Daniel Moukondo is a square peg in a square hole- Fako Senior DO

Moukondo Daniel Ngande is already a year old into his five-year mandate at the helm of the Tiko Council, after his election as Mayor on October 16, 2013.

During a ceremony to commission him into office on Saturday, November 23 at the Tiko grandstand, Fako Senior Divisional Officer, Zang III described the new Tiko mayor, Moukondo Daniel Ngande as a square peg in a square hole.

Popular acclamation given the new Tiko mayor a year on only confirms that he is indeed a real square peg in a square hole like the SDO had said.

Bouncing back strong after eleven years in the political wilderness, Moukondo Daniel Ngande was certainly aware of the stakes of the office and was prepared to meet up with the great expectations of the people.

Zang III told Moukondo to immediately get to work and develop Tiko when he said “…You have to tackle challenges like the fight against urban disorder & uncivil behaviours, fight the illegal sale of council land, reorganise council staff, ensure the removal of abandoned vehicles around Tiko Town, ensure effective implementation of the council budget and above all mobilise resources through local taxes to finance investment projects. You have to provide social amenities to the people.”

Moukondo indeed was aware of the challenges. He said the following in a chat with The SUN a year ago: “We are going to prioritise the needs of the Tiko people and we will attend to these needs gradually. We shall meet up with our obligations,” he quipped.

“… The work culture had been dead in the council. The first thing will be to fine-tune the staff situation in the council, to make them to be more work conscious. You may have all the money, but if you don’t have the personnel to manage the resources, you will never succeed,” the mayor said.

“From there, if you look at Tiko critically,” he continued, “the main issue is that of roads. All the roads in the municipality are bad. We will start tackling the problem of roads, then move to health, the schools, social situation and other things. I think the most pressing issues are the roads.”

Also, some members of the CPDM in Tiko had said it will be an abomination for an ‘SDF’ Mayor to welcome President Paul Biya at the Tiko Airport during his visit to preside at celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of Cameroon’s reunification.

Moukondo did his all immediately he assumed office to mobilise and set the stage for the Presidential visit, a goal he achieved.

Quietly but steadily, Moukondo is assuming the mantle of a transformational leader who knows where he is coming from, where he is and where he is going to.

One year into a popular mandate entrusted to him and the other 40 councillors, Tiko, a town seemingly abandoned in the doldrums of underdevelopment, is gradually seeing the change promised at the eve of elections last September 30, 2013.

The doubters and cynics are already revising their prejudices as they initially thought Moukondo and his team will fall short of expectations – prophets of doom had no friendly prayers for the mayor and his état major. In fact, many are those who did all to kick out the SDF list, but they failed.

Tiko has a history and a past before Moukondo, no doubt, but what he is successfully doing is consolidating and expanding the horizons of the municipality to meet its growing stature. After all, he is only continuing from where he stopped when he left the council in 2002.

As the mayor himself puts it, the council has grown in size, reason why he has transformed the town into a vast construction site. “We want to clean Tiko, we want to develop Tiko. This is what we shall be able to leave behind when we leave the council.”

Before we get pelleted by stones of disapproval from those who don’t see anything good in Moukondo’s first one year in office, and whom destiny seems to have thrust on the municipality, let us straight away say that it is not a 100% scorecard judgement that we are passing because there is still a lot to be done and a lot to be better managed. Only the passage of time will afford us the opportunity of making a more elaborate appraisal.

But because the expectations and the negativism at the onset of Moukondo’s mandate, especially because the former administration of the council is thought to have failed, were so low and high, a rundown of what Moukondo and his team have been able to realise is a telling and poignant reminder of the levels to which one can be propelled through self-believe and determination to achieve.

Be it in the domain of health, hygiene and sanitation, education, infrastructure, social and economic advancement of the town, Moukondo spoke with the sparkle of a tried and tested politician, a charismatic leader. We went to Tiko in an attempt to appraise first-hand what has (not) changed in Tiko a year on.

Moukondo tells The SUN his vision is to “transform Tiko into a chantier ‘listing projects like grading of streets in Mutengene, beautifying the Likomba roundabout, creating space for bread women in Mutengene, building of culverts and electrification of council premises among others.”

In Moukondo’s own words, a year on, “It’s been one year of direct dealings with the people, one year of constraints. All that notwithstanding, it’s been one year of collaboration, one year of team work with all the stakeholders that make up this municipality. I think if you should carry out a vox pop out there for the people, they will rate us 80% of the work that we have done in this very short time in office and that makes us feel proud and makes us believe we took the right step.”

Moukondo took up office at a time when the South West was expecting to receive the Head of State; all preparations were geared towards the visit. “You know we received the Head of State here in the municipality, cleaned our town, did our major roads, built culverts everywhere, gave support to schools, supported the vaccination campaigns that took place here, awarded scholarships to some children, gave benches to some schools. We have even started doing the most dreaded Mudeka-Mongo road which is one of the worst in the municipality and the putting in place of a comfortable area for the bread vendors in Mutengene.

The motor park project is in progress, the Tiko market receiving finishing touches with electricity connections on going, the gates, few days from now, the market will be opened, there are a lot more,” Moukondo says.

In a bid to assess Mayor Moukondo’s works one year on, we look at some of the prominent projects he has realized with the internal funds of the council and such projects include the electrification of the council, construction of culverts in Likomba and Mutengene, rehabilitation and decoration of Likomba roundabout.

Also the reinforcement of culverts and grading of earth road from Koel Primary School To Fobetec Clinic road junction, the maintenance of some major roads within the municipality, which all stand at a 100% completion.

Other completed projects of the council include bulldozing of the dumping site at Big Ikange to improve on the hygienic and sanitary condition of the municipality.

Beside the above projects already realized, there are those under the second category of projects which fall out of the council internal funds, these are projects funded by the Public Investment Budget and other funding bodies.

Amongst such projects are the constructions of a nursery block for Government Nursery School and a block of two classrooms at Government School all of Holforth layout, construction of zoo-technique and veterinary center in Mutengene as well as the construction of lock up shops and shades at Missellele Market to replace the dilapidated wooden shades present at the site (a PNDP funded project) and construction of the Mutengene ‘Big-Mop’ market.

There are some on-going projects of the council amongst which are the building of hangers for bread women in Mutengene, construction of the Tiko motor park at a strategic point along the Tiko-Douala road.

It is worth mentioning that the park has a section of 16 stores, syndicate office section for transport agencies, another section of offices to host various travelling agencies that will be transported permanently from Mutengene to the site upon completion.

Still as an on-going project is the construction of Tiko Main market as a BOT project (Build, Operate and Transfer) with 84 BOT stores and some 162 lockup shops and 32 hangars from FEICOM.

The Tiko Market had witnessed a fire incident in 2010 after which the government came in with assistance through FEICOM to construct a new market. It is expected that the Tiko Main Market will go fully operational in a not too distant future.

Time to go operational as soon as gates are hung and electricity connected are all over as the workers work around the clock to satisfy this business need of the people. The market is one of the highest revenue generating tool of the council besides the wharf and other benefits of the Tiko sub division. Same goes for the Tiko motor park, the stores for the Mutengene bread women.

Next four years… 4 years will not be the same because this first year much time was spent on seeing how to put the council in order, when we came here we met workers in different camps, some working and putting money in their private pockets, the workers were not duty conscious and it took us some time to put us all under one roof. However the cinquantenaire was before us and we were key players for the event to succeed so all these things by next year will not be there it will give us more time to work and with our projects that we put in for funding through the Feicom-Medium Cities Decentralization Program. I think if those two projects on water supply and sand exploitation are sustained, it will go a long way to change the lives of the Tiko municipality.

Message to populace The message to the people is that this team has come to work without personal interest for the people of Tiko we are servants to them and will continue to remain servants. So when we deliberate in council sessions and come out with decisions they should be part of the people who will help us to enforce those decisions and I call on all other political parties with whom we were involved in elections that the time of electioneering has come and gone, this is the time to build our municipality, anybody with the interest at heart to develop our municipality, our doors are open, together we can think better and make Tiko better.

To inhabitants of street 1-7 of Tiko with 2 years injunction to transform their plank structures into permanent block structures they should be reminded by this medium that the campaign is still on and those with plank structures along the road should endeavor to change them to permanent, the end result will be that our town will look more beautiful. And those who have containers along the road we are calling on them to remove those containers by the road because the bottom line is by the end of this mandate we don’t want to see dirty structures along the road again in Tiko subdivision. Let all of us together change our town so that when someone travels out and comes back, he or she should see a different Tiko not the usual Tiko we come and meet year in year out.