Mayors need more scrutiny to curb mismanagement.

Currently trending in the media is the case of eight incumbent mayors and one former, who have been summoned "for a matter of great urgency" to report at the Permanent Secretariat of the Budgetary and Financial Disciplinary Council, CDBF, in the Supreme State Audit Office, known by its French acronym, CONSUPE.

The summons, signed by Minister Delegate Mbah Acha Rose Fomundam on September 17, 2026, leaves little doubt regarding the gravity of the matter, which traditionally concerns allegations of financial impropriety.

The nine are: Dr. Noah Vincent de Paul, Mayor of Okola; Eto Romain Roland, Mayor of Nanga Eboko; Akono Alinga André Rémi, Mayor of Awaé; and Njatou Ngadep Nazaire Brolin, former Mayor of Makénéné. All are municipal leaders from the Centre Region.

From Littoral are Ebwea Pierre Honoré, Mayor of Mouanko; Manfo Songong Jean René, Mayor of Penja; and Manfred Njecacal, Mayor of Dibamba.

South Region has Ipoua Robert Olivier, Mayor of Campo, while West Region has Njoya Inoussa, Mayor of Foumbot.

It is not exactly known why they were summoned. What is without quibble, nonetheless, is that CONSUPE, attached to the Presidency of the Republic to highlight its importance, customarily summons mayors and managers of state resources only when there is a smoking gun in their coffers. 

Wherever the case, the nine remain innocent of any offense until proven guilty.But it brings to the radar, transparency in managing councils given several other questionable cases, especially in the South West and North West Regions where many Mayors have abandoned their offices, yet still claim to exhaust their investment budgets and owing workers several months.

The most severe precedent remains that of the former Mayor of Bafia, Issah Ahmed, who was initially sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2016. He was tried and convicted in absentia by the Special Criminal Court for eight counts of financial mismanagement and embezzling public funds intended for youth employment projects.

He later surfaced, appealed and his sentence was significantly reduced to 10 years in prison, which he served until he gained freedom in March last year.

Last April 19, the Mayor of Konye Council, Barrister Musima George Lobe, alongside the municipal treasurer and store accountant, were taken into custody and transferred to Yaounde.They were reportedly held over allegations of embezzlement and corruption following months of investigation.

The Special Criminal Court, however, ruled that there was no incriminating evidence or solid case against them and they were left off the hook.

Management irregularities and financial misconduct within councils have increasingly drawn scrutiny from national auditing and oversight bodies such as Supreme Court Audit Chamber, the National Anti-Corruption Commission CONAC, South West Public Independent Conciliator and the Supreme State Audit Office, CONSUPE.

They have consistently highlighted structural, budgetary, and administrative flaws across multiple councils such as a mayor buying a vehicle for 50 million FCFA without tender, squandering millions for foreign trips for a white elephant project to build a five-star hotel in a suburban municipality, awarding contracts that are deliberately not paid for, inflated billings et al.

The million-dollar question is who ensures accountability in Councils which have become like milking cows for some Mayors?

Created by a Presidential decree on March 2, 2018, the Ministry of Decentralisation and Local Development, MINDDEVEL, was among its duties charged with designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating the government's decentralisation policy and promoting grassroots local development.

It supervises key national agencies like Special Council Support Fund for Mutual Assistance, FEOCOM, but it is the Ministry of Territorial Administration, MINAT, and its Senior Divisional Officers, SDOs, who supervise councils, with some of them known to be demanding too much to attend council sessions or order councils to pay for services not budgeted for.

The Public Independent Conciliator has a mission to use dialogue, mediation, and conciliation to amicably settle disputes between citizens and regional or council administrations. But there have been cases where the office has been snubbed by some crooked mayors.

Who really has the power to scrutinise mayors and sanction fraudulent ones?

At one point there was a tug of war between the Supreme State Audit Office and the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court to the point that the Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Supreme State Audit, Mbah Acha Rose Fomundam, declared on April 16, 2025, during the official launch of the Budgetary and Financial Discipline Council's annual activities in Yaounde that “CDBF is not dead". 

Under the 2018 law governing the State’s financial regime, this jurisdiction was supposed to shift to the Audit Chamber but the CDBF continues to summon suspects.

The situation smells as if there are “too many cooks spoiling the broth”, giving some councils, especially in the North West and South West Regions, made “risky” by the decade-long simmering crisis, to mismanage community money, while staff go for months without salaries, yet some buy luxury cars without tenders and being globe-trotters on council bill.

The Ministry of Finance has come to the rescue by collecting some taxes on mayors’ behalf; but there still need to be more scrutiny with the Decentralisation Ministry supervising municipal authorities, if decentralisation has to be an “effective” form of state which the CPDM government swears is “non-negotiable”.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3916 of Monday September 19, 2026