Cameroon: “Mayor Ekema Patrick Remains My Son” – Sacked Buea Councillor, Chief Njie Mandenge Tells The Post

Par Atia T. AZOHNWI | Cameroon-Info.Net
BUEA - 22-Jul-2019 - 13h00   5088                      
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Chief Njie Mandenge Facebook
Njie Mandenge a.k.a. ‘Lisengi’, Chief of Wonjia village, Lysoka, Buea one of the two councillors said to have been dismissed by Buea Councillors in a session last July 17, 2019 has told The Post that the Mayor of Buea,  Ekema Patrick Esunge remains his son, despite all what has happened.

Elected as councillor of the Buea Council on September 30, 2013 under the ticket of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, Njie Mandenge says his dismissal is a nullity, insisting that he considers himself a councillor of the Buea Council until February 29, 2020 when their mandate ends.

“All what happened at the Buea Council on Wednesday, July 17, has no legal backing. It is null and void. I remain a CPDM Councillor of the Buea Council till 2020,” The Post quotes Chief Mandenge as saying.

Mandenge’s own “crime” was that he championed the chiefs’ boycott of National Day celebrations in Buea despite Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai’s call for chiefs in the area to massively participate in the unity feast along with their subjects. Mandenge was thus indicted for carrying out anti-patriotic activities that are at variance with the goals and aspirations of the CPDM-run Buea Council.

Chief Mandenge told The Post that because of the “current war in the Anglophone Regions”, he had to leave the South West Region. “Unfortunately, I have been out of the Region for over a year today because of the present social disturbances. I am living out of the Southwest Region and there was no way I could have attended the sessions,” he said.

Chief Mandenge alleged that the same Ekema Patrick Esunge he helped into the CPDM is the same one who masterminded his sacking. “I call it an unfortunate incident because it has been masterminded by somebody I, Chief Njie Mandenge, pushed to where he is today…I consider the Buea Mayor as my son because he hasn’t even the age of my first child. He remains my son.”

On where it all went wrong between him (Mandenge) and Ekema, the Chief said things started getting sour in 2015 when Ekema wanted him to side with him in the famous 2015 re-organisation of the basic organs of the CPDM party in Buea.

Chief Mandenge insists that all what transpired on Wednesday, July 17, “is a nonevent because Mayor Ekema does not understand the law.” To him, for a Councillor or Deputy Mayor to be dismissed, the Minister of Decentralisation must visa the act. Besides, he stated that such a decision can only hold during an extra-ordinary session where the issue is the only thing on the agenda.

The Post quotes Mandenge as saying: “All Mayors and Deputies must be sworn in by a law Court before any of them can qualify to act as a Municipal Magistrate with the powers to sign birth certificates or legalise marriages between couples. Which Court is Ekema going to take his newly recruited deputies to, to qualify them as Municipal Magistrates when the Minister has not approved such acts?”

Auteur:
Atia T. AZOHNWI
 @T_B_D
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