Buea in the South West region and Kolofa in the Far North are two municipalities facing security crises. Despite the multiple and similar difficulties they face, the chief executives against all odds have managed to make the issue of birth certificates a priority which, on the sidelines of the first national forum of mayors on birth registration, unfolded the strategies implemented.
David Mafani Namangue Mayor of Buea and Satomi Boucar head of the municipal executive of Kolofata are two exceptional Mayors in their respective regions. Each committed to marking the history of decentralization, they dare and work everywhere and in everything despite the risks and their deleterious professional contexts to offer a legal identity to their fellow citizens.
Concretely, for David Mafani Namangue, birth registration involves the facilitation and strengthening of social ties, working in synergy and proximity with the population which involves field visits. In other words, he specified “the crisis that the region which hosts us is going through has taken away all the documentation and civil status data in our administration. To reconstruct the facts, we contacted the prefectural authority. Also, beyond trips to Kenya, cooperation with South Korea; we referred to the national printing company in order to obtain new registers to rebuild.
To date, more than half a billion people, young people and adults combined, have been enrolled despite the costly costs linked to supplementary judgments. As in Buea, Kolofata stands out for his self-sacrifice and his capacity to mobilize for the cause of births. So to speak, in Kolofata there are more than 4000 files registered, some pending and thousands of documents already established. According to Mayor Satomi Boucar “In my town, children do not have a problem with birth certificates, unlike adults who saw their homes burned down by Boko Haram incursions.
Despite the enormous costs of the mobile audiences, the town hall via its income, the elites and the district development committee are working together to achieve the expected objectives,” he continued. In short, in Kolofata as in Buea, birth registration is the work of the commitment and especially the patriotism of executives who, aware of the risks, are committed to the issues of birth registration in attendance. Although satisfied with the first forum, they are requesting special measures to better establish birth registration in these sensitive areas.
