ELECAM director spites Fonkam Azu’u, sacks staff

The leadership tussle which has been rocking Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, since its creation is apparently spilling out of hand.

Last month, Sani Tanimou, the Director General of ELECAM decided to sanction some ELECAM divisional and council heads from North West and South West regions who were duly assigned by Board Chairman, Fonkam Azu’u to attend some capacity building seminars on elections within and beyond Cameroon. The sanctioned ELECAM staff were queried, suspended, demoted or dismissed out rightly with part of their salaries curtailed.

Fonkam has expressed concern and disappointment that Tanimou sanctioned the staff without any charges against them and without consulting with him. Fonkam spoke to reporters on Friday, June 5, during a rendezvous to brief the press on the on-going voter registration.

He said they of the electoral board chaired by him, sent some ELECAM staff for capacity building seminars on elections but that on their return the director of the electoral body issued queries and sanctioned them.

Fonkam explained that the sending of the staff for capacity building meetings was within the competence of ELECAM board where he is chairman. He said the capacity building seminars were organized only for Anglophones, reason why only English-speaking ELECAM staff was selected to attend. He said a similar capacity-building seminar for Francophones was still scheduled to take place and French-speaking ELECAM staff would be sent to attend.

The Director General of ELECAM is the sole vote holder of the organization’s finances. He has veto power even over board members’ sitting commissions before they can receive it.

The ELECAM Board Chair also explained that his visit to Bamenda was part of a routine quarterly tour meant to take him to all the seven divisions of the North West region and some of the council branches. He noted that the tour is very important because most Cameroonians are yet to get rid of voter apathy and embrace voter registration and vote to fulfill their civic rights.

He said it is the role of ELECAM officials to ensure that voter registers are updated given that a good number of Cameroonians attend voting age every day while others equally die requiring that their names be expunged from the voters’ registers.

He exhorted Cameroonians not to wait until election period is at the corner before registering otherwise it would be like someone feeding his animals only on market days. He reminded people at the meeting that there’s no time frame for organizing referendums and so the head of state can call for a referendum at any time.

On the statistics of new registration, Fonkam disclosed that North West occupies the first position in the country with a total of 22,821 registered voters in the on-going registration and 18,000 of the 22,821 are between 20 and 35 years.

Consequently, Fonkam said North West is not indiscipline as most people think. He observed that while North West region has emerged the best in the country in terms of the number of registered voters, South region is the last.