An economic operator, the CEO of the Integrated Farming Group, IFG, and the Director General of the Farmers House, Mile 3, Nkwen in Bamenda, Peter Ngufor, has disclosed that his sole reason for declaring for the Cameroon Peoples’ Democratic Movement, CPDM party, some 10 years ago, was to liberate Northwest from the fangs of the opposition and cleanse the stigma that the Northwest was the bastion of the Social Democratic Front, SDF, party.

Speaking during a press conference in Bamenda on September 26 in his office, Peter Ngufor said, in doing all of these, he wasn’t expecting to be appointed or elected to any post.

“Before President Paul Biya, who doubles as the National Chairman of the CPDM party came to Bamenda, for the 50th Anniversary of the Armed Forces in 2010, it was wild talk everywhere that the whole of Northwest was an opposition bastion. Going back a little, we convened several meetings here in my office with key elite like; late Christopher Nsahlai, Dr. Ngwafor, Zacheus Fornjindam, Patrick Akwa Kum and myself, on how to handle the President’s visit.

As you know, it has been close to 20 years that he had not visited Bamenda. But before then, ahead of the 2007 Legislative and Municipal elections, the CPDM party was quaking and being afraid of loosing the lone Parliamentary seat, that of late Hon. Fon Doh Gah Gwanyim of Balikumbat. I suggested that the idea of CPDM always imposing candidates is what has been preventing the party from wining elections.

The idea was bought by the “think tank of five” that we organised. That is how we won nine Parliamentary seats for the first time in several years. After this election, few of the MPs came to me to say; Papa, thank you. I told them to go back, reconcile and thank the people. I can venture to reveal this to you because the elections came and passed, years after”.

The CEO of Farmers House regretted that, instead of progressing, the CPDM lost one seat to the SDF during the 2013 twin elections. That notwithstanding, “I am a proud man today that we had a dream of winning five seats, but ended up winning nine seats in Parliament, and have continued with the wining spree right to Council elections.

The strategy of not imposing candidates gave us the win, because the masses selected their candidates and voted them into these offices. In most places, it was not the idea of voting parties, but personalities. So, the right candidates who were popular won,” Ngufor remarked.

Talking about the preparation geared towards welcoming President Biya during the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Armed Forces, Ngufor said he organised top meetings at his late wife’s restaurant with Hon. Achidi Achu and others to press on Biya to honour the Northwest with a civilian reception.

Because, it would appear that Biya was to finish with the celebrations of the Armed Forces at the Bamenda Airport and take off for Yaounde same day. This pressure paid-off and President Biya accepted to be given a civic reception at the Bamenda Grandstand where he declared the creation of the University of Bamenda, UBa, the development of Menchum Fall, the commencement of work on the Ring Road , the Referral Hospital and more.

“When I sit and watch university students marched past the grandstand every time I have the opportunity to be there, I clap extra because we fought for this. The massive turnout proved those who used to trade the Northwest for their personal gains were wrong.

The Head of State discovered that those who used to tell him those lies were ashamed. During his additional days here, the Head of State received and embraced the SDF National Chairman, John Fru Ndi, to prove to those who were painting a very bad picture of this man and the Region, wrong.

These were people who were buying and selling the Northwest Region. To me, Biya and Fru Ndi are politicians who are working for the good of this country. If the CPDM is at the centre of events today in Cameroon, who knows what will happen tomorrow, some other political party might take over? So, we must not kill ourselves. We should learn from the British and American democracies. If my idea is bought by most people, it should be praised. I am not blowing my own trumpet, but I think the notion of always referring to us as an opposition bastion has progressively been wiped out. To my mind, President Biya left Bamenda, after his three-day visit, a happy man,” Ngufor averred. Regretting the passing of Nsahlai and the imprisonment of Forjindam, Ngufor says it is his opinion that the heavy hand of the law should have a human face with an eye that can blink. He praised Fornjindam for raising Chantier Naval from nothing to everything, though he ended in jail.

About Integrated Farming Group IFG From conception, the IFG maize transformation industry was created some 13 years ago to help the unemployed graduates or jobseekers and ultilise the resources, like maize which is a stable foodstuff and raw material for breweries.

An agro-industry and as a development project, Ngufor explained, the IFG was installed and the factory at Mile 6 Nkwen and opened farms in Ntem Valley in Mbaw Plains, as well as obtained loans, all in a bid to transform maize, but after two years, the company was bugged down and could not produce 20 tons of maize that was needed by the brewing companies.

When the Ministry of Regional Development, MINEPAT, created a body known as AGROPOLE to sign partnerships with industries in Cameroon, Ngufor went in body-and-soul.

“This AGROPOLE under MINEPAT promised to subsidise IFG with FCFA 640 million and we signed this convention in 2012 with the Minister. I thought heaven has come to rescue jobless Cameroonians.

But up till today, nothing is being mentioned anywhere and what baffles me is that there are representatives of MINEPAT and MINAGRI and when they pass around, they pretend not to know what is happening. It is shocking that they have the wrong notion that IFG belongs to Ngufor. It is not Ngufor’s headache. No, it’s our headache.”

According to Ngufor, the company belongs to the Northwest, first, and Cameroons, as a whole. “If it were Ngufor and family, we could not have been talking about it here. There are authorities that have visited IFG and seen the factory machines still quite new, they have never been used and if we (IFG) are not qualified, who else? Resources are there and are squandered for what does not make sense”

Ngufor, however, expressed the wish to see the Government act fast and help rescue IFG as they have “massively intervened in the cases of the Upper Nun Valley Development Authority UNVDA, Ndop rice factory, MIDENO, GP-DERUDEP and now Livestock Project known as LIFEDED. To Ngufor, the solution to IFG is with Biya’s lieutenants not Biya himself.

Ngufor recalled a bitter experience during the recent celebrations marking the World Population Day in Bamenda, when a young man who was promised FCFA 20 million as loan from PACA , was given less that amount, about FCFA 8 million.

At the grandstand, he was offered a tractor and other farm tools which were not what he needed. What he needed was maize dryer and a processor for storage. This, to Ngufor, was a poisonous gift because, in agriculture, you should not be underfinanced, because you will fall back at minus zero position.

According to Ngufor, it is wrong for civil servants to think everybody in the private sector is a crook when money is concerned. “We are being under rated and it is not everybody who should be regrouped under this canopy of those who could not handle cash.

We have proven at the Farmers House where I am at the head that we can handle money better than these civil servants. Look at the successes of the Farmers House when and wherever I go, I find farmers rushing to give me what they have harvested from the highly improved or hybrid maize seeds we have been able to produce and market beyond Cameroon. That is a thing that gives me satisfaction,” Ngufor stated.

He said Cameroon cannot boast of food self sufficiency because most people in right places are doing wrong things. “Agriculture to us in Cameroon is to hold very long seminars in hotels. No, that is not agriculture, we are supposed to be in the field not in seminars, jumping from one workshop to the next,” Ngufor lamented.

As concerns mechanised or second generation agriculture, Ngufor is of the opinion that the Government should fulfil the promises she made in Ebolowa of creating an Agricultural Bank to save farmers or those engaging in agriculture from suffocating under very high interest rates from commercial banks or credit unions.

While recalling that some time ago, Government went all out to sell bonds so as to pump money into agriculture, Ngufor says, up till date, there is no trace anywhere that the billions envisaged have gone to the agricultural sector.

“Let them tell me one project that has been sponsored or subsidised? Here, at IFG, we still have brand new industrial transformation machines, manpower and, what have you, wasting. Let Government do something so that we can emerge before 2035 as President Biya wishes,” Ngufor appealed.