Irate Fako chiefs storm Y’de to protest minister’s order

Some 20 Fako chiefs spent three days in Yaounde last week moving from one office to another protesting what they described as the misguided and preposterous decision by government to place a ban on the surrender of lands to villages in Fako Division by the CDC.

According to information we gathered, the chiefs came with a memo to present to the Prime Minister Philemon Yang, but the PM refused to grant them audience on Wednesday 6 August 2014.

He rather directed them to go and present their grievances to the Minister of State Property and Land Tenure who issued the circular suspending registration of lands surrendered by the CDC.

The Minister, Catherine Koung A Bessike, received the chiefs very briefly early on Thursday morning. But nothing filtered from the audience, especially as the chiefs preferred to maintain sealed lips after the meeting. All efforts by this reporter to get the chiefs to talk were futile.

However, other sources revealed to us that the chiefs left back to the region in frustration. We learnt that the minister advised them to go back and wait for ongoing investigations into the scandalous land saga to be over.

The minister reminded them that the government has been made to understand that the dimension the land crisis was taking is that which can provoke a breach of the peace, and that the government cannot condone illegality and public disorder.

It is worthy to note that when this reporter on Tuesday and Wednesday last week visited the hotel at Mini-ferme quarters here where most of the chiefs were lodged, the discernibly young and seemingly epicurean traditional rulers were busy enjoying themselves and making the most from the endless pleasures that the notorious and lecherous neighbourhood is known to offer its guests.

Forcing a discussion with some of the chiefs no one of them was willing to expose the objective of their mission to Yaounde. But some however expressed bitterness at the picture that “a certain Banyangi lawyer” has painted and continues painting of them in the press.

They said they would not sit and fold their arms while a stranger in their land drags the chieftaincy institution in Fako in the mud. The chiefs wondered aloud if a Bakweri man can go to Mamfe and castigate the Banyangi chiefs the way “that Banyangi boy” is doing to them.

It should be recalled that the minister of state prosperity and land tenure signed a circular on 18 July 2014 suspending registration of lands surrendered to villages in Fako by the CDC. The minister’s decision was sequel to complaints filed to the prime minister and the National Human Right Commission by Dr. Tambe Tiku, member of ELECAM board and representative of the NHRC in the South West, and Barrister Ngongi Ekomi, secretary general of the Bakweri Land Claims Commission BLCC.

The two lawyers complained to the PM in very vexatious terms about what they considered as the “wanton abuse, misappropriation and mismanagement of lands ceded to Fako villages by the CDC”. They indicted the local chiefs and some local administrators and elite of perpetrating the “inacceptable crime” against the people of Fako Division.

Tambe Tiku and Ngongi Ikomi told the PM that the commission set up by the minister to investigate the matter was not properly constituted and had quickly become inactive. It was even alleged that some interested parties in the scandalous land crisis had bribed some members of the commission to the tune of 80 million fcfa to hide some of their findings.

We also learnt that CONAC has picked up the file and has opened investigations into the matter. Some local administrators (including the governor), chiefs, members of the BLCC, Dr. Tambe Tiku and other stakeholders in the land matter have already been interviewed by CONAC delegates, we learnt.

Meanwhile hearing on a matter pitting some villagers of Bota land village near Limbe, against some persons who bought parts of the 17.5 hectares of land ceded to the village by the CDC, opens at the Limbe court today, Monday, 11 August 2014. We learnt that the South West Governor may also be questioned because he too allegedly bought part of the land and is already developing it.