Chronic power outages

Nguti youths go on the rampage!
-Ask WIJMA Timber Company to park their machines and quit Nguti
By Eddy Bokuba in Nguti 
Barely months after councilors of the Nguti municipality announced an imminent holding of an ''All Nguti Conference On Electricity”, youths of Nguti town last week took to the streets to protest what they described as the “unbearable darkness” of the typically rural municipality. The irate youths have indicted the WIJMA Timber Company, situated within the locality, for failing to honour its corporate social responsibility commitments to the Nguti community, one of which is the provision of electricity.
    The striking youths blocked the roads leading to the company thus preventing workers and vehicles of the company from getting to the company’s site. The youths even threatened the authorities of the company that they would use the dreaded juju of the Bassossi tribe, ''Esapa'' to bring its wrath to bear on the company and its workers.

        According to the youths the Dutch company is supposed to supply Electricity to Nguti town for the 30 years that they are expected to stay in Nguti.  “But for 11 years that they have been wantonly extracting timber from our forests we have remained in darkness,” remarked one of the youths, who went on that: “They don’t allow us to collect even the firewood that we used to collect from the company; they have now decided to burn the wood and produce charcoal which they export to Gabon.”
    The youths further observed that though the company is based in Nguti, the bulk of its workers are francophones from the West and Centre regions.
    It is for these reasons and other reasons that the youths are urging the company to park their things and leave Nguti.
    The aggrieved youths are also pointing accusing fingers at their elite especially former mayor of Nguti, Ayompe George, and one Napoleon Nyake, a senior staff of the National Cocoa and Coffee Board, for conniving with the company’s authorities to dupe the entire Nguti community. They say Napoleon Nyake and mayor Ayompe George were signatories to the barren contract that was signed between the Nguti community and the Timber company.
        In a chat with Esapa Patrict Enyong, a son of Nguti and president of the South West Farmers Cooperative, SOWEFCU, he said the issue of electricity in Nguti is not a new story. Being a trained technician and electrician, Enyong said he sought for alternative methods for Nguti to be electrified, but his efforts ended in vain, due to lack of financing.
    He is however suggesting that the best way to solve the problem could be to increase the capacity of the dam that generates electricity for the St John Hospital, so that it could also light up the entire municipality and its environs. 
    Enyong explained that when WIJMA came some 11 years ago in Nguti, they had an agreement with the late Nzo Ekah Nghaki who charged them to pay a token of 5 fcfa per month as rents. He said though the amount was later raised to 50,000 fcfa per month, it was not done with the requisite consent of the late Nzo Ekah Ngahki who owned the land.
    He has therefore urged the youth to stop calling the name of Napoleon Nyake who is only a caretaker of the property of the late Nzo Ekah Nghaki.
    Enyong argues that WIJMA is more of a blessing than a curse not only to Nguti but the entire Kupe-Muanenguba and Meme Divisions. He recalled that when the Company just started operations many years ago and was quite buoyant, they rehabilitated municipal roads, provided firewood for the entire community and maintained portions of the Kumba-Nguti-Mamfe road. Besides these, he added that grace to the coming of WIJMA many Nguti sons have built their personal houses, while many others were able to get married.
    Enyong is therefore urging the youths to be patient, saying that Nguti would soon have lights.