North West Ranking of State Projects Execution; Momo Division Comfortable with its Repeated Last Position?

MINEPAT Momo Divisional Building 

Momo division has seemingly been comfortably maintaing its first from the bottom  position when it comes to the divisional ranking of the level of execution of projects funded from the public investment budget in the North West region. 

For close to three consecutive years now, there has always been the call at divisional follow up meetings for the level of physical and financial execution of Public Investment Budget projects to be improved upon at all cost by vote holders and contractors but ironically, in reality, each time the next quarterly meeting holds, often it's reported that little or nothing concretely has changed.

Year in year out, most contractors and project owners have continued to complain of insecurity as reason why they can't do the task expected of them well but ironically, in other more risky divisions of the region, relatively positive progress is being made in terms of realising such projects. Ironically again, cases of money being paid from the state coffers and collected by dubious contractors for abandoned or uncompleted and unstarted projects have continued to be reported. 

When these committee members met on Wednesday the 10th of January  2023 in the conference hall of the Momo Divisional Delegation of the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development (MINEPAT) for the 4th quarterly evaluation of PIB projects, it was like singing thesame old song. As usual and has been the case always, only the mayor of Mbengwi Council, Ndangsa Kennedy Akam has been physically answering present at such meetings. Those of Andek, Batibo, Widikum despite always being absent didn't even bother to send at least a representative like deputy mayor or Council Development Officer but for Njikwa that was represented at the meeting. 

When the mayor of Mbengwi took to the floor to report about his municipality, he regretted that only three projects came from the decentralised funds from Yaounde this year worth 108 million Francs for the grading of Sam Tabeng  to Bali road, rehabilitation of the stretch Checkpoint to Africa Petroleum station through Pa Kwati junction with pavement bricks, a project that was awarded during the mandate of his predecessor to the tune of 65 million but was never executed. He added that the Ministry of Public Works (MINTP) has sent 65 million this time around far above the 25 million that used to be sent for road works and that the money will be used for the construction of a bridge  linking Njindom to Mbemi.

The representative of the Njikwa council on his part said as usual, nothing much has changed in their municipality except that the projects that hadn't been started are in progress now like solar electrification at Ikweri Health Centre, construction of two classrooms at Government School Njumukod and others. He added that the Njikwa-Bassa road is now better as bikes can at least ride on it after some rehabilitation works were done. 

Having listened to the reports, the Momo Divisional delegate of MINEPAT cautioned that her collaborators need to be careful because the Anti Corruption Commission (CONAC) has warned that it's been noticed most contractors and mayor's plus other stakeholders in the region are taking advantage of the crisis to give fake project execution levels especially as most control team members now avoid going for inspection in most areas said to be unsafe.

Speaking at the tail end of the meeting, the Chief of Service for General Affairs at the Momo Senior Divisional Officer's office, Ankene Mary Adah said "The S.D.O for Momo Division, Mr. Fouda Etaba Benoit Nicaise expressed disappointment with the very low rate of project execution for Momo Division in 2023... Projects executed with these funds should be sustainable and concrete, instead of opening many new roads, they should build more bridges and culverts for example. If other councils in the North West region could attain 100% by October 2023, it means that if the mayors and other stakeholders put in place new strategies, our own Momo Division can also reach this target."

With the recent clichéd call to order, the question on many lips now is, will anything really change? Interestingly, the mandate of these mayor's is gradually coming to and end and they may want to start feeding their chicks on the market day but as usual, someone will likely emerge from somewhere to tell them "sorry, too late Hewett" and that's how they'll  lose their mayoral positions except they seat up now and do the right thing within the shortest possible time left.