Donga Mantung: SDO, MP Condemned for Illegal Use of Police Escort

(NewsWatch Cameroon)-A memorial service observed in memory of the late veteran politician and statesman from the Donga Mantung Division, Hon SN Tamfu is now shrouded in controversy following allegations that the second assistant SDO for the division colluded with Awudu Mbya, the SDF MP for Nkambe to grant the latter privileges he was never entitled to.

Given that he could not be present at the memorial service which took place in late Tamfu’s native Taku village on Sunday December 15, 2013, the SDO for Donga Mantung was represented at the memorial service by the second assistant SDO, Nicholas Mashang Nkongho.

However, it subsequently emerged that while in Taku, the second assistant SDO offered the police vehicle with the siren to escort the Member of Parliament for Nkambe, Hon. Awudu Mbaya Cyprian. The MP who was in Taku for the first time since his election on September 30 reportedly used the vehicle with the siren to parade the village in the company of the second assistant SDO - an act most observers have condemned.

Some of these observers say the second assistant SDO had been militating with the SDF parliamentarian even before his reelection into parliament. A CPDM loyalist from Nkambe who spoke to NewsWatch on grounds of anonymity indicated that the second assistant hid the truth of the havoc wreaked by some thugs that the MP hired during the campaign from the SDO who in most cases sent him (the second assistant) to scenes where the hooligans operated.

Upon being contacted, the SDO for Donga Mantung, Mr. Ndode Messape Bernard told NewsWatch that he did not offer any escort to Hon. Awudu Mbaya to Taku. “But if Hon. Awudu was in the same convoy as my assistant, I think the person who was being escorted was the SDO’s representative and not the MP”, Mr Ndode said. The Donga Mantung chief executive explained that if Hon. Awudu was visiting Taku in his capacity as questor at the National assembly, he would have been given an escort.

A source close to the SDF MP has however refuted allegations that the second assistant SDO offered the MP the escort he was given by his boss. The source insisted that “at no instant did the MP and the second assistant SDO sit in the same car in Taku. Hon Awudu was not even in church; he came only for the reception at the deceased’s residence and the MP and the second assistant SDO came separately”.

By press time, efforts at getting the second assistant SDO react had all proven futile.

By Ndi Eugene Ndi in Yaounde