 26MFCFA to transfer council property from the temporary council chambers to the newly constructed structure less than1000 meters apart.

“What were transferred are only some files and few items because the cupboards and most furniture we have in the new chambers were constructed in here,” the deputy mayor stressed.

 He wondered how 26MFCFA could have been used to transfer the items which could well cost less than 5000FCFA.  However, the first deputy mayor advanced that “administration will come and go but Tubah will remain”.

On other issues which preoccupied the local representatives, councillors frowned at the deviant dressing pattern which is skyrocketing in Tubah municipality stemming from University girls and other students of higher institutes. The councillors then pleaded with the Mezam administration to ensure decency among youths which the ministers of social affairs, women empowerment and communication stressed a year ago.

They equally called on the administration to work in collaboration with traditional authorities to institute vigilante groups in all the four villages of Tubah, given that the approaching Christmas period is coming along with a rise in banditry the sub-division.

Also, the councillors expressed concerns that some tourists from Czechoslovakia Republic residing at Big Babanki village in Tubah sub-division were operating illegally.

A forester disclosed that he accosted them in collaboration with the commissioner of special branch and the tourist said they were following up some endemic birds in the area. “Later when we visited the area, we discovered that they had set up a nursery for reforestation and were running a basic education institution in the area”.

An official of basic education for Tubah immediately confirmed they were not aware of such a school and as such it was illegal. Reacting to this worry, the SDO simply said the tourists at Big Babanki had their required documents to be where they are and so were in order.