Cameroon-Tubah SDF mayor under death threats for launching forceful tax recovery

Tanjong Martin, SDF mayor for Tubah in Mezam division, has come under death threats for
launching a forceful tax recovery in his municipality.The Guardian Post daily reported Friday July 21  that the sad development is unfolding barely days after a tax recovery team he sent out clashed with  irate traders in Bambili.
Sources say besides refusing to pay their taxes, most of the traders attacked and heaped insults on the council tax collectors that were accompanied by law enforcement officials. Reports say matters came to a head when one of the traders brutally attacked the council tax collectors.
In response, police officers on the tax recovery mission arrested the trader. It was shortly after the arrest of the trader that the SDF mayor for Tubah, Tanjong Martin began receiving death threats from individuals believed to be fueling the Anglophone crisis. One of such death threats, a copy of which The Guardian Post stumbled on reads: “Three bullets will be put into your head and your entire family any time from now. We have already paid the snipers for the job to be done on you and your entire family…”
Reacting to the threats, the mayor questioned what crime he committed by asking traders to pay their taxes. He said his municipality badly needs money to pay students on holiday jobs at the Tubah council, clean the municipality as well as attend to other pressing development projects for the interest of the municipality. Mayor Tanjong who said he said he was doing only his job as the landlord of the Tubah municipality insisted that there can be no development without the payment of taxes by businessmen.
It should be recalled that ever since taking over the Tubah municipality in 2013, the award-winning Mayor Tanjong Martin has been hailed, even by his detractors and those who initially opposed his election as God-sent. Even his peers within and without the SDF have been unanimous in hailing his transparency, level-headedness in council management and the landmark projects that have transformed Tubah into an Eldorado. Councillors, staff and users of thes ervices of the Tubah council say Mayor Tanjong since taking over the management of the council has demystified the ‘power’ that go with such a high office.

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His deputies have reportedly confessed that it is only with the coming of the dynamic and charismatic Mayor Tanjong that they have understood what it means to be deputy mayors. They have cited his never-seen collaboration, transparency in the management of council funds, humility, hard work and above all the sharing of functions between him and his deputies. Several infrastructural developments have seen the light of day in Tubah since the coming of Mayor Tanjong.
Several kilometers of roads have been graded and opened up in areas that were inaccessible, portable water provided to communities that used to fetch water from the same streams with animals, classrooms built and offered to schools, benches bought and distributed to schools as well as donations to community projects in the Tubah council area. Sources say there is no single quarter or village in the entire Tubah sub division that has not benefited from the indiscriminate generosity of Mayor Tanjong.
The mayor has rendered the Tubah municipality clean, thanks to two trucks that he acquired. He is also reported to have played a key role in making sure that the University of Bamenda hosted the 2017 University Games with all the gains that came with it to Tubah. Throughout the Games, he kept the environment and the play grounds sparkling. Besides permanently harassing authorities in Yaounde to offer development projects to the Tubah municipality, Mayor Tanjong has also twinned the SDF-run council with many foreign councils. Surprisingly, those who have mounted rooftops to sing Mayor Tanjong’s praises and styled him as God-sent are the same people who for selfish intentions in 2013 opposed his election as mayor.

Source: Journal du Cameroon