(Business in Cameroon) - Alphonse Roger Ondoa Akoa, Managing Director (MD) of Cameroon Water Utilities (Camwater), the national company in the drinking water sector in the country, did not wish to receive anyone on 26 September 2016. This was the instruction given once at his office, after an arduous weekend, which was marked in particular by the Board of the company he has been heading since 8 February 2016 holding an extraordinary meeting.

But, the MD of Camwater, shaken by the administrators a little over 48 hours earlier, had to accommodate Mrs Fortune Kané, General Secretary of the Ministry in charge of the Higher State Audit. She came from Yaoundé during the weekend, we learned, to seize from the MD all his seals and other documents, thus preventing Alphonse Roger Ondoa Akoa from continuing his role as MD of Camwater.

This action by the Higher State Audit confirms the information which went around throughout last weekend in Cameroon, which announced the suspension of the MD of Camwater. The decision, denied until 26 September by the immediate colleagues of Alphonse Roger Ondoa Akoa, supported by a document whose authenticity is now under question, was taken by the Board of this public company while meeting in Yaoundé on 23 September 2016. This session concluded five days of written exchanges with a strong tinge of power struggle between the MD of Camwate and the Chair of the Board of this State company, Jerôme Obi Eta, a former Cameroonian Minister of Civil Engineering.

At the roots of the conflict

Indeed, we learned through Camwater internal correspondence, the relationship between the MD and the Chairman worsened between 19 and 21 September 2016. According to our sources, on 19 September, the MD decided to suspend the Administration and Finance Director, Jean Dieudonné Mah, and the Assets Director, Marc Essomba Bomba, officially due to “misappropriation of public funds”.

Responding to the notification of this decision, which was made by the MD, the Chairman, through a letter dated 21 September 2016, informed Alphonse Roger Ondoa Akoa that such decision, according to “the statutes of Camwater”, “is the responsibility of the Board”. For this reason, one can read in the letter, the MD is invited to “defer”, “with immediate effect”, the suspension of the above-mentioned managers. It was at this juncture that an extraordinary board meeting was called on 23 September in Yaoundé, whose session led to the suspension of the MD of Camwater.

We can however note that these suspensions and other tensions at Camwater are happening when a mission of inspectors from the Higher State Audit (Consupe) is visiting this public company; a mission during which the inspectors are mainly exchanging with the Administration and Finance Director suspended by the MD, but finally reinstated by the Board. At Consupe’s demand, which is now extremely feared by the MDs of State companies, since the launch of this type of Operation Clean Hands labelled “Opération Epervier”; the Admin and Finance Director of Camwater had to provide explanations and documents on the management of this company during the 2008-2012 period. This period corresponds to the stay of Basile Atangana Kouna, current Minister of Energy and Water, as head of this company, whom some present as the mentor of the current MD of Camwater.

Brice R. Mbodiam