Financial scandal rocks Mkpot Oil Mill Project!! Manyu Chiefs won’t talk ⁰

Chronic embezzlement, abetting assassinations and intimidations are the currencies of tyrants. Michael Mbi Oruh, the traditional ruler of Mkpot village in Manyu Division has gained prominence in demonstrating that supporting extrajudicial killings, hijacking communal farms and embezzling funds intended to stimulate employment in his village are fundamentally his persona.

Cameroon Concord News is on the verge of completing an 18-month investigation into one of the nastiest and most inhumane killers in Cameroon. Our meticulous investigation, which spans 12 years, covers three continents (Africa, Europe, and North America). Over the coming weeks, this publication will lay bare the vicious criminal empire the so-called Chief Michael Mbi Oruh rules over. Our findings are jaw-dropping, shocking, and profound.

We have uncovered a bandit who used his position as technical adviser in Cameroon’s Ministry of Industries, Mines and Technological Development to apply for and obtain part of four million six hundred and fifty-six thousand forty US dollars (USD 4,656,040) total cost of a project with the title, improving income generating potential of Oil Palm in Nigeria and Cameroon—CFC/FIGOOF/28. The project was jointly facilitated, sponsored and overseen by the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Cameroon Concord News Kingsley Betek uncovered a scheme where Chief Oruh swindled donation money meant for the building of a health centre in a region where the average person lives on less than $1 a day.

In one of our publications in 2020, we raised concern that Chief Michael Mbi Oruh with the aid of Egbe John Besong, Orock Thomas Nchung, and Otang Ivo Enow supported the execution of a series of extrajudicial killings and other crimes against humanity in Mkpot Village.

Our chief correspondent in Mamfe now has ample, authentic and critical audio, text, and other forms of recorded evidence linking Chief Michael Mbi Oruh and his crime syndicate to these gross human rights violations and heinous crimes. The recent revelation is Chief Michael Mbi Oruh’s failed harsh ploy to assassinate Sesekou Dr Mbu Phillip Eno and Sesekou Otang Wilfred Obi aka NseMgbe.

In Nigeria, where Michael Mbi Oruh lived as a young man, he has been told never to come back! And in the USA where he claimed to have undertaken some university education, Manyu citizens have openly questioned his professed academic qualifications and have often painted a picture of a loner with a disturbing mind.

In this first of four articles, we intend to highlight the Mkpot Oil Mill scandal in which Chief Michael Mbi Oruh siphoned and misappropriated CFA Francs 750,000,000 (over one million dollars) grant, as part of the USD 4,656,040, allocated for the construction of an Oil Mill in Mkpot, as a palm oil processing centre intended to accommodate and enhance the production capacity of farmers under Central Ejagham Palm Oil Producers’ Union (CEPOPU). The remainder of the total funds (USD 4,656,040) intended to improve the income-generating potential of the oil palm in West and Central African regions (Cameroon and Nigeria) was allocated to Teze/Ngie, Sombo (Cameroon) and AkwaIbom State (Nigeria).

Cameroon is a major palm oil producer in Central Africa but according to reliable estimates, the country still imports about 60,000 tons annually to meet domestic demand. To address this shortfall, this project that was jointly sponsored by CFC and UNIDO, over a decade ago, was intended to support a sector characterized by obsolete production equipment and little access to technology and financing. The project’s objective was to establish and equip four medium-scale palm oil processing centres in Cameroon and one in Nigeria. The processing capacity of the mills was established to be 2 tons per hour and one of the sites selected for this was Mkpot village in Manyu Division, Southwest Region, Cameroon. This particular project was overseen by Chief Michael Mbi Oruh, the then technical adviser in Cameroon’s Ministry of Industries, Mines and Technological Development and the supposed chief of the village. Chief Michael Mbi Oruh told Voice of America in an interview on the 1st of November 2009 that “the goal of the project was to help the country use palm oil to generate income…” Kingsley Betek says this project was a con from Mbi Oruh who is somehow addicted to fiddles.

In applying for the grant, Michael Mbi Oruh told UNIDO that the money was to train “farmers in new and more efficient ways of processing palm oil and also to buy planting material and equipment.” Astonishingly, the good people at UNIDO provided what he asked for. However, very little happened on the ground in Mkpot village!

Our reporters were shown a dilapidated building, posturing as an Oil Mill, which Michael Mbi Oruh built for less than 5% of the millions he received from CFC and UNIDO.

According to the grant documents seen by Cameroon Concord News reporters, and the CFC 2016 and 2018 Annual Report, the mill in Mkpot had to create over 250 new jobs and improve household incomes in the Manyu local area, especially Eyumojock. Over the last few years, Michael Mbi Oru has been blaming the current crisis in the Southwest and Northwest regions for the lack of productivity in the oil mill but his subjects told Cameroon Concord News reporters that the mill never actually got off the ground. One of the villagers who spoke on grounds of anonymity said “Mbi Oruh built this sub-standard building here to take pictures and justify to his superiors in Yaoundé that the project was genuine, it was just a scam all along”. According to some disturbing facsimile of documents, Chief Mbi Oruh lured Minister Victor Arrey Mengot into the scam by selling the minister shares in the project.

The disgusting structure built in Mkpot village to pass for an oil mill is certainly not a 700 Million FCFA building. Correspondingly, our reporters were taken to a beautiful house that Michael Mbi Oruh had constructed in Mkpot for himself during the oil mill project. There is enormous evidence that his houses in Yaoundé and Limbe were built or restructured and modified from the proceeds of this oil mill theft.

According to his family members, the people of Mkpot fought bitterly against their brothers in Bakwelle for the land they acquired to cultivate a communal palm plantation for the village, which has now been hijacked by Michael Mbi Oruh as his private estate.  A source in the US hinted Cameroon Concord News  that Peter Nayongho, the man who supplied the land for the building of the mill was given a 2,500,000frs CFA hut, not the 25,000,000 frs CFA that Mbi Oruh promised him as compensation.

The people of Manyu Division must be prepared to pick up the pieces as they deal with the reality of a chief in a never-ending sequence of mischief and sinfulness.

Cameroon Concord News has contacted CFC through its headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands for further details on project execution and closure report including safeguards that were put in place to monitor and deter such outrageous embezzlements with impunity.

Cameroon Concord News will also begin a campaign of alerting multi-national and multi-partnership agencies to track and hold Michael Mbi Oruh accountable for serious rights violations and financial crimes.

There seems to be a majority now in Mkpot village determined that he will be the first Manyu chief in over 130 years to be deposed by his people. Though he has further descended into intimidating progressive voices by inviting them to police and military interrogations, there is growing anxiety among many in Mkpot that gentleness is a strategy that won’t work with this corrupt leader.

As Michael Mbi Oruh prepares to end up on the scrapheap of history as a disgraced and deposed chief, it won’t be because of the people of Mkpot, it will be because, in the end, he, Michael Mbi Oruh was his own biggest problem.

By Kinsley Betek and Rita Akana with additional editing from Soter Agbaw-Ebai