Refund the FCFA 4 million or face the law - Mayors warned

The Minister of Forestry and Wildlife, Philip Ngole Ngwese, has issued letters to Mayors in Cameroon who collected millions of FCFA for tree-planting and misdirected the money.

In one of such letters addressed to the former Mayor of Tubah, dated May 11, 2015, which The Post procured, Minister Ngole Ngwese ordered the Mayor to pay back the money, because, the money belongs to the State and must be accounted for.

In the opening lines of the letter Ngole Ngwese writes: “The Lord Mayor Tubah Council, your Council received the sum of FCFA 4 million for the Tree Planting Programme on September 26, 2013, in order to plant 4,000 trees in your Council area. Up to this day, however, nothing shows that those trees were effectively planted to justify receipt of the money. While reminding you that the money in question is State funds, I have the honour to invite you to carry out that activity no later than the second quarter of the current fiscal year. In the absence of which, I will be obliged to revert to lawful measures to assert the rights of the State.”

Documents attached to the letter show that the former Mayor of Tubah, Stanislaus Sofa Meji, who is awaiting trial at Bamenda Central Prison on charges of corruption and the embezzlement of public funds, signed out the money on behalf of the Tubah Council, when he was still in office.

Details in the contract form carry former Mayor Stanislaus Sofa’s address, email and telephone numbers.

When contacted, the current Mayor of Tubah, Martin Tanjong Mushongong, said it is only his predecessor who can tell when and where he planted the trees or where he kept the money.

Tubah Subdivision, with a population of over 120,000 people, is suffocating on the surface area of 450m2 without enough portable water because water catchments and streams have all dried-up, due to climate change, compounded with non-planting of environmentally- friendly trees.