Preferential treatment:

DO bans SDF event to make way for CPDM
By Nwo Fuanya in Limbe
Against all expectations the DO for Limbe I, Seraphin Epalle last Saturday November 14 suddenly banned a fundraising meeting that the SDF Limbe I electoral District had planned to raise funds for its Community Centre project.
    The circumstances surrounding the ban took a new twist a day later on Sunday November 15 when the chairman of the Limbe IA CPDM reorganization exercise, Gobina Simon openly congratulated the DO, Seraphin Epalle for the drastic and timely measures he took to ensure that the CPDM voting exercise was not disturbed by other circumstances.
    This led observers concluding that Gobina was thanking the DO for stopping the SDF fundraising a day earlier for fear that it could attract attention and spoil the CPDM elections.
    According to the Limbe I SDF Electoral District Chairman,Ndenge Godden Zama,his party had submitted a request for an authorization to hold the meeting to the DO.He expressed shock that two days to the meeting ,he was called up urgently at the DO’s office and handed the ban letter;with the paradoxical reason that he did not have an authorization that he had earlier asked for.

    Zama said when he confronted the DO on Friday to find out why the meeting had been banned the DO rather told him that it would be possible for him to hold his meeting the next and that he would instruct the forces of law and order not to obstruct the meeting.
    The SDF electoral District Chairman rather expressed shock that on the day of the meeting proper when militants started arriving the venue, police and other law enforcement officers had invaded the party’s secretariat at Cassava Farms threatening fire and brimstone to whoever tired to go ahead with the fundraising. Zama told reporters that when he got to the SDF Secretariat that Saturday afternoon, he was accosted by security officials who had taken up positions around the building. He said they threatened him that any attempt to go ahead with the fund raising meeting would have disastrous consequences.
    However some fearless militants who had already come with their own money still handed it over. Zama said it took extra effort for him and his party militants to be able to cart away the soud system that had been planted at the venue of the event.
    Meantime, SDF militants in Limbe have vowed that they would not tolerate such preferential treatment in future; that if the DO make the same blunder  they will face him squarely.